A few days later his voicemail dies.
In Nizamuddin I ring the bell of the apartment door. The maid answers and I ask to speak to sir or madam, knowing that sir has already left for work.
Madam comes to the door holding her young child, a curious look on her face. I act surprised to see her, as if expecting someone else. I ask her right away where they are, if the family is in or away. She tells me they don’t live here any more, they sold the apartment, it only happened two weeks ago, it was a very quick sale. Oh, I say, but I’ve come all the way from Chandigarh. I’d lost their number but I knew the house, I used to live just round the corner and now … Do you have a number for them? Do you know where they’ve gone?
She says she’ll get it for me, would I like to come in?
The woman offers me a seat in the living room while she goes to leave her child with the maid. The Japanese screen doors have been removed—now family photos cover the walls. It’s hard to believe it’s the same home.
She comes back and sits down opposite and asks me what I’m doing here in Delhi, besides coming to find old friends. I tell her I’m applying for my visa to the States, and also meeting a boy who I might be marrying, who’s from the U.S. himself. He’s only here for a few days, but we’ve met six times before and I think he might be the one. The lies fall out my mouth very easily. But it’s hard being here. Beneath the layers of new furniture and everyday life I can see where I’ve been ripped apart.
She sees my wandering eye and asks, It must look different to you. I heard their son did a lot of work on it in the last few years. Did you know him very well?
I say I knew him a long time ago when we were small, he was older than me, he used to tease me a lot, but when we moved to Chandigarh we lost touch.
She nods and says, So you really haven’t heard? Well, I hate to be giving such bad news, but he died, not so long ago at all. He fell in front of a truck on the highway. He was drunk. It was in the papers, they said it was suicide and a girl was involved, but then there usually is in these cases, no? She drove him to it, that’s what they say. It almost stopped us buying the place, but since he didn’t actually die here we thought that there’s really no bad luck involved.
The pain is suddenly very sharp, like a clockwork razor turning in my chest; I feel it tightening and cutting me to shreds. I want to run away from here as fast as I can. I ask if I may use the bathroom instead.
As soon as I shut the door my strength begins to fail. I have to cover my mouth with my hands to stop myself from crying out. When I look around me, I see that nothing in this room has changed. There’s the same chipped tiles, the cracking paint on the pipes, the plaster falling from the walls, the same shower, the frosted glass with the sunlight seeping in. I see my face in the mirror and I know that one day I will die. Slowly, with great effort, I pull my breathing back, take deep inhalations and in the warmth and the whiteness I close my eyes. I am alive.
He says, Open your eyes. Open your fucking eyes. Don’t be blind your whole life. Don’t be blind to it. Open them up. I open them and he’s looking down at me, flaring in the sun.
In October it finally began to come apart. The Israelis moved down to Delhi from the mountains, on their way back to Sinai, to Tel Aviv, on their way to the new season in Goa. This great pack of Israelis coming into Paharganj. They called him up from there. They needed him to fix some things.
I didn’t know it then but he was going out most nights. Going out to smoke, drink, shoot up. In rooms with strangers and friends. Waiting for me to come back to him in the day. But getting bored of me. In rooms with men just like Franklin John.
I learned all this from K.
K the fat Buddha man, one of the greatest dealers Delhi’s ever known. Dark like my love, but unlike him possessed of a beatific face, a face that catches the light, without malice, a face to put your faith into. Self-taught, home-grown, raised right out of the dirt of Orissa, unable to read or write, but he could speak seven languages, he learned Hebrew in three months. He knew everyone.
K sat in all of his hotel rooms and the models came, the designers came, the actors and actresses came, the sons of politicians came. They all shook his hand, venerated him. They came to talk, hang out, pick up what they needed, and he sat there like a maharaja with his cigar, the centre of the world. When his customers arrived he’d have a long chat, he’d reach into the bag by his side, take out the drug, give a little more from his own supply, give it on credit if required, always with a good word and a smile.
K was an acquaintance of his, not quite a friend, both part of the scene. We were introduced in a five-star hotel suite at the very start of things, in those glorious first three weeks. We’d gone to pick up some money he was owed. Downstairs in the hotel a fashion show was going on. K was keeping everyone high above.
When we went into the hotel suite that day K looked him up and down, gave a wry smile and shook his hand. He said he hadn’t seen him in a long time, but that he was looking well.
I was introduced but we didn’t stay long. We picked up the money and left. But K shook my hand then and quietly handed me his card as I walked out the door.
Outside the flat in Nizamuddin, with the woman watching me from the balcony above, I searched the glove box for K’s card. It was there, buried under papers, off-white and expensively made. I had no one else to talk to then, nowhere else to go any more. No voice to hear on the phone. I drove awhile until I was away from there, parked in a small street in Lodhi Colony and then called.
K answered the phone almost right away. He said, Hello and nothing more. In the silence that followed I told him who I was and where we’d met before. He said he remembered me and he was sorry because he’d heard the news. Would I like to come over to see him some time? He said he was in the Meridien, he gave me the number of the suite, said he’d be around for a while.
I sat with him for a few hours that same day, nestled in a couch at the side of the room, listening to him talk. He said how much I’d changed. He remembered a fresh and nervous college girl.
Between customers, between answering the phone, he talked to me, talked about things absent-mindedly, talked about his business, kept me occupied. When the customers came I sat alone at the side and watched until they were gone. Finally he came round to the only thing I wanted to know. He said he was not at all surprised by what happened, that he always thought it would end this way, that he was a wild one, that no one could live like he did for so long and not come crashing down to the ground. He told me all about the parties, about the raves.
For a week or so I go back to K, day after day, and he tells me the things he knows. I listen to it all. I keep coming back. He doesn’t mind, he says I’m good luck for him. I sit in the room while he conducts his business. I provoke curiosity in his customers. I sit there every day, numbed somehow and lost in thought. He asks me what I’m going to do with myself now. I say I don’t know. I’ve finished college, I was thinking of getting a job. Where I live, they’re getting impatient, but they’ve given up trying to marry me off.
At some point he looks over at me as if I’ve been noticed for the first time. He cuts a couple of lines of coke, holds out a rolled-up banknote and says I should help myself. He says it’ll make me feel better.
There’s nothing in the world like the first line of cocaine. The way it hits the brain, sharpens the lights of the room, removes all doubt, removes the pain. Removes guilt too.
I take two grams with me. He says there’s no rush to pay, just go, forget about him, enjoy yourself. That’s what he would have done. There’s a whole city out there waiting for you.
I do another line in the room and then I drive back home.
Throughout our love, until it was much too late, there was always the hope that he would change. That he would become rich, successful, respectable. Respectable above all else, because of his ideas and the wealth they would bring. That one day he would become rich on his own, not through inheritance but through tal
ent, skill, that he would make money, make business, do something. That this would be enough for me to present him to my family and say, Look, I found someone. And if he were rich, if he were famous, if he were a recognized success, if they knew him from the papers, if he had been confirmed in some public way, then they would embrace him. They would overlook his flaws, his ugliness, his black skin, his well of madness. They would be happy to let me go to him. All the way through I held on to a hope like this, like the coward that I was. I could never quite let that go.
I went to the qawwalis one more time. I got out of the car and walked down the path to the same alleyway past the mosque, shining bright with all those godly lights. But it was cramped and noisy and I was painfully alone and it stank of men and their meat and their eyes.
Still inside the dargah, by the shrine, I hoped for some of the old magic to appear, for the music to lift me, for the saint to return the love I once gave. But the saint kept his distance and the music left me cold. It was toneless, an empty edifice behind a veil in a world built by fools.
I stood as I used to stand, not knowing what to do with myself. The way the devotees behaved, it seemed more like a train station than a holy place. Men went into the shrine like a ticket office as the women and children huddled together outside. They stared morosely, nudging, gossiping, scowling. I looked around the empty space trying to hold on to something, but it wasn’t the same. I saw things I hadn’t noticed, the dirty stains on the marble, the ugly white lights and the shops on the edges selling bright, tawdry clothes. I smelled the ripeness of armpits and unwashed feet and became full of hate. I despised it all.
All eyes seemed to fall on me, the women’s more than ever. They were watching, sniggering, twisting their lips. Making me feel foolish and ashamed. Because I was alone, because of the way I was dressed. I couldn’t take being watched like this so I went to the edge of the courtyard away from the music and stood at the wall in the shadows thinking I would be all right there. But there other pious women began to notice, to hiss at me, curse me for leaning against the wall, for doing things I didn’t even know were wrong. And when I stepped forward and squatted down to try to hide they hissed at me some more.
I retreated from the dargah back to my car. I cursed them all the way. I drove a short distance until I reached Jor Bagh, parked and cut myself a line, then drove through the city at speed.
Him and me, we are driving up to Majnu ka Tila in October. The prayer flags are fluttering over the stagnant Yamuna breeze. He’s picked me up from college to drag me here, called me out of the blue.
Rain came down for a day yesterday, out of season, surprising us all, bringing up the sewage and leaving the heat behind, and the flies and mosquitoes and the traffic fumes. Here by the refugee colony, old metal coaches are parked full of Tibetans, young men, young women, old men and women, all weighed down with boxes of supplies and possessions, waiting to head back up to the mountains. Foreigners too, sitting exhausted with their backpacks and matted hair by the side of the road, and the tangle of prayer flags over everything.
Inside the colony we walk through the alleys, past Internet cafés and travel agents. In a guest house there’s a longhaired Tibetan from Amdo called Losel, who dresses like a basketball player, speaks American English and has fifty tolas of charas he’s looking to get rid of.
He grins at us in the murky restaurant with four cheap marble tables. There’s the smell of fried food and incense. Next to him a stocky monk is slurping noodle soup, dripping sweat from the end of his nose. His arms are tree trunks, and although the rest of his body is hidden within the crimson robes, you can feel the strength of it, the kind of strength that pulls trucks in its wake and lifts rubble. He has a wiry moustache and goatee and a hairline low on his head.
Losel puts an arm around the monk’s shoulders, saying, This is my brother. The monk stops eating, turns his head towards Losel and curls his lip, the kind of sneer that’s reserved for a cockroach. Then Losel says something in Tibetan and the monk produces a great grin that transforms his face and continues eating.
He hates it here, Losel says, addressing me, gripping the monk’s shoulder even tighter. He thinks Delhi is a hell and I’ve become one of its demons. He’s only here for a night to pick up supplies, but even this is too much. He thinks the city is evil, it gives him a headache, dealing with the dishonest people, the liars and the thieves. He’s from Amdo, just like me. We came together over the mountains, eight of us through the snow walking single file at night from Amdo through Tibet to Nepal and then here. It took eight weeks—hiding in the day, walking at night. They have the snipers up there. It was OK though, no problem, no one died that time. One of us died later but he had TB. Two more are in prison now.
Losel was seventeen when he left home. His mother was worried he’d end up dead, or worse, Chinese. He didn’t want to leave at first, he liked it up there. But he got into too much trouble. Squabbling over an unpaid debt he blew up a Muslim bookie’s car. He made a petrol bomb of the gas tank and blew that old BMW into the sky. His mother sent him away the next day.
The monk interrupts him, begins talking, talks fast and stern, as if he’s lecturing. He goes on like this for a while and Losel gives him short replies, starts to laugh, until the monk bangs his fist on the table, gets up and walks away. Losel watches him go. He says, He worries about my soul. He’s going upstairs to watch people killing each other on STAR Movies. He likes the action films best of all.
We drive down from Majnu ka Tila to the Tibetan Monastery Market. Through the flyover arch we walk to the stalls of clothes surrounded by college students. Left before the main market, past the bell of the monastery—there’s a small alleyway, nothing more than a gutter between two buildings, on either side of which there are more shops selling bags and shoes and all manner of counterfeit clothes. At the end of that alley, dodging the sewage running through the middle, we come to a door with panels painted black so you can’t see inside. Into that drab building, through another door on the right, and you’re in Tibet.
The room is a great dark canteen full of noise and incense, twelve tables of monks and laymen all together, photos of the Dalai Lama on the walls alongside a giant photograph of Lhasa from the air. High in one corner, a TV is screeching, half the room absorbed in its boom bang, the other half in conversation—loud, intense, spirited—or eating. Monks gobble noodles. We sit at the only empty table and Losel orders Coca-Cola, thentuk, phing sha, fried beef momos.
They begin to talk about the charas, how good it is, where he got it from, what the price should be. He says he’ll sell for three hundred, you can sell it on for six. Who’s buying?
There are some Israelis in Paharganj, they’re waiting for it right now, they called last night.
Coming from?
Old Manali—some are heading to Goa, some of them are going home. They want to take it back with them too.
At the end of the meal we leave the monks and the smoke and go back down the alleyway, back into the market, inside one of the countless shops, up some step-ladders in the back to a storeroom above the ceiling, full of shoeboxes. A pretty young Tibetan girl is sleeping, Losel shakes her awake. My wife, he says. She stretches and yawns. Without a word she pulls out one of the shoeboxes, pushes it towards us and goes back to sleep. Fifty tolas inside, creamy little pellets wrapped in cling film.
Losel passes him one, he peels the film off, scratches it with his nail, sniffs, nods, throws it back again. He takes the envelope from his pocket, counts out fifteen thousand and hands it over.
The Israelis are waiting for us on the roof terrace of Anoop Hotel. They don’t stay here, it’s just the meeting place. The Israelis. Most of them are just out of the army, muscled, tattooed, letting their hair grow long—the women as tough and free as the men.
Others are scared of them, and they keep to themselves, they don’t mix well, they move in packs, don’t suffer fools. But they love him. They think he’s a crazy one, this crazy Indian coming into t
heir world, talking with them as one of their own, talking with a brain, charming them. Not like the others, not trying to suck up and serve. He wears a Star of David when he meets them. They love him for this too. They laugh. They say maybe he’s one of them, he could be one of the lost tribe.
And they hate Delhi. Another reason to love him. He makes the city bearable for them. They call him up on the phone and he makes it better, he knows where to get hold of the best charas, the best dope, the Valium and ketamine from the corrupt pharmacies.
The room we go to is like Franklin’s. Mosquito bloodstains on the walls, sewer stench lingering, incense burning. In the process of packing, unpacking or repacking, someone’s belongings got scattered about the place. There are drums and chillums and dirty clothes, and a machete on the bed.
Ten of them are standing there. The bed is cleared, fifty tolas are spread out on the mattress. One is opened up, passed around, inspected by everyone. Guarded smiles and shrugs and nods, a ripple of cautious approval, and someone begins to crumble charas into a mixing bowl.
The negotiations begin. He starts at eight hundred per tola and they baulk at this, laugh at him. They say, Come on, man, be real. He laughs back, gives nothing away, declares the provenance, says it’s from Malana itself, reminds them that he’s the trustworthy one and they came to him, he’s not a dirty Kashmiri, he’s not like the others on the street. He says they won’t find anything this good on their own, not here, not for this much, not now. Go out in the street and ask for it, see what they give you. So they offer five. He looks offended, goes to collect the charas in the shoebox like a kid gathering his toys. They laugh at him and push him away and say, OK, OK. Make it six, and he looks at them with raised eyebrows and shakes his head and says, Seven five. Six, they repeat. He makes as if to spit on the floor, pauses, grins, says, OK, six five.
A Bad Character Page 10