A while later, the mobile-woman returns. “You can go to the makeup room now,” she tells Shiv. “One of the other panelists is already there.” (Shiv knows, from the way she says this, that this is a bigwig, an in-favor government-type.) “I hope you don’t mind sharing the makeup room.”
As she speaks, the woman opens a door, sticks her head in and says, “Sultan, I’ve brought the professorji for makeup.” She leaves Shiv to Sultan’s mercy and shuts the door behind her.
The room is small and brilliantly lit. It is entirely lined with mirrors on one side. The room itself seems to be all corners. It is almost triangular, and the lights and mirrors combine to multiply corners—real corners and mirror-corners. There are two chairs with armrests and headrests before the mirror.
The bigwig is in one of the chairs. His bushy eyebrows rise a fraction at the sight of Shiv in the other chair. Just a fraction but that is enough for his eyebrows to meet the outward-growing bush on his head. The bridge of skin in between collapses and disappears entirely, making way for two continents of hair to meet and merge.
The makeup man, Sultan, is one of those men who has taken stock of the place he has to work in and adapted himself to it. He is so thin that his features flatten out obediently into a straight line every time he presents himself in profile. But he makes up for his insubstantial appearance with his hospitable air. “Just a minute, sir. I’ll be with you in a minute,” he says to Shiv. Or to Shiv’s reflection. (All conversation in this room is held with reflections, with the makeup man behind whoever is in the makeup chair.)
Shiv sees Sultan’s reflection hovering round the bigwig’s bushy face, brush and sponge to hand. The bigwig’s face turns an even, unhealthy pink. He shuts his eyes with a sigh, as if used to catching a nap on the move.
A few minutes later, Sultan is done. The bigwig opens his eyes and blinks at the pink mask in the mirror. He examines the blush painted on his face, then yawns. Shiv can see the bigwig’s thick gray tongue in the mirror. Though it lies still in his mouth like a sleepy, fat slug, Shiv suspects it is usually agile and darting. The bigwig gets up and bustles out of the room. Sultan comes over to Shiv, smiling shyly. “Now sir, let me see what I can do for you,” he says.
The mobile-woman returns just as Sultan releases Shiv from the room of mirrors. “Ready, sir?” she asks, and leads the way. Armed with pancake, his thinning hair artfully combed to fool the general public, he follows her to where the cameras wait.
She pushes open a door with a sign that says No Entry; there is also a red light blinking above the door for those who require more than one warning. A blast of air-conditioning greets them as they step into a cavern-like room, all the lights directed at a semicircular table.
“The show is a straightforward panel discussion,” the mobile-woman tells Shiv. “There are two panelists other than you, and the moderator—” She breaks off as the host of the program comes toward them. Shiv notices that the bigwig is one of the other panelists. He is looking at Shiv avidly, a hawk waiting to swoop down on a delectable mouse.
Much later in the day, his face washed of pancake, Shiv tells Meena about the bigwig’s version of Basava’s story. He had, to Shiv’s surprise, done some homework. But predictably, his homework on Basava and his times refused to go beyond legends and tales. He recounted, in shrewd politician-style, some rosy myths about Basava’s divine powers.
“Apparently Basava was not human from the very beginning,” Shiv tells Meena. “We had to hear a long and involved story about the cosmic events that led to Siva sending his bull to earth as Basava. He sent his bull to earth because”—Shiv mimes derisive quotation marks—“of the unfortunate status of devotion on earth. So, the bigwig went on to ask, What was the difficulty in Basava’s escaping death, of his ‘shedding his mortal coils’ and going back to Siva when his earthly mission was accomplished?”
The bigwig had also stumbled upon one of the more peculiar examples of Basava’s supposed miracles. There has been some speculation about who fathered Basava’s nephew, the veerashaiva leader Chennabasava. “The bigwig had done enough homework to find the best explanation,” says Shiv. “It seems Basava was praying when he saw an ant hurrying along with a seed in its mouth. Basava took this seed for some reason and gave it to his sister Nagamma, and the result was an immaculate conception.”
Meena laughs uproariously.
“Have you ever noticed,” she says to Shiv, “how close some of these mythical explanations are to the small print on official documents? I mean, you can really see the governmentwallas in these convoluted myths, bending over backwards to do some damage control.”
Shiv is losing count of interviews, meetings, telephone calls. Meena has forgotten about her itchy knee. She sits in her bed, phone in hand, a general on the battlefield directing operations. The occasional awkward silence that would sit between them in the early days is now filled; they have more than enough to talk about, all safe subjects. But sometimes, Shiv finds himself shutting out her voice. He looks at her instead. At her eyes. Into her eyes, the tumultuous place where Meena lives.
Then her voice intrudes into his daydream. “Shiv?” she says sharply. “What do you think—did you hear what I said?”
He shakes his head, but his heart, an absurd and frivolous creature, grows light and buoyant. It’s the first time she has called him by name. And as always with Meena, it is a natural act, performed entirely without self-consciousness.
Then the doorbell rings. The telephone wakes up. Professional hatemongers pen letters to the editor.
Dear Sir,
It is high time our so-called historians presented Hinduism and its famous tolerance in its true light. This Professor Murthy has made the great saint Basavanna a mere politician, appealing to caste and dividing society just like Mandal did some years back. Maybe the esteemed Professor needs a refresher course in more recent history? When the Pope came to India, he refused to apologize for Christian conversions, yet he was treated to Hindu hospitality. As for Islam, its advent might have been a boon for the Arabs who united under its banner, but it has been a curse for people outside the Arab world. Wherever the Islamic hordes went, they conquered, killed and plundered. The Islamic belief that political power can be claimed by anyone who can wield the sword goes against the legality of inheritance to the throne. It also encourages intrigues, plots, rebellions and assassinations of father by son, brother by brother, ruler by military commander or minister, and above all, master by servant, nay, even by slave.
Our misled historians and other troublemakers criticize Hinduism for its caste system and pull our saints off their pedestals. But they keep quiet about Christianity or Islam. The truth is that these minorities will be safe in India only if they share our vision of our country and culture. Then we won’t mind accommodating two more gods (Allah and Christ) along with our three hundred and thirty million gods and goddesses.
Yours, etc.,
Prof. (Shri) M. M. Behoshi
(failed Oxon, 1942)
Meena throws the newspaper aside as if it is infectious. “I wonder what your colleagues are doing,” she says to Shiv. “I know your wimpy Head is avoiding you, but what about the rest of them? Can they be persuaded to take a stand—come out and say something against the Manch and the Head and whatshisname? The Department fundoo?”
“Arya,” says Shiv. The word slips out of his mouth so easily. It is so light, this easily said two-syllable name. It rises into the air above them like a spiral of smoke detaching itself from the reality below, the man with the ugly fire raging inside him. And Arya brings to mind the rest of the core faculty. Just three weeks back Shiv was still a member of the clan, sharing their daily concerns and their boredom and those interminable cups of venomous Department tea. But now, with Shiv marked as a creature apart, a foreigner like Mrs. Khan, the core faculty may as well be complete strangers to him. A secret society that speaks an exotic, excluding language. “I spoke to Menon, he was telling me about a somewhat similar case—
”
“You’ll have to meet them all, Shiv,” interrupts Meena. “You can’t avoid a confrontation, you have to get the Head to meet all of you.” She pauses, her face taking on a hungry, expectant look that reminds Shiv of the predatory bigwig in the studio. “Even better, you have to confront this Arya. Ignoring him is not going to make him go away.”
The telephone rings. Meena picks it up immediately. “Yes, I’m Meena,” she says. “Oh, I’m fine.” Whoever is on the phone obviously has a lot to say. Meena looks at Shiv, her face stretched into a comical mask of mock-dismay, her eyes lit with amusement. “No, I don’t know when the cast will come off,” she now says. “Shiv is here, he’ll talk to you. Just a second.”
She covers the mouthpiece with her hand and says to Shiv in a teasing, exaggerated whisper. “Phew! Someone called Amita Sen. Very sweet and ladylike, ve-ry concerned about my leg though she has never set eyes on me. She has to talk to you urgently. Special friend of yours, eh?” She grins at him with wicked shrewdness as she hands him the phone. Shiv takes it, flustered and guilty, as if it is Rekha in the room with him, not Meena.
Amita is in full flow. “I’m so glad she’s better—your ward I mean—her name is Meena, isn’t it? She sounds very young. But Shiv, I’m calling so we can meet today, I have so much to tell you. Let’s meet somewhere quiet, away from the campus.”
“I don’t know,” Shiv begins, but Amita hastens to add, “Menon’s coming too. We are both free today, and we’ve got to talk about what’s happening, we have to figure out how Menon and I can help. You know we are on your side, don’t you, Shiv?”
Shiv is on the road again, but this time he is not floating in limbo, safe in an anonymous studio vehicle. He is driving his own Maruti, feeling like a child who has stolen out of the house without his guardian’s approval. Meena does not know where he is going; though Menon will be there too, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her he is going to meet Amita. Amita did not say what exactly she and Menon have in mind, and Shiv was anxious to cut short her call. But he is sure they plan more than reassurance and sympathy over lunch; Menon at least must have some plan for a meeting at the Department.
If he had not been so secretive, Shiv thinks, if he had told Meena that he is meeting his colleagues outside the campus, she would probably have been delighted. “To chalk out a plan?” she would have asked. Shiv’s car makes a furtive, steady sound as if humming under its breath. For a moment, he feels a childish thrill: if he is up to a clandestine meeting, or at least a little plotting against the Head, he must still be in control of his life. He eases the pressure of his foot on the accelerator and crawls to a halt at an intersection.
The traffic lights are not working. All around him, cars, buses, autos, scooters, cycles and pedestrians compete with each other, determined to go ahead before the traffic on the other side gets there first. The air fills with impatient honking. Shiv wills himself to wait, to remain the rule-following person he thinks he is.
He waits. He shuts out the noise around him by pretending he is in the middle of a silent movie. Chaos in silence, chaos more easily managed. The city looks more squalid than usual somehow, an exhibitionist showing off its open wounds. Surely some of these gaping potholes are new? The ugly pockmarked buildings on either side of the road sit watching the commuters like an unhappy, unwilling audience.
Then Shiv sees the woman and her companion. The young woman is hugely pregnant; her midriff is bare between her blouse and skirt. The companion is an old woman wizened with worry. Together they dodge their way between the restless cars as they try one driver after the other. Even before they come closer Shiv can see their taut, desperate faces: he saw them last month with exactly the same expression. Back then, as he waited at these same traffic lights, the two women went begging for help from car to car. The young woman moaned, her face contorted with pain. Her hands held the dangerously low bulge in such a way that Shiv’s own stomach lurched with sympathy. The light turned green. Shiv opened his wallet quickly and gave a couple of the notes to the older woman. Then he put his car into gear with an apologetic look.
Now, a month later, still at the same place, the two women are working their way toward him. The young one is still pregnant. She moves slowly as if her baby will be born any minute. They have reached the car to his left. Shiv can’t believe he is seeing the same scene again; he also feels his muscles tense as if he is watching a tightrope act.
The man in the car to the left stares ahead, intent on the traffic. But there is a bus before him and he cannot pretend to inch forward. He looks at the women sheepishly, then pulls out his wallet. Shiv wants to switch off the engine, get out of his car and say to them as if he has gone backstage after a performance, Bravo! The women turn toward his car. Their eyes meet Shiv’s; all three of them are trapped together in a few seconds of piercing clarity; then the women scuttle away.
The honking reaches a frenzied pitch. The lights are back; the traffic is moving with a vengeance to make up for lost time. A truck snorts as it rushes past Shiv. Its exhaust smoke hangs in the air for a moment as if it does not know where to go.
The restaurant Amita has picked turns out to be the sort that is dimly lit so it can pretend the air-conditioning is more potent than it is. But Shiv feels energized somehow by his encounter with the women on the road. It was a brief holiday from his troubles, this glimpse of others’ desperate survival strategies.
But when he tells Amita and Menon about the professionally pregnant woman—and he does this right away, he can’t bear to begin on his own business yet—he is amazed by their reaction. “Shouldn’t believe every sob story you hear,” Menon says disapprovingly, then falls silent as if he has said too much. Amita is more voluble. “How could you, Shiv, how could you get fooled so easily? I can’t believe you actually gave her money the last time. How much did you give her? You should have taken them to the police station today.”
Shiv is actually relieved when the conversation moves to the inevitable, waiting track. The Department, the Head, Shiv’s options. He is also taken aback—when she spoke to him on the phone, Amita did not let on about the minor miracle she and Menon have already managed: an “extraordinary” faculty meeting to be held in the Department.
“I never thought Menon could be so tough,” Amita gushes, her voice shrill with newfound admiration. “The Head didn’t know what hit him.” She chuckles, leaning toward Menon and blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke into his face. “Just goes to show, doesn’t it—you think you know a person you’ve been seeing day after day, then suddenly, like magic, the person surprises you.”
Menon winces and passes Amita the chicken; she obediently puts out her cigarette and serves herself. Menon may be less effusive than Amita, but Shiv can hear the quiet satisfaction in his voice. “The meeting’s on,” he says. “The Head must have seen he can’t avoid a faculty meeting indefinitely. Arya will be there, of course, and he’s bound to make a nuisance of himself.” Menon pauses, then goes on with an air of confessing something, “But Arya actually helped me engineer the meeting, can you imagine? He pressurized the Head even more than I did. So let’s hope for the best.”
Shiv enters the room and feels a strange sense of letdown. Everything is as banal and predictable as usual: the dusty, cobwebbed room, the temperamental tubelight, the curtains faded an indeterminate gray. The core faculty gathered in the inevitable room, every one of them including the Head, Mrs. Khan to hand with the ubiquitous pad and pen. All is as usual, and Shiv automatically makes his way to the empty chair beside Amita.
But once he has sat down, looked around, he sees the little paradox he has missed. The cast remains the same, yet it is not unchanged. Not one of them is really at ease. All is not as usual: Shiv sees this now, in the stiff, self-conscious way they sit in their chairs, waiting anxiously to play out unfamiliar, unscripted roles. And as if to remind him that this is an extraordinary meeting with no time for frivolous distractions, the usual tea is missing. Shiv catches Mrs. Khan�
��s eye; she gives him a brief, watery smile, then looks away.
The Head frowns at her. “I don’t think we need minutes today, Mrs. Khan,” he says, nodding his head censoriously at her pad. “This is just an informal meeting with Dr. Murthy.” So, Shiv thinks, the swine wants to settle it all off the record. He steels himself.
But it is Arya who puts the Head in place. “I don’t know why we are pretending there is no problem. I suggest”—and he leers at the cowering Mrs. Khan—“every word spoken today, any explanation Dr. Murthy may have to offer us, should be on record.” Shiv turns to Arya with distaste. The man’s face looks bloated as if he has been feasting on Shiv’s misery. Shiv’s eyes move to Menon and they exchange a speaking look. No wonder Arya was an unexpected accomplice; he wanted the meeting so he could gloat in public over the Manch’s new victim.
“Well,” says the Head, looking miserable. “Take the minutes down, Mrs. Khan, but show me what you have written once it is typed. We’ll have to decide whether it should go on file then.” It’s impossible not to feel sorry for the Head; obviously nothing in his career has prepared him to take on intimidation by the likes of Arya and his goons.
Now the Head valiantly tries to hold his own. “We might as well get to the point. The point is that the Department and the University are doing their level best to defuse this crisis before it gets completely out of hand.” He nods at Mrs. Khan who is writing down every pearl of wisdom. “As you know, the lesson has been sent to an expert committee for a fair, balanced review. Meanwhile it’s best perhaps that Dr. Murthy—”
“But do we know who these experts are?” Amita asks bravely. Shiv gives her a grateful look and takes the plunge. “If the Manch is satisfied with this committee, the chances are the committee does not have a single historian we can take seriously. And what about the precedent we are setting? With the lesson and with the ‘suggestion’ for my resignation?”
In Times of Siege Page 11