A Bad Character (23 page)

Inside the hospital they fed him their drugs. They tied him to a bed and injected him with many things. For days he was raging, incandescent. Saying Shiva was with him in the room.

Then he was calmed, put under their control. They began to counsel him. They challenged his beliefs. They talked to him about what he knew and what he saw. They wore him down this way, and he grew compliant. He believed what they said to him and recognized that what he believed was not the truth. Later, when they agreed to release him, it was on the condition that he renounce what he’d always thought. They made him sign a piece of paper that said Shiva did not exist.

When he came out of that place his parents took him back to his apartment. They flew his fiancée over from the States and they all stayed together for several weeks, until the end of May, and then, convinced he would be all right again, they left him in Ali’s care. Ali, who promised to be with him day and night.

I retreated into my studies in those months. I blocked him from my mind as best I could, devoted myself to college instead. In May I sat my final exams, half expecting him to be there when I left the hall.

At the end of May, late at night, someone called me on my cellphone, five or six rings, enough to bring me out of sleep. But before I could think to answer, the ringing stopped. I spent the rest of the night clutching the phone tight, my eyes open in the dark.

The Businessman had other girlfriends. In London, in Bombay, in Delhi. But she didn’t care. She had no illusions about him. And he still looked after her. He found
her a small apartment in Defence Colony, a barsati near the market in B Block, a small one-bedroom flat on the roof of one of the large houses there. She moved out of Aunty’s the next day. The goodbyes were brief. The coke she did in her room right then made it manageable, completely without consequence.

The barsati was bare, unfurnished. Only a bed, a table and a chair, a few rugs, naked bulbs, a couple of cups and glasses in the kitchen area. Nothing on the walls, empty shelves. The city came in from everywhere. She stood on the roof and looked out over the colony, the city. There was no one here to claim her, no one telling her what to do. She went back inside, switched off the fan and cut another line.

In this room, in silence, staring at the ceiling fan, lying completely alone, no longer waiting, she felt the bliss she’d been searching for from the start.

He and Ali were back in his apartment and everything went well at first. He kept regular hours, took the pills
he’d been given dutifully, exercised and slept like never before. He didn’t touch a drop of alcohol. His eyes took on a steady shine.

But after a few weeks things started to slip. He was restless, didn’t sleep so well, and soon enough he was awake throughout the night. Ali sat with him in the living room or by the bed, exhausted, talking with him, smoking cigarettes, playing cards, but he had no luck. So they began to go out and drive again, but with Ali now in the passenger seat. They’d drive around the city, then they’d go out to the dhabas on the highway to eat.

It was here that he began to open up to Ali, to talk about the hospital and what they made him do there, what they did to him, but Ali confessed he didn’t understand a word of it, it made no sense to him, he thought it was black magic and the doctors were all crazy themselves for saying Shiva didn’t exist. Shiva, Allah, God, they were around us all the time, it was plain to see.

I know all this because I met Ali again, quite by chance. He’d found work as a driver for an associate of the Businessman, he’d clawed his way up and was sober and smartly dressed. He had a daughter now too, she was three months old. His knowledge of the city was unparalleled.

We met as I came out of a club in GK with the Businessman very late one night. There were many drivers standing waiting for us in the desolate colony street, empty besides the stray dogs and the humming lights and the expensive cars under the drivers’ watchful eyes. Ali was among them—I was climbing into the back of the car when I heard his voice calling out to me. His voice brought back everything and I stopped and began to tremble, so when he came towards me the other drivers held him back as if he were mad. But I regained myself and said it was OK. We stood facing each other for a moment before I nodded at him and climbed into my car.

I got Ali’s number from one of the other drivers and I called him the next day, asking him to come and see me when he had finished work. He arrived at my building late at night in an autorickshaw. I’d been waiting for him, unable to think of anything else, unable to go out. When I heard him I went down, handed over my car keys and told him to drive.

We drove around the city that night. He told me everything he knew.

Ali arrived at the apartment on the morning of June 7 to find that some bags had been packed. He told Ali he was going away, heading to the mountains the long way round, the way he loved to go, stopping off first in Jaipur, driving through Rajasthan and Punjab to Pathankot, close to the border, through the desert. From there he didn’t know, maybe Ladakh or maybe Parvati, he would decide on the journey.

Ali expected him to leave straightaway, but for some reason he hesitated. He sat in the flat waiting in silence for something—he wouldn’t say what—so that by the time he climbed into the car the sun had already set. He handed Ali a bag of money, eighty thousand rupees, and gave him the keys to the apartment, telling him to look after it while he was gone. Live in it, he said, bring your wife, be happy. He told him he’d be back in a couple of months. But Ali couldn’t leave things like that. He insisted he’d drive with him some of the way.

When they were out of Delhi on the highway they stopped to eat at a dhaba. That’s where he and Ali said goodbye. They went inside and ate chicken and dal as a last meal. In an effort to prolong the departure they had some whisky.

It was one in the morning and they were still sitting drinking as the trucks and cars and buses flew by, as the drivers drifted in and got drunk in the heavy night. They watched the lights and grew drunk too, one whisky after
another, they talked about the past, argued, laughed, embraced. Ali told him his wife was expecting and that he would be a father soon and they ordered another whisky to toast this fact.

Around two, not yet completely wasted, he told Ali it was time to leave. He wanted to make Bikaner in good time, to get there by breakfast. They called over one of the old men who sat behind the counter and the three of them together found a truck that would take Ali back to the city. He paid the bill, gave Ali more money for his new baby, they embraced once more, and then he stood beside his car as he waved Ali’s truck on to the road.

I drifted away from the Businessman in the end. Nothing spectacular. It just happened like that. I still see him around here and there, now and then. We’re still on good terms. He paid for my apartment for another year, and by the time this ran out I’d found a real job for myself.

One of the last big nights I’m with him we’re in a nightclub, drinking champagne, it’s the VVIP section, the coke is plentiful and barely concealed. We’re with his rich and powerful friends.