Family Planning (15 page)

M
R. AHUJA WAS IN HIS CAR
—contemplating the forthcoming flattery of the SPM—when the call came.

Mr. Ahuja screamed. “WHY THE HELL WAS RAVI DRIVING?”

“Sorry, Papa. I’m in trouble—”

“DOESN’T MATTER. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU? ONLY GO IN A CAR WITH A DRIVER?”

Unlike Mr. Mehta, Mr. Ahuja’s shouting was calculated—a flexing of his larynx to firmly reestablish his authority, so severely eroded by Arjun’s untimely appearance in the nursery last night.

“Sorry Papa. Please come.”

Then Arjun explained the complications. The dutiful policeman. Ravi’s stubborn father.

“Coming,” said Mr. Ahuja.

In the hospital Mr. Ahuja found the four boys crouched low over a table in the waiting room and was so relieved to see Arjun that he immediately botched the moment. “You must be the famous band,” he beamed.

The boys, Arjun included, jolted upright, said their “Hello uncles.”

Ravi’s father looked a little upset, his cheeks twisted into a scowl.

“Where is the policeman?” asked Mr. Ahuja. “Let me talk to him.”

Unnecessary. The policeman—harassing some other innocents outside the ER—simply saluted him and followed, looking pale. Mr. Ahuja was now his concentrated best, marching through the neon-lit corridors with his arms wound into his three-piece suit, his chin tucked into his neck, shoulders hunched—the entire world gets sucked in when a powerful man turns brusque and broody. He exuded importance. He had brought his two Black Cat Bodyguards—Balwant Singh and Ram Lal, former washermen—out of their laundry fellowship; they followed him with upright machine-guns. The receptionist came to meet him at the automatic doors to the waiting room, palm curled like a rose. He was so sorry. He was
the one who had called the police. It was simple protocol. Now he was sorry. So, so sorry to offend the Minister-ji.

Ravi got up and kept saying thank you.

After conferring with the policeman, Mr. Ahuja said, “Okay, so we need to write out an agreement if we want to settle out of court. So—who is the driver?”

“
He
is the driver,” said Arjun, a bit irritably. “I told you on the phone.”

“Please be quiet. He is
not
the driver,” said Mr. Ahuja, matter-of-factly. “Correct, Mr. Mehta?”

“Yes, of course.”

“But we need to put a name down.” Mr. Ahuja paused. “Not you boys. We need to say someone else was driving.”

“How about one of your bodyguards?” said Mr. Mehta, looking askance at Balwant and Ram.

“ID card?” said Mr. Ahuja.

“Bodyguards,” repeated Mr. Mehta.

“No, no,” said Mr. Ahuja dismissively. “They are poor people. The last thing poor people need is their name on a legal document—”

“My driver—” said Mr. Mehta.

“No, no. If you don’t mind, can you put your name?” asked Mr. Ahuja. Only it wasn’t a question; it was a command. Mr. Ahuja was looking Mr. Mehta in the eye, his head tight and trembling with authority.

Mr. Mehta hesitated. “Well. There’s one issue. I’m not sure—”

“Never mind,” said Mr. Ahuja, appalled by Mr. Mehta’s cowardice. “I will put my name down. How does it matter if I am a minister? I will say I hit the girl. I am to blame. It is my fault.”

And before anyone could stop him, he’d written out a statement in Hindi and signed it. Mr. Ahuja was now officially the driver. Mr. Ahuja had hit the girl. Arjun was impressed by his father’s self-sacrifice, and he understood from the lovelorn expressions on his friends’ faces that they would be eternally grateful for Mr. Ahuja’s intervention. That he—Arjun—could misuse their gratitude to establish complete control over the band. That he’d never have to invite them home to practice.

M
R. AHUJA DID, IN THE END,
have his revenge on Mr. Mehta. He walked into the ward, shook hands with the girl’s parents, patted the girl on the head, and pointed to Mr. Mehta. “He is a great man. He has agreed to pay for all medical expenses.”

Mr. Mehta frowned, assented.

“Your good name?” asked the girl’s father.

“Minister Ahuja.”

They signed the agreement. Then, to cement the situation, Mr. Ahuja gave the girl’s parents the ultimate prize—his phone number. He told them they could call if they ever needed “help.” Yes, help: in Delhi, the only thing that mattered was who you knew, and now—for the rest of their lives or for the duration
of his term—the girl’s parents
knew
a minister (whether they’d be able to get through Mr. Ahuja’s peons and busy phones was another matter). They signed the legal document and the case was closed. Mr. Ahuja was triumphant: he inhaled deeply and took in the peculiar odor of the hospital, a smell he associated with babies being born, kick-started with a little slap on their backs to out any fluid.

He walked toward the car with Arjun. The parking lot was floodlit and finished with tiny, ugly peaks of concrete.

“Thank you, Papa.”

“You’re welcome, son,” said Mr. Ahuja. Then he added, “I hope you’re not upset about last night.”

“I’m normal,” said Arjun.

“It must be upsetting. What you saw last night. I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk about it.”

“Papa, the more you ask me if I’m upset, the more upset I’ll get.”

Mr. Ahuja said, “Come sit here with me in the car. I need to have a father-son talk with you.”

They remained standing, knees awkwardly bent in the breach between cars. Mr. Ahuja asked the driver, who had been sitting with one leg out of the car, smoking, to take a bus back home.

“I’m going to drive,” he told him. The driver handed Mr. Ahuja the keys and walked away.

Mr. Ahuja gestured at the open driver’s door. “Let’s sit in the car and have a father-son talk.”

“This
is
a father-son talk,” Arjun reminded him.

“Very funny, young man. But what I am going to talk about is very serious. Get in.”

“Papa, I
know
how sex works. I’m sixteen.”

“No, of course, beta. Of course! In this day and age how can one not? But I also wanted to use this opportunity to talk to you about, well, a question you asked me some years ago.”

“What question?”

“Well. Do you remember you asked me why your penis looks different from that of other boys?”

“What? Did I? No.”

“You asked me. And I said then that it is because they have foreskin and you don’t. Remember?”

“No.”

There was a point to this excruciating exchange. Mr. Ahuja wanted to use Arjun’s mandatory circumcision in America as a segue, applying to dialogue the same tricks of photography that showed a flower retracting into a bud in a few seconds. A concentrated life span. Circumcised penis = America = Rashmi. Later, Mr. Ahuja would wonder if this was unconscious revenge he’d taken on Arjun. Hitting back with a sexual secret.

“Please bear with me for a minute. This will all be clear to you soon. I’m not doing this to needle you. But there is a reason why they have foreskin and you don’t. I want to explain it properly.”

“How do you know what my penis looks like?”

“I am your father! Of course I know what every part of you looks like! I gave birth to you—”

“Mama gave birth to me,” Arjun corrected. “You just watched.”

“Exactly,” said Rakesh, “but I washed you sometimes also.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Okay, I understand this is a sore topic, but it is also a salient one, and I just want you to know that your penis is perfectly normal. It’s different because—”

“I know! Papa, everyone can HEAR US!”

“No, no—no one can hear. We are in the parking lot.”

“NO, ONLY YOU CAN’T HEAR.”

“Okay, okay,” said Mr. Ahuja. He decided to retreat. “I just didn’t want you to think that because you are circumcised you are a Muslim or any such thing. These days there are all these movies in which people who are circumcised are mistaken for Muslims and then killed in riots or arrested as terrorists, and I just wanted you to be aware—”

“What’s circumcised?”

“You know: your penis.”

“I hate you,” said Arjun.

“What?”

“I hate you,” Arjun said, now nearly in tears. “Is this what a son needs to hear from his father? A judgment of the size of his penis? Hello, son, your penis is not regular-sized or good-sized or normal-sized, but instead, your penis is circumsized?”

“Arjun, YOU WILL NOT RAISE YOUR VOICE AT ME!”

Arjun walked off toward the hospital gates.

Rakesh shouted behind him, “CIR-CUM-CISION MEANS YOU HAVE NO FORESKIN! IT MEANS YOU HAVE NO SKIN!”

Arjun shot back over his shoulder: “YOU HAVE NO HEART!”

The repartee hit Rakesh with the force of a tennis ball slamming into a racquet with loosened guts. His entire body vibrated around the shocked, shivering antenna of his spine. What was wrong with him? He could only keep his guilty secret by treading clumsily on his own words, each conversation with his son a disaster in the making.

The boy stood near the hospital gates with his back to him, arms crossed, hair wet and clumpy with perspiration, and now Mr. Ahuja was angry. First, Arjun’s intrusion last night and now this public shouting match. He couldn’t condone his son’s constant disrespect. He wanted to shock Arjun into submission with the secret. This was not how he’d imagined doing it. This would not be a rehearsed and penitent explanation like talking to the villagers in his constituency about why they wouldn’t have a ready supply of drinking water for another five months. This would not be a dialogue. This would not be an accidental discovery, a slipup by Sangita. This would be shouting: “THAT’S IT, ARJUN. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. CUT IT OUT. YOU WILL NEVER SPEAK TO ME LIKE THIS AGAIN—UNDERSTAND? HOW DARE YOU RAISE YOUR VOICE AT ME. I AM YOUR FATHER AND IF YOU EVER SPEAK TO ME AGAIN LIKE THIS
THEN THAT’S IT. DON’T EXPECT HELP FROM ME, DON’T EXPECT LOVE FROM ME, DON’T EXPECT ANYTHING.” Then he slipped into muttering as Arjun drew closer. “You give people love and all they do is disappoint you. I will not tolerate misbehavior from you. Understand?”

“Sorry, Papa.”

“Good. Now come. Get into the car. I have something very important to tell you. Something about your mother.”

But by the time Mr. Ahuja had gotten into the driver’s seat and begun driving, Arjun had recouped some of his insolence. So when Mr. Ahuja said, “You know, I didn’t want to marry your mother,” Arjun replied, “Oh really.”

Mr. Ahuja couldn’t believe it. His son lacked all empathy. He’d actually raised a child who felt ruthlessly entitled. While his son scowled, Mr. Ahuja’s sense of oppression on Delhi’s roads was total: the hot pedals of the car jimmying tightly; the traffic around him lustrous, garish, blinding with its high beams and swarms of mosquitoes that broke upon the cars like flimsy nets; in his throat the same formulaic desiccation he felt every morning after his snack of coffee and banana; his son at his ornery worst. Then he saw himself in Arjun’s eyes. A man so unapologetic in his pursuit of satisfaction that he’d camouflage his own grunts with the forced wails of his babies—but no. To expect such analysis was to expect too much. There
were
no eyes to be seen in; his son had turned away. Mr. Ahuja read his son endlessly. Arjun looked bored as he squashed a mosquito against the window. Maybe, Mr. Ahuja thought, he hadn’t given Arjun enough credit.
I didn’t want to marry your
mother
was as self-evident as saying
I don’t love her
, and Arjun knew that. (The term
your mother
too was a thorny paradox. He didn’t love Sangita enough to use her real name. So he distanced her by calling her
your mother
.) Arjun had watched enough TV, in all probability, to know the ins-and-outs of arranged marriages; to know that even painstakingly matched horoscopes produced howling couples; that you could taste man and wife’s indifference in the food that was served up at the table everyday. He’d seen his parents interacting every day. Now Mr. Ahuja had stated the obvious and Arjun would feel insulted rather than feel pity for Mr. Ahuja—and all Mr. Ahuja wanted was to be pitied. He wanted to be pitied for having sex with Sangita. He wanted to prove that he, too, was a victim. That he was living a life he’d had no intention of living. He couldn’t stop himself.

“You don’t know what your mother did to me,” said Mr. Ahuja. “You have no idea. I was shown a different girl. But on the wedding day, in the tent, there was your mama. I went along because I wasn’t sure. Because I didn’t want to cause a fuss. Then I was sure.”

Immediately, Mr. Ahuja regretted his confession. He’d sullied the memory of Rashmi with self-pity. He’d given Arjun ammunition against his siblings. He’d shown himself deeply vulnerable, capable of being cheated at life, at marriage, a man who crumbled behind his stoic façade. He was a monster battling a monster.

“Papa?” said Arjun. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it’s true,” he said.

“But that’s impossible. You saw her. You married her. I don’t believe it. How is this possible? It’s impossible.”

“She’d planned it. You’re confused on your wedding night. I didn’t divorce her because—”

“Confused?” Arjun sneered.

“Well—”

“Papa, she’s still my mother.”

“No,” said Mr. Ahuja, gratefully knee-jerking, “she’s not.”

“What?” said Arjun. But the first thing he thought was not
I’ve been lied to my whole life, I’ve been betrayed
but
I can’t believe this is the first time we’ve been alone together in almost a year
.

“Of course she’s my real mother,” Arjun shouted. “Just because you don’t love her—”

“Enough!” said Mr. Ahuja. “Listen to me. What did I say before?”

“Sorry, Papa.”

“Look, Arjun. This was the thing I wanted to tell you. That your Mama—Sangita—is not your real mother. Your real mother was someone else—my first wife. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I didn’t tell you because your mother died when you were three. You didn’t even remember her, what was the point? I didn’t want to tell you, I thought you would feel bad, I thought you’d feel different. But you’re not different. You know that. Even Sangita treats you the same. Whatever she is, she’s been a good mother. And I’m sorry I had to tell you like this. That’s why you are circumcised—you were born in America. Most babies there are circumcised. I was doing my
engineering there when you were born. We came back to India because your mother died.”

“How did she die?”

“In a car accident.”

“In America?”

“In America.”

“Was it a love marriage?”

There was something definitive about the question; all modes of inquiry henceforth for Arjun would be sentimental—
What did she like? What did she eat? What was her favorite joke?
Even the question
Was it a love marriage?
was sentimental, but it came cloaked in an institutional reference.

“Yes,” said Mr. Ahuja, “it was a love marriage.”

Arjun ground his teeth and tried to look disbelieving—but failed.

Now Mr. Ahuja drove and drove and drove. They’d U-turned under the Moolchand Flyover—sped past its crumbling walls and extravagant bushes that swept the road—and had passed Defence Colony in a rash of high-beamed traffic before approaching the old 1982 Jangpura Flyover. Mr. Ahuja hadn’t driven in years; it showed. His body was tense behind the steering wheel of the Qualis. Old pains resurfaced: his back ached, his shoulders ached, his arse ached, his head ached. Sitting in the back seat of his chauffeured car, he’d gotten used to making relaxed, trenchant observations about the city—now you needed to observe simply to live. Beauty be damned. He shook his fist at drivers zigzagging between lanes; he pummeled
the accelerator hard to overtake a young man in a suit who’d whizzed through a red light; honked madly at a truck that had broken down in the middle of the road, its back bumper decorated with small green plants to indicate its vegetative state; and then found himself on the Jangpura Flyover, a wide concrete lung that gently breathed the car up to eye level with treetops and flocks of pigeons, his mind aware not of the aestheticism of the crossing that had once so inspired him but rather of the fact that he was crawling to the crest of the flyover.
Crawling
. This was to be the simultaneous beauty and tragedy of the flyovers: you’d escape the red lights, but the traffic was growing so fast that you’d still be jammed, your only consolation a view of Delhi from a height.

Rakesh, then, was the great consoler of Delhi. He could bandage the city with concrete, but he couldn’t offer a solution to the growing number of cars or people or even the slums you levitated over in your fancy car.

And now he was getting off the Jangpura Flyover, and he was about to enter the one part of Delhi he’d not changed at all. It was too green and too beautiful and too old to change. The dry, green belt of the Yamuna Canal lying perpendicular to the road; the bulb of Humayun’s tomb emerging from the tungsten-bright trees; the old Oberoi Hotel; rich colonial Delhi. He wanted to tell Arjun about his romance with Rashmi here, but how could he?

They couldn’t even face each other in the car. He felt so thirsty now, the way one did after one had finally lain in bed,
that thirst that arose because the body was always rolling over toward entropy, a terrible restlessness. So you got up at night, tired, and picked up a glass, took a sip. It was not a slaking sip. It was not a satisfying segue into sleep. It was just a drink to destroy that last leftover ounce of restlessness you carried back to bed.

And he felt like this was the beginning of a long sleep, this talk, this drive. A paternal hibernation. And all he wanted before this descent into alienation was a drop of encouragement from his son, one motion or sentence or word that said
Now that you’ve told me the secret, I will forgive you for having held it so long
. But no, that was not how it worked. For every extra year he had kept the secret, Rakesh knew he would have to pay. The words were easy enough to speak, and yes, that was what made it worse, the ease of it, the ease.