JOHNNY GONE DOWN (31 page)

‘I might just take one as a mistress. Perhaps she will want to spend time with me.’

‘That’s a really good idea,’ she said, returning to her book. ‘You won’t be in my hair so much then.’

I went to play with my son, but he seemed so annoyed at being distracted from the monster that I thought he’d punch me instead.

I called Marco. ‘Now is not a good time,’ he said and put down the phone. I thought I heard a gunshot in the background.

I called Philip. ‘Oh yes, now that this is steady, I have another big idea I wanted to talk to you about…’

Sam’s arrival, announced via our sophisticated security system, was almost a relief.

‘I’m going,’ I said stiffly.

No one cared. I double-checked the alarm systems and ensured that the three security guards on duty were fully awake before I joined Sam in the waiting car.

‘You go in, Johnny boy. I have a phone call to make,’ said Sam as soon as we reached the sprawling farmhouse on the outskirts of Delhi where the MIT Indian alumni reunion was on.

‘What’s this now? Busy CEO Sameer Srivastava arrives after everyone else? Anyway, I’ll wait. What will I talk to them about?’

Arre… all our old friends will be there,’ he said. ‘You have so much in common with them. Tell them all about your new name, Johnny. Go on now! Unlike you, I work for a living and need to keep my business running.’

I cursed him as I got out of the car.

I saw about two or three hundred identically dressed men and women ranging from their twenties to their sixties, scattered in small groups around the farmhouse. In their tailored suits and expensive sarees, their flushed, confident faces and easy, textured smiles, they conveyed an effortless air of importance. They ruled the world after all, these CEOs, CFOs, consulting partners, hedge fund owners, managing directors, studio heads, billionaire entrepreneurs - all that we’d been trained to become.

I didn’t belong here, I thought, as I made my way towards the bar in the corner. I chatted with the
middle-aged bartender, a kindred soul who seemed to have graduated from the same hard knocks school as I had, before others assailed him with cocktail orders. I fetched myself a stiff whiskey and stood comfortably in a corner, nursing my drink. I had no desire to talk to anyone. MIT was a distant memory from another lifetime, and I felt neither nostalgia for the past nor aspirations for the future. There was no one I wanted to swap memories with or network for the future with. I wasn’t going places; I didn’t
want
to go any place.

‘Hey, you are Sam’s friend, aren’t you?’

I turned around and saw the man who had come to play squash with Sam that first day in Delhi. A lot had happened since then and I no longer remembered his name.

I nodded. ‘Jahangir Khan, right?’ I smiled.

He laughed. ‘Yep. Ram Lal,’ he said. ‘And you are Nick, right?’

‘No, I’m Johnny,’ I said.

He looked puzzled. ‘Surprising! I don’t usually forget names. We can’t afford to forget in our line of work.’

Ah, the consulting partner, I recalled.

‘Have you found a job yet?’ he asked.

I considered this for a moment and shook my head. ‘Unless you consider fighting a green monster with my son,’ I said. ‘But I’m not looking for one.’

‘Oh, you can’t give up hope so soon,’ he said. ‘You
should network at events like these. Everyone here is very well connected.’

‘Actually, Sam and I…’ I began.

‘Shall I tell you something?’ he said, cutting me off. He came closer to me, his eyes bulging. ‘You can’t trust Sam. He won’t do anything for you unless you do something for him in return.’

‘Really?’ I said, amused. I would never let Sam live this down, I thought, laughing to myself.

Ram nodded his head vigorously. ‘You come with me. I will introduce you to the others.’

I looked towards the entrance to see if Sam had arrived yet, but couldn’t see any sign of him.

‘Sure,’ I said and followed him.

We headed over to a group of four men - all of medium height, clean-shaven, balding, with gold-rimmed glasses - and a few women, also looking identical with their permed hair and wide foreheads. They were engaged in an animated discussion when we joined them. To my relief, Ram seemed to have forgotten his altruistic mission of helping me find a job, and proceeded to regale them with stories of his latest accomplishments while I quietly introduced myself to the others.

‘What is your take on the recession? Will it end this year?’ Ram was asked by one of the suits.

He stepped back to give himself room. ‘The fundamentals are still weak, but if I were to make an educated guess…’

I tuned out the rest of the discussion as the others listened in rapt attention.

I could have been them
, I thought suddenly. Successful, confident, stable, secure - none of them would know any serious crises other than a delayed promotion at work or a failed marriage. I
would
have been them, I thought, just a few different turns and I would be mouthing grand theories about complex credit derivatives, mortgage crises and the ongoing recession. Instead, I thought regretfully, all I knew of were genocides and amputations, Buddhism and Vipassana, guns and drug cartels, and homelessness and insanity.

‘Where are you lost?’ said Ram, looking at me kindly. ‘When do you think the economy will get better?’

The others looked at me expectantly.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I haven’t been following it closely. To be honest, I haven’t paid any attention at all.’

Everyone looked at me with incredulous expressions. ‘But this is everything,’ their expressions said.

But it isn’t, I thought, suddenly, inexplicably irritated. There is so much more out there, I said silently as Ram continued to drone on and his circle of listeners became bigger and bigger. There is an entire world that is completely oblivious to Mckinsey and Goldman and vacations in French
Polynesia and company retreats in Swiss villas and MIT and the latest econometric theory. Do you believe that knowing the latest Federal Reserve interest rate trumps knowing that a Glock can shred your temple from two hundred yards away? Why don’t you try telling the crippled Cambodian survivors who lay in their blood for years on end that the chairman of XYZ bank is a more influential figure than Pol Pot, the CEO of the greatest genocide in Asian history?

‘Hey Ram bhai, stop this intellectual discussion, please yaar,’ said someone and the others laughed in chorus.

‘That reminds me of Sodhi, Sukhdeep Singh Sodhi, who started the anti-intellectual movement at MIT,’ said Ram. ‘You guys remember him? 1979 batch? Must be your batch, Jassi, wasn’t he?’

More names were thrown around. Do you remember him? Do you remember her? None of them meant anything to me. Either I’d never known them or they had been replaced in my limited memory by far more significant events.

‘Arre yaar, don’t talk about those days. I get all nostalgic,’ said someone. ‘Those were the best days of my life. It’s so good to catch up with everyone. I’ve never made such friends again.’

Everyone agreed whole-heartedly, again in sync.

Such friends, I thought dryly, that you don’t even remember their names. I thought of Sam, Ishmael
and Marco. I didn’t even know what ‘catching up’ with them meant because I couldn’t think of them as separate from me. Could it even be called friendship? It was beyond that, beyond any ‘we are close as brothers’ clichés. Hell, I was alive because of them. What do you call such people? ‘Friends’ seemed too limiting a word.

‘Now, my only friend is this,’ announced Ram, proudly pointing to his Blackberry, ‘and the boss in New York.’ Again, he looked at me a little condescendingly. ‘You are lucky, man. You don’t have to answer to anyone.’

I thought of David, the monk who had nursed me to life and taught me what was worthwhile in it, and Philip, who selflessly taught me everything he knew and willingly allowed me to take over. Were they bosses? Or mentors? Again, I struggled with words. They meant so much more. Like Ishmael and Marco, they had both given me another lease of life just when everything seemed to have ended.

‘Our real bosses are at home,’ said someone. ‘Cheers to the “no spouses and kids” MIT reunion tradition.’

Everyone cheered in unison.

I thought of Lara, and felt the same heady emotion I had felt the first time we went on a date. Now we had a son together. She had waited without an end in sight, despite everything I had put her through. Did I really deserve such a blessing? Would I ever
be able to take our marriage for granted as spouses reportedly did after years of living together?

‘Cheers also to the MIT India chapter!’ said someone who looked like he had had a drink too many. ‘Desi rocks! Aren’t you glad we guys came back home? Anywhere else in the world you would be a second-class citizen.’

But you aren’t, I thought. I had lived in a world that knew no boundaries. Everywhere I went, people had overwhelmed me with their generosity. Was Marco, a Brazilian, less of a friend than Sam, an Indian? Or David, the wandering Buddhist monk, less effective as a teacher than Philip, an American who had never ventured out of America? What about Ishmael from Estonia - a country I would still be hard-pressed to locate on the map? There were no borders, there was no distance; people felt, people cared, people loved, people hurt. Everyone was the same.

‘Desi rocks!’

Everyone clinked glasses in agreement.

Another middle-aged, balding man with gold-rimmed glasses and a bushy moustache joined the group just then.

‘There you are!’ said Ram excitedly. ‘You all know him, right? Sharad Raj, CEO of Lever Oil.’

People made space for him. He was important, he had a title after his name.

A startling realization hit me with a sudden
force. I didn’t want to be them. I now understood the strange feeling that had haunted me since the time I had arrived at the reunion. They were all clones. They all looked the same, they thought the same thoughts, they even talked the same way - and none of it was my way.

It was, well, small, for lack of a better word.

All my life I had thought I wanted to be
them
, but I realized now that I wasn’t supposed to be them. I had thought I was unlucky. But no, quite the opposite. I was lucky to have been chosen to live this patchwork quilt of a life. How could I wish any different? Damn, I thought as I drained my glass, so this is what Lara meant. I was turning my son into them by denying him the very things that made life worth living - friendship and loyalty, openness and vulnerability, love and loss, complexities and contradictions, falling, picking up the pieces, rising and falling again, a world that has no boundaries, a life that knows no limits.

I would relieve the security guards as soon as I got home.

Sam came rushing in just as I moved away from the group.

‘Johnny boy! There you are,’ he said in a rush.

‘Who is Johnny? I’m Nikhil,’ I said. ‘Johnny’s gone down.’

‘What?’ he said, looking confused.

‘Johnny’s gone down,’ I repeated. ‘I’m me again.’

‘Screw you and your name games. You won’t believe what just happened. Wait till you hear,’ he said, his face red.

And here we go again, I thought.

‘Don’t sweat it,’ I said. ‘He was right, the homeless man in the shelter. I kept seeing unravelled threads because I wasn’t looking at it right. But I can see the pattern now.’

‘Are you high?’ asked Sam.

‘Soaring.’

First, a note of gratitude to the many readers who took the time to share their thoughts with me via e-mail and letters after reading
Keep Off the Grass
and also the critics who reviewed the novel, including a venerable scribe who termed me and some of the more illustrious authors of my generation as the ‘Rakhi Sawants of Indian literature’ (I’m still trying to figure out who the remark was intended to offend, Rakhi Sawant or us). I’m being honest when I say that I have valued each and every critique that came my way, both positive and negative, and though I can’t claim to be the Shabana Azmi of Indian literature just yet, I hope I’ve improved significantly with my second novel. And as always, I greatly welcome your comments on
Johnny Gone Down
to guide me along my journey to be a better writer -and a better person.

To my parents, both heroes among a thousand faces, my father for his character and dignity, my mother for her strength and resilience; noble traits that have influenced Johnny, my protagonist.

To Anshuman Acharya, Renuka Chatterjee, VK Karthika, Neelini Sarkar, Ashwin Bhave, Jason
Chrenka and Regina Brooks, the very best set of early readers that an author could wish for. Your respectful, considered comments made the book stronger than it was ever capable of being in my rookie hands. I’ve learnt tremendously about writing from each of you and for that I will forever be in your debt.

To Sonali and Avneesh Arya for giving Johnny a name without reading his story!

To the uniquely Indian familial networks that never cease to fill my life with warmth, comfort and interesting stories, from grandmother down to maasis, chacha, bua and cousins.

To Vinod Raghuwanshi, Saurabh Nanda, Kent Wolf, Ajay Srivastava, Trupti Rustagi, Sundip Gorai, Keith Melker, Jana Malinska, Ben Rekhi and Samrat Chowdhury, old friends who constantly surprise me with new ideas - as you did this time.

To Hinoti Joshi and Bhaskar Shankaran, and their team, Nrusingha Choudhury and Bhautik Siddhapura, the most creative folks I know. I’m proud to work with you as colleagues, prouder to know you as friends.

To the marketing and editing team at Harper Collins, Text 100 and Mr Pradeep Guha; humble, hardworking, competent folks who often have to bear the brunt of my marketing MBA!

To all the terrific institutions I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate to be a part of - BIT
Mesra, IIM Bangalore, Procter & Gamble, Boston Consulting Group and now, Kraft Foods. Any novel is ultimately some version of one’s experiences and I wouldn’t have lived half a life is not for these establishments. Also to JP Kuehlwein, Shailesh Jejurikar, Maile Carnegie, Stephen Ripple, Steve Robinson and Gopal Pathak, just some of my mentors in these institutions who fundamentally changed the trajectory of my life.