River of Gods (20 page)

"I prefer classical," the man says. He has an
English-educated voice.

"I've always thought Indira Shankar very underrated myself."

"No, I mean Classical; Western Classical. Renaissance, Baroque."

"I'm aware of it but I don't really have the taste for it. I'm
afraid it all sounds like hysteria to me."

"That's the Romantics," says the man with a private smile
but he has decided Shaheen Badoor Khan shares some kindred feeling
with him. "So, what line are you in yourself?"

"I am a civil servant," Shaheen Badoor Khan says. The man
gives his answer consideration.

"So am I," he says. "Might I ask what area?"

"Information management," Shaheen Badoor Khan says.

"Pest control," the man says. "Congratulations then to
our hosts." He raises his glass and Shaheen Badoor Khan observes
that the man's suit is smudged with dust and smoke. "Yes,
indeed," Shaheen Badoor Khan says. "A fortunate child
indeed." The man grimaces.

"I cannot agree with you there, sir. I have considerable issues
with geneline therapy."

"Why so?"

"It is a recipe for revolution."

Shaheen Badoor Khan starts at the vehemence in the man's voice. He
continues, "The last thing Bharat needs is another caste. They
may call themselves Brahmins, but in fact they are the true
Untouchables." He remembers himself. "Forgive me, I know
nothing about you, for all I know."

"Two sons," Shaheen Badoor Khan says. "The old way.
Safely at university, God be praised, where no doubt they're at
things like this every night, prowling for wedding material."

"We are a deformed society," the man says.

Shaheen Badoor Khan wonders if this man is a djinn sent to to test
him for everything he speaks is in Shaheen's own heart. He was
remembering a young married couple, their careers dazzling, their
path luminous, the parents so proud, so delighted for their children.
And, of course, the grandchildren, the grandsons. Everything you
have, save this one thing, a son. A son and spare. Then the
appointments with the doctors they had not asked to see, and the
families poring over the results. Then the bitter little pills, and
the bloody times. Shaheen Badoor Khan cannot count how many daughters
he flushed away. His hands have twisted the limbs of Bharati society.

He would talk more with the man, but his attention is turned to the
party. Shaheen follows his direction: the woman Bilquis had derided,
the good-looking country woman, makes her way through the excited
crowd. The arrival of the diva is imminent.

"My own wife," the man says. "I am summoned. Do excuse
me. A pleasure to have met you." He sets his champagne down on
the ground and goes to her. Applause as Mumtaz Huq arrives on the
stage. She smiles and smiles and smiles to her audience. Her first
song tonight will be a tribute to the generous hosts and a hope for
joy, long life, and prosperity for their graced child. The players
strike up. Shaheen Badoor Khan leaves.

Shaheen Badoor Khan's raised hand fails to stop any of the infrequent
taxis in this private-mobility suburb. A phatphat drums past, turn at
a gap in the concrete central reserve, and pulls over to the verge.
Shaheen Badoor Khan starts towards it but the driver twists the
throttle and surges away. Shaheen Badoor Khan glimpses a shadowed
figure in swathes of voluminous clothing beneath the plastic canopy.
The phatphat again crosses the median strip, rattles towards Shaheen
Badoor Khan. A face peeks out from the bubble, a face elegant, alien,
fey. Cheekbones cast shadows. Light glints from the hairless,
mica-dusted scalp.

"You are welcome to share my ride."

Shaheen Badoor Khan reels back as if a djinn has called the secret
name of his soul. "Not here, not here," he whispers.

The nute blinks yts eyes, a slow kiss. The engine races, the little
phatphat pulls into the night traffic. Streetlight catches on silver
around the nute's neck, a Siva trishul.

"No," Shaheen Badoor Khan pleads. "No."

He is a man of responsibilities. His sons have grown and left, his
wife is all but a stranger to him these years but he has a war, a
drought, a nation to care for. Yet the directions he gives to the
Maruti driver who finally stops for him are not to the Khan haveli.
They are to another place, a special place. A place he hoped he would
never need go to again. Frail hope. The special place is down a gali
too narrow for vehicles, overhung by intricately worked wooden
jharokas and derelict air-conditioning units. Shaheen Badoor Khan
opens the cab door and steps out into another world. His breath is
tight and shallow and fluttering. There. In the brief light of a
door's opening and closing, two silhouettes, too slim, too elegant,
too fey for mundane humanity.

"Oh," he cries softly. "Oh."

Tal runs. A voice calls yts name from the cab. Yt does not look. Yt
does not stop. Yt runs, shawl pluming out behind it in a blue of
ultra-blue paisleys. Horns blare, sudden looming faces yell abuse;
sweat and teeth. Tal reels back from a near miss with a small fast
Ford; music thud-thud-thuds. Yt spins, dodges the shocking blare of
truck horns, slips between a rural pickup and a bus pulling out from
a halt. Tal halts a moment on the median strip for a glance back. The
bubble cab still purrs on the footpath. A figure stands there,
glimpsed through the headlight glare. Tal plunges into the steel
river.

Tal tried to hide that morning, behind work, behind huge wrap-round
tilt-jet pilot shades, behind the Lord of the Hangovers, but everyone
had to come and get the goss on the
faaa
bulous people at the
faaa
bulous party. Neeta was celebstruck. Even the cool guys
circulated past Tal's workstation, not of course asking direcrly, but
accessing hints and suspicions. The goss-nets were full of it, the
news channels, too, even the headline services were beaming pictures
from the night to palmers all over Bharat. One of which was two nutes
going at it on the floor and A-listers cheering and clapping.

Then a neural Kunda Khadar burst behind Tal's eyes and it all came
gushing back. Every. Little. Detail. The taxicab fumblings, the
airport hotel mumblings and profanities. The morning light flat and
grey with the promise of another merciless day of ultra-heat, and the
card on the pillow.
Non-scene
.

"Oh," Tal whispered. "No." Yt crept home as early
as the impending wedding of Aparna Chawla and Ajay Nadiadwala would
permit, a shaking, paranoid wreck. Huddled up in the phatphat yt
could feel the card in yt's bag, heavy and untrustworthy as uranium.
Get rid of it now. Let it flutter out the window. Let it slip down
the seat lining. Lose and forget. But yt could not. Tal was terribly,
terribly afraid yt had fallen in love and yt didn't have a soundtrack
for this one.

The women were on the stairs again, winding their way up and down
with their plastic water carriers, their conversation dying as Tal
squeezed past, mumbling apologies, then resuming in titters and low
whispers. Every rattle, every snatch of radio seemed a weapon thrown
at yt. Don't think about it. In three months you will be out of here.
Tal plunged into yts room, tore off yts stiff, smoke-reeking party
clothes and dived naked into yts beautiful bed. Yt programmed two
hours of non-REM sleep but yts agitation and heart-hurt and
wonderful, mad bafflement defeated the subdermal pumps and yt lay
watching the nibs of light cast by the window blind bindings move
across the ceiling like slow worms and listening to the voiceless,
choral roar of the city moving. Tal unfolded that last insane night
again, smoothed out its creases. Yt hadn't gone out to get involved.
Yt hadn't even gone out to get fucked. Yt had gone out for a simple
mad time with famous people and a bit of glam. Yt didn't want a
lovely person. Yt didn't want an entanglement. Yt didn't want
involvement, a relationship. And the last thing yt wanted was
love
at first sight.
Love, and all those other dreadful things yt
thought yt had left in Mumbai.

Mama Bharat was slow answering Tal's knock. She seemed in pain, her
hands uncertain on the door locks. Tal had washed in a cup of water,
removing surface layers of sleep and grime but the smoke, drink, and
sex were engrained. Yt could smell them off ytself as yt sat on the
low sofa watching the turned-down cable news while the old woman made
chai. She was slow about her making, visibly frail. Her aging scared
Tal.

"Well," Tal said. "I think I'm in love."

Mama Bharat rocked back on her seat, swaying her head in
understanding. "Then you must tell me everything about it."

So Tal began yts tale, from stepping out of Mama Bharai's front door
to the card on the pillow in the numb morning.

"Show me this card," Mama Bharat said. She turned it over
in her leathery, monkey hand. She pursed her lips.

"I am not convinced about a man who leaves a card with a club
address rather than a home address."

"Yt's not a man."

Mama Bharat closed her eyes.

"Of course. Forgive me. But he is acting like a man." Dust
motes rose in the hot light slanting through the slatted wooden
blind. "What is it you feel about him?"

"I feel I'm in love."

"That is not what I asked. What do you feel about him?
Yt."

"I feel. I think I feel. I want to be with yt, I want to go
where yt goes and see what yt sees and do what yt does, just to be
able to know all those little, little things. Does that make any kind
of sense?"

"Every kind of sense," Mama Bharat said. "What do you
think I should do?"

"What else can you do?" Tal stood up abruptly, hands
clutched. "I will, then, I will."

Mama Bharat rescued Tal's discarded tea-glass from the rug before yt
could flood it with hot, sweet
chai
in yts excited
determination. Siva Nataraja, Lord of the Dance, watched from his
place on the tallboy, annihilating foot eternally raised.

Tal spent the remains of the afternoon in the ritual of
going out.
It was a formal and elaborate process that began with laying down a
mix. STRANGE CLUB was yts mental title for yts venture to Tranh. DJ
aeai sourced an assortment of late-chill grooves and
Vier/Burmese/Assamesse sounds. Tal stripped off yts street clothes
and stood in front of the mirror, raising yts arms over yts head,
relishing yts round shoulders, child-slim torso, full, parted thighs
free of any sexual organ. Yt held yts wrists up, studied in
reflection the goose flesh of the subdermal control studs. Yt
contemplated yts beautiful scars.

"Okay, play it."

The music kicked in at floor-shaking volume. Almost immediately
Paswan next door began banging on the wall and shouting about the
noise and his shifts and his poor wife and children driven demented
by freaks perverts deviates. Tal namasted ytself in the mirror, then
danced to the wardrobe cubby and swept back the curtain in a balletic
twirl. Swaying to the rhythm, Tal surveyed yts costumes, weaving
permutations, implications, signs and signals. Mr. Paswan was beating
on the door now, vowing he would burn yt out, see if he did not. Tal
laid out yts combo on the bed, danced to the mirror, opened yts
makeup boxes in strict right to left order and prepared to compose.

By the time the sun set in glorious polluted carmines and blood, Tal
was dressed, made up and geared-in. The Paswans had given up
hammering an hour ago and were now treating Tal to half-heard
sobbing. Tal ejected the chip from yts player, slipped it into yts
bag and was out into the wild wild night.

"Take me, here."

The phatphat driver looked at the card and nodded. Tal hooked up yts
mix and slumped back on to the seat in ecstasy.

The club was off an unprepossessing alley. In Tal's experience, the
best clubs usually were. The door was carved wood, grey and fibrous
from years of heat and pollution. Tal guessed it had been there even
before the British. A discreet camera bindi blinked. The door swung
open to the touch. Tal unhooked yts mix to listen. Traditional dhol
and bansuri.

Tal took a breath and walked in.

A great haveli had once lived here. Balconies in the same weathered
grey wood rose five floors around the central courtyard garden now
glassed over. Vines and climbing pharm bananas had been let run and
ramble up the carved wooden pillars to spread across the ribs of the
glass dome. Clusters of biolume lamps hung from the centre of the
roof like strange fetid fruit; terracotta oil lanterns were arranged
across the tiled floor. All was flicker and folded shadow. From the
recesses of the wooden cloisters came low conversation and the
musical burble of nute laughter. The musicians sat facing each other
on a mat by the central pool, a shallow rectangle dappled with
lilies, intent on their rhythms.

"Welcome to my home."

The small, birdlike woman had appeared like a god in a film. She wore
a crimson sari and a brahmin's bindi and carried her head cocked to
one side. Tal guessed her at sixty-five, seventy. The woman's gaze
darted over yts face.

"Please, make yourself at home. I have guests from every walk of
society, from Varanasi and beyond." She pulled a thumb-sized
banana from its broad-leafed vine, peeled it open, and offered it to
Tal, "Go, eat eat. They grow wild."

"I don't want to appear rude, but."

"You want to know what it does. It will get you into the we are
here. One to start, that is the way we do it. There are many
varieties, but the ones by the door are the ones to start with. The
rest you will discover on your journey. Relax, my lovely. You are
among friends." She offered the banana once again. As yt took
it, Tal noticed the curl of plastic behind the aged woman's right
ear. That tilt of the head, that dodge of the eyes, were explained
now. A blindhoek. Tal took a bite from the banana. It tasted of
banana. Then yt became aware of the details in the woodcarving, the
pattern of the tiles, the colours and weave of the dhuris. The
individual parts of the music became distinct, stalking and twining
around each other. A sharpness of focus. A lifting of awareness. A
glow in the back of the head like an inner smile. Tal ate the rest of
the banana in two bites. The old blind woman took the skin and
deposited it in a small wooden bin already half-full of blackening,
fragrant peels.