Shantaram (4 page)

And I was glad of Prabaker's company. I noticed that he was well known on the street, that he was greeted frequently and with considerable warmth by a wide range of people.

"You must be hungry, Mr. Lindsay," Prabaker observed. "You are a happy fellow, don't mind I'm saying it, and happy always has it the good appetites." "Well, I'm hungry enough, all right. Where is this place we're going to, anyway? If I'd known it would take this long to get to the restaurant, I would've brought a cut lunch with me."

"Just a little bit not much too very far," he replied cheerfully.

"Okay..."

"Oh, yes! I will take you to the best restaurant, and with the finest Maharashtra foods. You will enjoy, no problem. All the Bombay guides like me eat their foods there. This place is so good, they only have to pay the police half of usual baksheesh money. So good they are."

"Okay..."

"Oh, yes! But first, let me get it Indian cigarette for you, and for me also. Here, we stop now."

He led me to a street stall that was no more than a folding card table, with a dozen brands of cigarettes arranged in a cardboard box. On the table there was a large brass tray, carrying several small silver dishes. The dishes contained shredded coconut, spices, and an assortment of unidentifiable pastes. A bucket beside the card table was filled with spear-shaped leaves, floating in water. The cigarette seller was drying the leaves, smearing them with various pastes, filling them with ground dates, coconut, betel, and spices, and rolling them into small packages. The many customers crowded around his stall purchased the leaves as fast as his dexterous hands could fill them.

Prabaker pressed close to the man, waiting for a chance to make his order. Craning my neck to watch him through the thicket of customers, I moved closer toward the edge of the footpath. As I took a step down onto the road, I heard an urgent shout.

"_Look _out!"

Two hands grasped my arm at the elbow and jerked me back, just as a huge, fast-moving, double-decker bus swept past. The bus would've killed me if those hands hadn't halted me in my stride, and I swung round to face my saviour. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. She was slender, with black, shoulder-length hair, and pale skin. Although she wasn't tall, her square shoulders and straight-backed posture, with both feet planted firmly apart, gave her a quietly determined physical presence.

She was wearing silk pants, bound tightly at the ankles, black low-heeled shoes, a loose cotton shirt, and a large, long silk shawl. She wore the shawl backwards, with the double-mane of the liquid fabric twirling and fluttering at her back. All her clothes were in different shades of green.

The clue to everything a man should love and fear in her was there, right from the start, in the ironic smile that primed and swelled the archery of her full lips. There was pride in that smile, and confidence in the set of her fine nose. Without understanding why, I knew beyond question that a lot of people would mistake her pride for arrogance, and confuse her confidence with impassivity. I didn't make that mistake. My eyes were lost, swimming, floating free in the shimmering lagoon of her steady, even stare. Her eyes were large and spectacularly green. It was the green that trees are, in vivid dreams. It was the green that the sea would be, if the sea were perfect.

Her hand was still resting in the curve of my arm, near the elbow. The touch was exactly what the touch of a lover's hand should be: familiar, yet exciting as a whispered promise. I felt an almost irresistible urge to take her hand and place it flat against my chest, near my heart. Maybe I should've done it. I know now that she would've laughed, if I'd done it, and she would've liked me for it. But strangers that we were then, we stood for five long seconds and held the stare, while all the parallel worlds, all the parallel lives that might've been, and never would be, whirled around us. Then she spoke.

"That was close. You're lucky."

"Yes," I smiled. "I am."

Her hand slowly left my arm. It was an easy, relaxed gesture, but I felt the detachment from her as sharply as if I'd been roughly woken from a deep and happy dream. I leaned toward her, looking behind her to the left and then to the right.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I'm looking for your wings. You are my guardian angel, aren't you?"

"I'm afraid not," she replied, her cheeks dimpling with a wry smile. "There's too much of the devil in me for that."

"Just how much devil," I grinned, "are we talking about here?"

Some people were standing in a group, on the far side of the stall. One of them-a handsome, athletic man in his mid-twenties - stepped to the road and called to her. "Karla! Come on, _yaar!"

She turned and waved to him, then held out her hand to shake mine with a grip that was firm, but emotionally indeterminable. Her smile was just as ambiguous. She mightVe liked me, or she might've just been happy to say goodbye.

"You still haven't answered my question," I said, as her hand slipped from mine.

"How much devil have I got in me?" she answered me, the half- smile teasing her lips. "That's a very personal question. Come to think of it, that might just be the most personal question anyone ever asked me. But, hey, if you come to Leopold's, some time, you could find out."

Her friends had moved to our side of the little stand, and she left me to join them. They were all Indians, all young, and dressed in the clean, fashionably western clothes of the middle class. They laughed often and leaned against one another familiarly, but no-one touched Karla. She seemed to project an aura that was attractive and inviolable at the same time. I moved closer, pretending to be intrigued by the cigarette seller's work with his leaves and pastes. I listened as she spoke to them, but I couldn't understand the language. Her voice, in that language and in that conversation, was surprisingly deep and sonorous; the hairs on my arms tingled in response to the sound of it. And I suppose that, too, should've been a warning. The voice, Afghan matchmakers say, is more than half of love. But I didn't know that then, and my heart rushed in, where even matchmakers might've feared to tread.

"See, Mr. Lindsay, I bought it just two cigarettes for us,"

Prabaker said, rejoining me and offering one of the cigarettes with a flourish. "This is India, country of the poor fellows. No need for buying whole packet of cigarettes here. Just one cigarette, you can buy only. And no need for buying it any matches."

He leaned forward and took up a length of smouldering hemp rope that was hanging from a hook on the telegraph pole, next to the cigarette stall. Prabaker blew the ash from the end of it, exposing a little orange ember of fire, which he used to puff his cigarette alight.

"What is he making? What are they chewing in those leaves?"

"Is called paan. A most very excellent taste and chewing it is.

Everyone in Bombay is chewing and spitting, chewing and more spitting, no problem, day and night also. Very good for health it is, plenty of chewing and full spitting. You want to try it? I will get it for you some."

I nodded and let him make the order, not so much for the new experience of the paan as for the excuse it offered to stand there longer, and look at Karla. She was so relaxed and at home, so much a part of the street and its inscrutable lore. What I found bewildering, all around me, seemed to be mundane for her. I was reminded of the foreigner in the slum-the man I'd seen from the window of the bus. Like him, she seemed calm and content in Bombay. She seemed to belong. I envied her the warmth and acceptance she drew from those around her.

But more than that, my eyes were drawn to her perfect loveliness.

I looked at her, a stranger, and every other breath strained to force its way from my chest. A clamp like a tightening fist seized my heart. A voice in my blood said yes, yes, yes... The ancient Sanskrit legends speak of a destined love, a karmic connection between souls that are fated to meet and collide and enrapture one another. The legends say that the loved one is instantly recognised because she's loved in every gesture, every expression of thought, every movement, every sound, and every mood that prays in her eyes. The legends say that we know her by her wings-the wings that only we can see-and because wanting her kills every other desire of love.

The same legends also carry warnings that such fated love may, sometimes, be the possession and the obsession of one, and only one, of the two souls twinned by destiny. But wisdom, in one sense, is the opposite of love. Love survives in us precisely because it isn't wise.

"Ah, you look that girl," Prabaker observed, returning with the paan and following the direction of my gaze. "You think she is beautiful, na? Her name is Karla."

"You know her?"

"Oh, yes! Karla is everybody knows," he replied, in a stage whisper so loud that I feared she might hear. "You want to meet her?"

"Meet her?"

"If you want it, I will speak to her. You want her to be your friend?"

"What?"

"Oh, yes! Karla is my friend, and she will be your friend also, I think so. Maybe you will make a lot of money for your very good self, in business with Karla. Maybe you will become such good and closely friends that you will have it a lot of sexes together, and make a full enjoyment of your bodies. I am sure you will have a friendly pleasure."

He was actually rubbing his hands together. The red juices of the paan stained the teeth and lips of his smile. I had to grasp at his arm to stop him from approaching her, there, in the group of her friends.

"No! Stop! For Christ's sake, keep your voice down, Prabaker. If I want to speak to her, I'll do it myself."

"Oh, I am understand," he said, looking abashed. "It is what foreigners are calling foreplay, isn't it?"

"No! Foreplay is... never mind what foreplay is!"

"Oh, good! I never mind about the foreplays, Mr. Lindsay. I am an Indian fellow, and we Indian fellows, we don't worry about the foreplayings. We go straight to the bumping and jumping. Oh yes!"

He was holding an imaginary woman in his hands and thrusting his narrow hips at her, smiling that red-juiced smile all the while.

"Will you stop that!" I snapped, looking up to see if Karla and her friends were watching him.

"Okay, Mr. Lindsay," he sighed, slowing his rhythmic thrusts until they stopped altogether. "But, I can still make a good offer of your friendship to the Miss Karla, if you like?"

"No! I mean-no, thank you. I don't want to proposition her. I ... Oh God, what's the use. Just tell me... the man who's talking now-what language is he speaking?"

"He is speaking Hindi language, Mr. Lindsay. You wait one minute, I will tell you what is it he is saying."

He moved to the far side of the stall and joined her group quite unselfconsciously, leaning in to listen. No-one paid any attention to him. He nodded, laughed with the others, and returned after a few minutes.

"He is telling it one very funny story, about an inspector of Bombay Police, a very great powerful fellow in this area. That inspector did lock up a very clever fellow in his jail, but the clever fellow, he did convince the inspector to let him out again, because he told the inspector he had some gold and jewels.

Not only that, but when he was free, the clever fellow sold the inspector some of the gold and some jewels. But they were not really gold and not really jewels. They were the imitations, and very cheaply not the really things. And the worst mischief, the clever fellow lived in the inspector's house for one week before he sold the not-really jewels. And there is a big rumour that the clever fellow had sexy business with that inspector's wife. Now the inspector is crazy, and so much angry, that everybody is running when they see him."

"How do you know her? Does she live here?" "Know who, Mr. Lindsay-that inspector's wife?"

"No, of course not! I mean the girl-Karla."

"You know," he mused, frowning hard for the first time, "there are a lots of girls in this Bombay. We are only five minutes from your hotel. In this five minutes, we have seen it hundreds of girls. In five minutes more, there is more hundreds of girls.

Every five minutes, more hundreds of girls. And after a little of walking, we will see hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds-"

"Oh, hundreds of girls, great!" I interrupted sarcastically, my voice much louder than I'd intended it to be. I glanced around.

Several people were staring at me with undisguised contempt. I continued, in a hushed tone. "I don't want to know about hundreds of girls, Prabaker. I'm just... curious... about... about that girl, okay?"

"Okay, Mr. Lindsay, I will be telling you everything. Karla-she is a famous businessman in Bombay. Very long she is here. I think five years maybe. She has one small house, not far. Everybody knows the Karla."

"Where is she from?"

"I think, German, or something like that."

"But she sounded American."

"Yes, is sounding, but she is from German, or like to the German.

And now, anyway, is almost very Indian. You want to eat your foods now?"

"Yeah, just a minute."

The group of young friends called out their goodbyes to others near the paan stand, and walked off into the mill and swirl of the crowd. Karla joined them, walking away with her head held high in that curiously straight-backed, almost defiant posture. I watched her until she was swallowed by the people-tide of the crowds, but she never looked back.

"Do you know a place called Leopold's?" I asked Prabaker as he joined me, and we started to walk once more.

"Oh, yes! Wonderful and lovely place it is, Leopold's Beer Bar.

Full of the most wonderful, lovely peoples, the very, very fine and lovely people. All kind of foreigners you can find there, all making good business. Sexy business, and drugs business, and money business, and black-market business, and naughty pictures, and smuggler business, and passport business, and-"

"Okay, Prabaker, I get it."

"You want to go there?" "No. Maybe later." I stopped walking, and Prabaker stopped beside me. "Listen, what do your friends call you? I mean, what's your name for short, instead of Prabaker?"