THE MAGICAL PALACE (3 page)

‘Oh …’ was all I could say, embarrassed by my ignorance, feeling the blood rush to my face. ‘Oh, a homo.’ I bit my lip.

Later, in the middle of civics class, looking harried, Mr Puri came into the room and collected Amit’s bag and books. A professor in Osmania College, where Suresh Khosla’s father also taught, he was tall and athletic like Amit. It was a shock to see his shoulders stooped in shame. He did not look at any of the boys who were his son’s friends. As he left, I felt afraid for Amit.

Jolted out of my ruminations by the loud ‘clang-clang-clang’ of the fire alarm-like bell indicating the welcome end of the class, I streamed out of the room with my classmates.

That evening, when I went home, my mind was in turmoil. This was the first time that I had seen such disgust directed at anyone for doing what I had done—write a love letter. But in the films, the hero and heroine always wrote love letters to each other. No one ever said that was dirty. This must have something to do with a boy writing a love letter to another boy. It was obviously something disgusting enough to make Ranjan pretend to vomit. I thought of Mrs Joshi’s chilling tone as she spoke to Amit. How could the hero of the class have fallen from grace so easily? I wanted to ask Rani, but dared not. I would have to find out on my own.

‘Arre, why are you not paying attention? What is the matter?’ my father asked me with irritation as I made careless mistakes doing my mathematics homework. He was an impatient man and always asked these questions. However, he never waited for an answer.

‘I am tired,’ I muttered as I stifled a fake yawn and shut my notebook.

‘Oph ho! If you are that tired, then why are you not in bed? I am going to listen to the news. Don’t slack off so close to the end of the first year at your new school,’ he said, getting up from the table to go to listen to the news on All India Radio.

His words reminded me that my exams would start soon and my stomach tightened at the thought of what would happen if I did not come first. I went to bed with many unanswered questions.

The next day, Mrs Joshi announced at assembly time that Amit had left the school. Her prim mouth was pursed in a tight grimace.

‘Amit Puri is not coming back to school. He … ah … he … ah,’ Mrs Joshi stammered. Then she paused and spoke again, choosing her words carefully: ‘He behaved in a manner not befitting the high standards of the school.’ Her glittering eyes surveyed each of the boys, the horn-rimmed glasses perched menacingly at the end of her nose, looking for anyone unfortunate enough to be standing out of line or whose hair touched the edge of his collar. I shrank back as she gave me a cursory glance.

My fascination with Rajesh Khanna would most certainly be my downfall. I had written a love letter to him—if the school found out, I could be expelled. How foolish I had been! Mrs Joshi must never know about it, I decided. Like
Amit, I too would be in trouble if anyone found out. The boys would call me a ‘bloody homo’! It was hard enough being younger than the other boys—if I were a homo too, life would be unbearable at school and at home. ‘Chhee … chhee …’ my parents would say, shaking their heads sadly.

I was suddenly seized with fear. The letter I had written to Rajesh Khanna was at home. I might have left it on my desk. Or hidden it in my secret hiding place in the garden. As Mrs Joshi’s gaze fixed on me, I knew I had to go home and destroy it before anyone discovered it.

I looked back once more at Amit’s empty seat before I forced myself to turn away. The chair sat vacant for the rest of the week and felt to me like a gaping hole, a wound that had bled dry but never healed. The teacher skipped his name during roll call. It was as if he had never existed.

Saturday Night. San Francisco.

There was silence. Then a series of loud beeps started.

‘Damn. My mobile is dying,’ Andrew muttered. ‘I have to charge it. Hold on.’

I heard him fumble with the charger. ‘Come home, Andrew. Please,’ I begged.

‘No, call me on the motel land line. The number is 922-3000. I am in Room 323.’

I called the Travelodge and was connected to the room.

‘So, what happened after that?’ Andrew asked.

I exhaled slowly, trying to sort the events of that year out in my head. ‘I discovered over the next few months that I was not the only one in danger. But first, I need to tell you about more—the Banerjees, our family friends, and Colonel Uncle.’

‘Okay. There is a lot here that is new to me, so please explain as you go along.’

I took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to explain the complicated relationships, and then continued my story.

‘The Banerjee family was the closest to us among our friends. Mr and Mrs Banerjee had two daughters—Mallika and Shyamala. Mallika was the older of the two sisters, and I adored her. She loved me too and never made fun of me like her younger sister Shyamala or Rani. I called their father Binesh Kaku and their mother Anjali Mashi—kaku is what one calls one’s father’s younger brother in Bengali and one’s maternal aunt is mashi. Anjali Mashi and my mother were very close, like sisters. There is a saying in Bengali that one’s mashi is as good as one’s mother—my mother used to called her Anjali Didi—older sister.

‘Binesh Kaku was a very stern man. He rarely smiled and almost never laughed. He was tall, gangly and had grey-black blotches on his skin. A thin, close-clipped moustache lined his upper lip and tufts of hair sprouted from his ears. He wore square-framed spectacles, which made his eyes look distant, as if they were fish swimming in a big glass bowl. He was always dressed in white kurta-pajama, like most of my father’s relatives in Calcutta.

‘Anjali Mashi, on the other hand, was a very sweet person. Hailing from Calcutta, she ran her household in the traditional Bengali way, observing customs that my mother never did—my mother had grown up in Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh. Anjali Mashi had been trained at Santiniketan, the university established by Rabindranath Tagore, and so she preferred Bengali films and music to Hindi or English. But she tolerated our interest in popular Hindi and American films and stuff with good grace.

‘Shyamala was Rani’s age and they were classmates. She would turn out to be a late bloomer like her sister—at that time, she still had acne and wore glasses and braces. I used to hate the way she and Rani ganged up against me!

‘That summer, we made a fateful visit to the Banerjee household, when I made a discovery that would change our lives forever … And then, of course, there was Colonel Uncle.’

‘Who was he?’ Andrew asked.

I was silent for a moment and looked at the picture on my nightstand. ‘Colonel Uncle was the most amazing person a boy could ever hope to know. I met him that summer and I don’t know how I would have made it through that year without him. He used to live upstairs.

‘Colonel Uncle was a rarely seen mystery to us, almost a phantom. An older gentleman, impeccably dressed, he walked with a military gait. Rani and I used to find him very intimidating. He had maintained his living quarters at the palace by special arrangement with the Indian government, but had only recently started living there. He used a different entrance, one to which we had no access. “The Ghost Who Walks”, Rani and I had dubbed him, the name that the pygmies in Lee Walker’s
Phantom
comics called the Phantom. Every time we called him that, we would giggle, delighted by our cleverness. But that was before I got to know him as a friend over the summer …’

April 1973. Hyderabad.

Ahmed Uncle and Shabnam Aunty visited a few days after the incident in school. They had been friends of the family for as long as I could remember. Ahmed Uncle, tall and
formally dressed in his Nehru jacket, and Shabnam Aunty, in her embroidered salwar kameez from Pakistan, were childless and always indulged me. Just before my summer vacation started, a few days before they moved to Pakistan to return to their estate, they came to the palace—it was to be the last time that I would meet them.

‘Let me take the snacks in please? Please?’ I begged my mother, anxious to show Ahmed Uncle and Shabnam Aunty that I was a grown-up boy.

Elegant and poised in her sea-green silk sari, my mother smiled as I looked adoringly at her. Her hair was swept up in a bun, in the style of Sharmila Tagore, with carefully arranged curls framing her face on each side. Her sleeveless blouse, made flawlessly by our family tailor, showed off her smooth arms adorned with matching glass bangles. Mother always carried the tray. She created and enforced the house rules, but relaxed them if I begged hard enough. Moved by my pleas, she said indulgently, ‘All right, just this once, beta. But be careful—this is my favourite tea set.’

I ran to the mirror to make sure my hair was neatly arranged, tucked my shirt into my shorts, and brushed the twigs and dried leaves I had acquired while wriggling around in the grass as I tried to catch a ladybird. I sighed, wishing that I was wearing neatly pressed trousers like the older boys in school.

Then I picked up the tray and started walking. I stopped for a moment at the doorway to the sitting room to steady my aching arms.

My father and our guests sat in the centre of the sitting room, around the dark teak table polished to a shine. A copy of the
Deccan Chronicle
lay folded under the table
surrounded by past issues of
Life
magazine. A rainbow of lights glittered from the crystal chandelier hanging above.

As I got closer, I heard my father talking. ‘What is the world coming to these days? I tell you, it was the right thing they did, expelling that boy, Amit Puri. This sort of behaviour must never be tolerated. God knows what kind of blood runs in the family. I am glad that this bad influence has been removed from Rahul’s class … I just got a call from Mr Khosla from Osmania College. His son Suresh told him what had happened. Mr Khosla said that Amit’s father was going to send him to a mental institution, where they will give Amit shock therapy to cure him of this revolting condition …’

My heart stopped beating for a second and then started hammering in my chest. What would my father do if he knew that I had written a love letter, just as Amit Puri had? Oh no, I had forgotten about the letter! I had returned home from school and had not been able to find it. It had worried me for a bit, but as was often the case, I was soon distracted. Once I found it, I would destroy it, burn it to a crisp that very day. Then no one would know my secret.

Shabnam Aunty and Ahmed Uncle sat side by side on the sofa, their expressions concerned. I looked away from them at the dark-wood ball-and-claw feet of the sofa, which contrasted with the plush crimson carpet.

My father stopped talking abruptly when he saw me and changed the topic. ‘So, Ahmed Bhai,’ he said, ‘you are now going to leave us all and return to Pakistan. We will miss you.’

‘Arre, we are not going forever. We will visit you often, you will see,’ Shabnam Aunty said soothingly. ‘Rahul will be unrecognizable when we see him next. Look, he is already such a big boy—he is carrying the food in all by himself.’

I went forward with the tray laden with tea, tantalizingly crisp samosas accompanied by emerald-green mint chutney.

‘Careful, Rahul,’ my mother murmured.

My father chuckled as I set the tray down. ‘So the Prince of Kuch Bhi Nahi State is now serving his own guests!’ he said.

Ahmed Uncle and Shabnam Aunty chuckled in unison. I was annoyed. Again, he had called me the Prince of Nothing Kingdom. So what if there was no state to rule? I still lived in a magical palace built by kings, the fabled Nizams of Hyderabad.

‘I am sure your father will find you a lovely princess to be your bride when you grow up to be a handsome prince and you will have lots of children to rule your kingdom.’ Shabnam Aunty smiled lovingly as she held my face with one hand, her plump fingers digging into my cheeks as she moved my face from side to side. I squirmed and escaped.

A princess? No thanks! I thought to myself, my mind returning to the troublesome love letter. I would find the letter and burn it. I ran off to the kitchen to get a box of safety matches and slipped them into my pocket.

I could still hear their laughter as I approached my desk in the study room. I opened the drawers, looking for an envelope with the letters ‘RK’ written on it in an extravagant flourish. It was nowhere to be seen. I sifted through the drawers’ contents: feathers from the birds that had visited the lake, multi-coloured stones I had collected from a visit to a riverside, glass marbles, stamp collections—they were all there, except for the letter. I tore open my school bag, searching the pockets. Still no luck. The feeling of dread
spread. What if someone at school had found it? No, I reasoned, it had to be around somewhere.

I remembered a part of the letter: ‘I imagine you close to me, singing to me just the way you sing to Sharmila Tagore.’ I blushed with shame as I imagined the boys in my class reading it. Perhaps it was in the garden—I had many secret hiding places there. I ran out to the garden.

I had spent hours trying to write the perfect letter to Rajesh Khanna. Once he read it, he would surely understand my admiration and longing. This is what I had said in my letter: ‘Dear Rajesh Khanna, I have watched all your films. I think you are the most handsome man I have ever seen. I think about you all the time … Will you come to see me in Hyderabad? Or will you send for me from Bombay?’

Saturday Night. San Francisco.

‘God, I was so naive. Of course, we had no internet, no television and no pop culture-induced cynicism. So imagination ruled my reality.’

‘Like it does still.’ Andrew laughed. ‘Is that why you are so dramatic when you dream and cry? Does your imagination run away with you still?’ Surprised by his nasty tone, I fell silent. He got like this when he was upset, and I hated not being able to see him. Talking on the phone right now felt like eating with a fork and spoon instead of with my fingers.

Andrew was quiet too. I could hear the foghorn from the bay in the background. ‘Sorry, Rahul,’ he finally said. ‘That came out wrong. It’s not funny. Please go on.’

‘Apology accepted,’ I answered. ‘I’m not a drama queen.
And what happened was real …’ Feeling defensive, I stopped.