THE STERADIAN TRAIL: BOOK #0 OF THE INFINITY CYCLE (4 page)

6

D
ivya hopped off her Scooty, dragged it in – trundling over the cement bump at the main gate, sliding down the ramp – and parked it in front of the veranda. Her stomach was all afire and she had very little energy left in her body. The traffic and the smoke only made matters worse – her cream salwar-kameez looked as if it was soaked in a turbid liquid of some kind. Even carting an ultra-light two-wheeler like the Scooty made her puff hard from exhaustion. But none of this could diminish the exhilaration she felt inside: She was going to co-author a paper with Joshua Ezekiel! Joshua had an Erdos number of 1 which meant her Erdos number would be 2. Try beating that!

Meenakshi heard the screeching of the main gate and unlatched the door. ‘Why didn’t you stay back a little more and come for breakfast?’ she snapped.

Divya had gone to the campus after a hurried brunch in the morning with the promise that she would be back early to help her mom with dinner. But chopping vegetables to set dimensions and counting pressure cooker whistles were the last thing on her mind after the meeting with Joshua. She had headed straight to the library and remained there until the roiling acids in the belly reminded her that she had better head back for dinner. She remembered her promise only when she saw Meenakshi at the door.

‘Where’s Appa?’ she asked, taking off her sandals. It was usually the man of the house Chander who opened the door so late in the evening. Why that was the case, Divya couldn’t say, but it was one of those rules of the house that was never violated as far as she could remember.

Meenakshi latched the door and said: ‘He went back to the office to tally some accounts before the year-end.’

‘So late?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you look so dull? Have you been crying?’

‘Hmm . . . no, not crying exactly, but overcome with emotion,’ Meenakshi said.

‘Why, what happened?’

Meenakshi choked up. ‘Vanathi is in ICU in a coma.’

‘What!’

‘The ECG has also started becoming flat. Doctors are not giving any hope.’

‘Wasn’t her husband in a coma six months ago?’

Meenakshi nodded. ‘Yes, but he is okay now. He is waiting outside the ICU, looking anxiously through the little glass window.’

‘Isn’t that crazy, I mean, both husband and wife going into a coma?’

‘They are second cousins, no? So doctors think it could be something genetic.’

‘Oh, so they even have a logical, I mean medical, explanation for it!’

‘I’m really worried, Divvy,’ Meenakshi said. ‘Poor Vanathi. It’s her husband who had all the bad habits. She is so good.’

‘Don’t worry, Ma, she will wake up next week and the ECG will go rocketing up like a stock price on a bull run.’

‘How do you know? Even the doctors are not so hopeful, they’ve asked everyone to prepare for the worst. You don’t have to tell lies to make me feel better,’ Meenakshi snivelled into her pallu.

‘No Ma,
Vanathi’
s TRP ratings are good; they can run it for another year at least. They can’t do that if they kill off the main character. She’s probably demanding more money, so they sent her into a coma to bring her back to her senses. Quite ironical if you think about it. I suspect that’s what they did to her husband last time. You don’t go sulking because of that. Look at you, you look terrible.’

‘Don’t try to change the topic. Let’s talk about you first,’ Meenakshi wiped her eyes and said.

Divya smiled to herself. Her mother
was
shrewd. She had to give her that. ‘
What
about me?’ she asked, all innocence.

‘What did you
say
and what did you
do
?’

‘It’s not that I didn’t want to help you, Ma. But it was a really interesting talk by this prof from MIT; he was presenting his new shortest path algorithm. People like him don’t come along giving talks very often.’

‘Whatever,’ Meenakshi said. ‘These silly professors have nothing else to do than go yapping from place to place.’

Meenakshi went into the kitchen. Divya took a swig of an orange drink from the fridge as an emergency measure and ducked into bathroom to wash up and change. But she could hear her mother launching into an all too familiar rant as she warmed the food and heated up the oil for pappadams.

‘Just can’t understand the girls of this age. Yes, you’re smart, I agree. But that doesn’t mean that you should have no consideration for others. No consideration, I tell you. Not even for your own parents. . . . Do I ask you to come and help me in the kitchen every day? Do I? Do I? You don’t even live here for that. Were so adamant about staying in the hostel though the campus is so close by. Don’t even come home on the weekends. We have to come there and beg you. . . . Doesn’t it occur to you that you should lend me a hand in the kitchen at least in the holidays? Always keep saying tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes. I’m not a young girl anymore, you know. . . . It’s not just me. It’s for your own good I’m saying. When you’re married and gone, it’ll be your duty to take care of your home. You’ll have to cook, clean, do the dishes, wash the clothes, manage the accounts, pay the bills. You could be a big shot working wherever you want, but you’ll have to take care of these chores at home. When are you going to learn? Especially cooking. It’s not like you have a lot of time left. Only two or three years. They’ll fly by in the wink of the eye. What are your in-laws going to think of you then? Think of your upbringing? Think of our family? Think of me? . . . Okay, forget your in-laws. Just take your husband. What is he going to think? Family life is a complex web, Divvy, but one thing is sure: the shortest route to the husband’s heart is through the stomach. No algorithm or American professor can help you there. You should know this.’

‘Ma, you should really go write dialogues for those serials,’ Divya yelled from the bathroom. ‘You’re pretty good.’

‘Serials, my foot. I’m just stating the facts. You can’t avoid household work saying you are a career woman. That’s not going cut any ice. Even when I was teaching in that nursery school, I never left any room for complaint in the house. Especially food . . . Did I ever make a single item less? Did I? . . . Why do you study and work and earn money? To eat properly, isn’t it? Then? . . . Forget everything. Just think about this. Where are you going to get our kind of food, spicy vegetarian food, in America every day? You have to make it on your own, right? Don’t you need to learn cooking at least for that? You can find a hundred faults with even the rasam or sambar I make. How are you going to survive on the stuff you make without even knowing the basics of cooking? These days even our boys studying in ordinary engineering colleges are learning to cook from their mothers to prepare for life in the US. But you? You don’t even know how to slice vegetables without cutting your fingers. When are you going to learn? The worst part is, your father doesn’t even think about any of these things. Not even for a minute. Still treats you like a little girl. Pampers you too much saying you’re the only child. Are you his child only? Not mine? Don’t I have interest in your welfare? He doesn’t think so. Can’t take it if I say one word against you. Just howls at me and goes away to tally accounts in the bank.’

Meenakshi went on a little longer, but Divya turned on the tap and tuned her out. She changed and made her way to the kitchen, stopping by the fridge en route to take another gulp of the orange drink. ‘That’s enough, Ma. Vanathi’s ECG may be going flat but your BP is shooting up like the inflation rate under our Oxford economist finance minister.’

‘What do you care?’ Meenakshi whined.

‘Look at how you keep rambling, Ma. Look at what the mega-serials have done to you.’

‘Don’t blame TV for all your mistakes,’ Meenakshi said, quickly springing to the defence.

‘No Ma, you don’t understand,’ Divya said earnestly. ‘These serials are bad for health, both physical and mental. Nobody is worrying about the psychological impact they’re having on our society, especially on our middle-aged women who keep lapping up the filth day in and day out. They’re all going nuts without even realizing it.’

‘Thanks for the compliment,’ Meenakshi snarled.

‘No Ma. I didn’t mean you. I was just speaking generally. Doctors say it’s a form of Mass Psychogenic Illness. You haven’t reached that stage. Not yet. But the rate at which you’re going, you’ll get there soon. Though of course you can always ask them to put you in the same ward as Vanathi.’

Meenakshi gave Divya a baleful look but she just giggled. ‘I’ll help you tomorrow, Ma. God promise,’ she said and hugged Meenakshi. ‘Don’t do anything for lunch tomorrow. Just pull a chair, sit down, fold your hands and supervise like a manager. Just tell me what to do, step by step, and I’ll do everything. But only tomorrow. Today, the only part of dinner I can help you with is eating. I’m dying of starvation.’

‘It wasn’t me who asked you to come so late,’ Meenakshi said and started setting pappadams afloat in the oil.

‘I wasn’t going to, but the American prof gave me some work to do. I went to the library to look up some journals and totally forgot the time.’

She picked up a puffy pappadam and sat down at the dinner table, delicately rubbing it with a piece of paper to absorb excess oil.

‘Why does he ask you to do his work?’ asked Meenakshi. ‘You help everybody except me.’

‘It’s not really
his
work, Ma. It’s for my own good. He wants to write a paper with me. If I don’t do it, the loss will only be mine.’

‘What I’m saying is also for your own good,’ Meenakshi said.

Even Divya’s Olympian brain had no answer to that one-two punch Indian mothers are so capable of. She clenched her teeth, smashed the pappadam to bits and started eating.

Meenakshi served her in silence for a while. When Divya was halfway through the final course of curd rice, she spoke again: ‘Forgot to tell you. Venus called as soon as you had left in the morning.’

Divya’s face lit up. ‘Venus? Really?’ she said.

‘Yes. Said he was going to Chengalpet to see one of your friends and wanted to ask if you would like to go with him.’

‘Today?’

‘Yes,’ Meenakshi said. ‘I didn’t know that even guys from a God-forsaken place like Chengalpet are getting into the Institute these days.’

‘Not just that, Ma. This guy also won a gold medal at the Olympiad.’

‘Oh,
that
boy? The same fellow who is now at the bottom of your class?’ Meenakshi said with a touch of sarcasm.

The mother hen that she was, Meenakshi followed the careers of her daughter’s peers with a lot of zeal. She knew who her immediate rivals were and who weren’t. This boy Nedumaran aka Binary was nowhere in the reckoning. But Divya knew the stuff he was made of and didn’t take kindly to her mother’s attitude towards him. You could be proud of your daughter, but that did not mean that you had to mock others. ‘Yes, it’s the same fellow who also won a silver medal at the Olympiad in eleventh standard, when I couldn’t even get past the second stage,’ she said. ‘He is not even from Chengalpet actually. He is from a place even more remote. I’m sure you haven’t even heard of it.’

‘What place?’

‘Sadhurangapattanam,’ Divya said and mashed another puffed up pappadam to smithereens on her plate.

7

D
urai Raj noticed that, unlike the trip to the airport, Joshua was in no mood for conversation on the ride back to the hotel. His amiable American customer was absorbed in himself and he made no attempts to disturb him. In fact, Joshua’s preoccupation started rubbing off on Durai and soon after blending into the trickle of traffic on GST Road he too got lost in thought at the wheel. The tip that had wound its way back into Joshua’s wallet after making a brief but tantalizing appearance kept gnawing at him on the inside. Was it going to come back? Would he be able to redeem it? If not wholly or in full measure but very substantially? At the stroke of the midnight hour? Would it be his tryst with destiny?

Joshua had been a hard-won customer for Durai. There was always a mad scramble among the drivers for the guest in room M-729 of the Oceanic. It was an opulently furnished suite generally occupied by visitors from overseas who had historically proven to be the most generous tippers. Anyone who could afford that suite had to be. It was the most expensive suite of the hotel and unlike other rooms its occupancy rates were low; it got booked only for a few days every month, if at all, and remained vacant for much of the year. But when it did host a guest, it set off a mini-war among the drivers.

Durai had run out of luck with the previous guest who had lodged there a few weeks ago. The fellow happened to be somewhat of a welfare-minded socialist and kept asking for a new car for his excursions every day, spreading his largesse over a bigger base – directly in US dollars. Sadly, Durai had been assigned exclusively to a tight-fisted tycoon from Bombay who showed no signs of leaving, visiting this temple or that down south to give a facelift to his karmic profile. So Durai had to forgo his share of the American’s bounty and remain content watching his comrades – none of whom spoke English half as well as he did – go home with dollar bills in their pockets and a big smile on their faces while he himself stood under the streetlight counting the coins the tycoon had flung at him. So he did not leave anything to chance this time. As soon as he heard that a new guest was taking the luxury suite – an American once again – he pounced on the dispatcher like a panther and made sure he and no one else was assigned to him. He served Joshua with all the politeness and dedication he could muster, leaving very little room for complaint. All that effort had been about to bear fruit when fate struck in the form of cops and tugged the rug under his feet. He drove back morosely, puzzled as to why this should happen to him of all people.

They reached the hotel and Durai offloaded Joshua’s luggage from the boot to the pavement. It was very late in the night and the concierge was not to be found at his post in the porch. Durai started hollering at the security guard to summon the concierge. He had seen Joshua pull out some money from his wallet and wanted no slips between the cup and the lip this time.

Joshua got down from the car and stood by the side, sweating, the cash clutched in hand. He was still somewhat detached, oblivious to Durai’s eager efforts. He piped up when Durai returned to the car, after setting the security guard on a hunt for the missing concierge. ‘Do you mind opening the boot again, Durai?’ he asked.

Durai quietly opened the boot and stepped aside. Joshua leaned in and took a peek.

His curiosity getting the better of him, Durai too joined in after a little hesitation.

The placard was still there, battered even more under the weight of Joshua’s luggage:

MR WI L LAI M J

A poorly spelt version of Mr William J. or even Mr Williams J. Joshua knitted his brows and relapsed into thought-marshalling mode for a few moments before speaking. ‘The name on the placard . . .?’

‘Yes sir?’ Durai said.

‘Is he staying here or something?’

‘No sir, this is an old placard. He must have come and gone already. There was a conference last month and a lot of foreigners came and stayed in the hotel; he was probably one of those people.’

‘Any chance you picked him up or drove him around?’

‘No sir. It wasn’t me – my spelling is not so bad,’ Durai said, somewhat offended. ‘It must have been some other driver. The car keeps changing hands, sir. That driver must have forgotten to discard the placard,’ he said, a touch poetically. Then with much hesitation, ‘Why are you asking, sir? You know this person?’

Joshua didn’t reply.

Durai noticed that Joshua’s manner had become stiff, as if possessed by an unknown fear. He stood brooding with the tip money in his hand – so hermetically closed inside his fist that Durai couldn’t guess how much it was.

Durai felt caught in a quandary. He badly wanted to go back home after a long day. But how was he to go without collecting his tip? The smile on the face of his wife depended on it. Even if he were to do the unthinkable thing of writing it off and leaving without waiting for Joshua, he figured Joshua might get offended. Especially since his luggage lay unattended in the porch; with even the security guard gone in search of the concierge, there was no one else to take charge.

Durai stood squirming in his boots indecisively, keeping a vigilant eye on the luggage, just as he’d done at the airport when the cops whisked Joshua away, wondering what on earth was running in the professor’s mind.

Joshua finally snapped out of his silence. ‘All right Durai, I’ll take it from here,’ he said and stretched out his hand.

It was a crispy roll of a few hundred rupee bills and Durai accepted it with a toothy smile. ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you very much,’ he said.

All his malaise vanished instantly like magic. He saw the security guard arriving with the concierge in tow and quickly tucked the money into his pocket. He handed over the charge to the concierge and drove away.

The concierge was a stout man who appeared stouter in a colonial-looking costume – a billowy white overcoat that dropped down to the knees and a red cummerbund – a perfect foil for the security guard who wore a navy blue uniform and an artistically done turban crested with crisp accordion folds that swayed and rasped in the wind. The garish, overdone uniforms of guards and concierges in Indian hotels never failed to amuse Joshua. The current specimens almost made him feel like a maharaja returning to his palace and it brought a faint smile to his lips. Letting the concierge cart his suitcases, he took off his jacket, slung on his laptop and made for the reception desk.

He didn’t have much trouble getting a room. The management welcomed him back as if he were the prodigal son returning to the family fold. The fact that he insisted on the same suite he’d stayed in earlier made it a whole lot easier. The clerk didn’t even keep him waiting, saying all rooms were taken, pretending to look into the system for cancellations. She pinged the manager right away and he came out of his office to personally welcome his most valuable guest for the night. It truly felt like a homecoming for Joshua.

The first thing he did upon re-entering the suite was to pick up the phone and call Becky at her kibbutz hotel in Jerusalem. She wasn’t available in the room or on her mobile though. He hung up after leaving a worried message with the operator and on her voice mail.

He had talked to Becky and Katie only a few hours ago and mom and daughter were doing great and thoroughly enjoying their day. But being unable to reach them when he wanted made Joshua jittery. He took a swig of water from the mini bar and tried diverting himself watching the news channel. An Indian economist with a hard-acquired accent was on air from the cosy cocoon of an American campus, belting out advice to the Indian government on pretty much everything: how to raise interest rates and tame inflation, how to lower expenditure to control inflation, how to attract foreign investment with a falling rupee, how to lower interest rates to stimulate investment, how to let inflation rein in consumption, how to increase expenditure to stimulate growth . . . Joshua clicked the remote and started watching a Bollywood music channel.

The concierge wheeled in his luggage and stowed them in the closet. Joshua tipped him and resumed waiting for Becky’s call.

Tired and restless, the songs and swaying hips failed to hold his attention. The suite too seemed to close in and stifle him. He switched off the TV and slipped out of the suite onto the balcony. One foot resting on the balustrade, he remained there for some time, lost in thought, in the vise-grip of a vague, faceless fear that stood in the way of enjoying the night-time view of the city, lights going out sporadically on the landscape, the hustle and bustle grinding to a halt.

One thing the placard made clear to Joshua was that someone named William J. or Williams J. had come to stay at the Oceanic very recently. The first thing to do was to determine if he was indeed
the
Jeffrey Williams. If he indeed was, Joshua knew what to do next. What were the odds that Jeffrey would get killed in a random incident after a visit to India? It had to be because of something like
that
.

But Joshua decided not to jump the gun. Before thinking about the next steps, he had to establish the identity of the person on the placard beyond doubt and he had to do it as quickly and as discreetly as possible. He could think of only one way and he zoomed in on it before long.

After spending a few more minutes in the balcony formulating a plan of action, he slipped back into the suite. Ignoring the fact that it was well past midnight, he flipped open his pocketbook and started pushing the buttons on the telephone.