River of Gods (33 page)

Then it changed. Trucks from Ray Power came and poured out men who
put up a tent village so that for a month there were two Kotkhais as
they built their wind turbines and solar panels and biomass
generators and gradually webbed every house and shop and holy place
together with sagging cables. Sukrit the battery seller cursed them
that they had put a good man out of business and a good daughter to
prostitution.

"We are part of the world now," Mrs. Jaitly had told her
women at the evening group. "Our web of cables connects to
another web, connects to a greater web, connects to a web across the
whole world."

But old India was dying, Nehru's dream bursting at the seams under
the pressure of ethnic and cultural division and an environment
sagging beneath a billion and a half humans. Kotkhai prided itself
that its backwardness and isolation would insulate it from Diljit
Rana's idiosyncratic mix of Hinduism and future vision. But the men
were talking at the dhaba, reading out columns from the evening news
about National Armies and armed militias and lightning raids to seize
and hold a fistful of sand-poor villages like Kotkhai in the grab for
national territory. Jai
Bharat!
The young men went first.
Parvati had seen how her father watched them leave on the country
bus. S.J. Sadurbhai had never forgiven his wife for only delivering
him daughters. He daily envied the middle classes who could afford to
choose the sex of their children. They were building a strong nation,
not weak and womanly as old India had been, bickering herself to
death. It was almost a relief in the Sadurbhai house when he
announced that he and his apprentice Gurpal from the garage were
driving off to the war. A good war. A man's war. They drove off and
in all Kotkhai there were only two casualties, those two, killed in
the truck they were driving by an aeai attack helicopter that could
not tell friend from foe. A man's war, a man's death.

Three weeks later a nation was born and war replaced with soap.
Within a month of the proclamation of new Bharat, more men brought
more cables, fibre-optic cables, down which came news and gupshup and
soap. Teacher Jaitly railed against
Town and Country
as
mind-gelling propaganda promulgated by the state to stifle real
political debate, but week by week her classes dwindled, woman by
woman, until in the end she returned to the city, defeated by the
affairs of the Prekashs and Ranjans. The new village gathering place
was around the state-supplied widescreen. Parvati grew to womanhood
in the light of
Town and Country
. From it she learned all the
skills needed to become the perfect wife. Within six months Parvati
was in Varanasi receiving the final social lacquer that would get her
into every best party and durbar on the loop. A half-year later, at a
wedding of some cousin of a cousin, she caught a whisper from her
second cousin once-removed Deepti, and looked where the whisper
pointed, across the lantern-lit gardens, through the glowing awning
to the thin, scholarly looking man trying not to be seen looking at
her. She remembers that the tree under which he stood was hung with
tiny wicker birdcages containing candles. She imagined him haloed in
stars.

A further six months and the arrangements were complete, the dowry
lodged in Parvati's mother's grameen account and a taxi booked to
carry Parvati's few things to the new penthouse flat in the heart of
great Varanasi. Except that the things looked like orphans in the
cedar-lined closets and penthouse it might be but everyone was now
moving out of that dirty, crowded, noisy Kashi to the green soft
Cantonment and the thin, scholarly man cloaked with stars was only a
policeman. But with a word or a wave of her hand the Prekashs and
Ranjans would be there, round to call, who were as happy in Kotkhai
as Varanasi, who knew neither snobbery nor caste and whose doings and
scandals were always interesting.

On the Thursday Krishan works late on the roof. There are many
needling things that require finishing off; the electrical supply to
the drip irrigation, the grouting on the path of round stones, the
brackets on the bamboo screens around the meditation bowl. He tells
himself that he will not be able to move on unless he completes these
small niggles, but the truth is that Krishan is curious to see again
this Mr. Nandha, this Krishna Cop. He knows from the papers and the
radio chat what it is they do but he cannot comprehend why what he
hunts down is such a terrifying menace. So he works until the sun
swells to a globe of blood in the west beyond the towers of the money
town, tightening bolts and cleaning tools until he hears the door
close downstairs and Parvati's voice meet the deeper, wordless male
rumble. The conversation grows in definition with each step he
descends. She is asking, pleading, wanting him to take her out. She
wants to go somewhere, get away from this high apartment. His voice
is tired and flat and Krishan knows that it will say no to anything
she suggests. He sets down his bag and waits by the door. He is not
eavesdropping, he tells himself. Doors are thin and words have their
natural volume. The policeman is impatient now. His voice hardens,
like a parent worn away by an insatiable child. Then Krishan hears
the voice bark in anger, a chair scrape back from a table. He seizes
his bag, retreats down the main stairs. The door flies open and Mr.
Nandha strides down the stair to the lobby door, face set like a
carving. He brushes past Krishan as if he were a lizard on a wall.
Parvati comes out of the kitchen. She and Mr. Nandha face each other
at opposite ends of the stairs. Krishan, invisible, is trapped
between their voices.

"Go then!" she shouts. "It is obviously so important."

"Yes," Mr. Nandha says. "It is so important. But I
would not trouble you with matters of national security."

He opens the door to the elevator lobby.

"I will be on my own, I am always on my own!" Parvati leans
over the chromed railing but the door is closed and her husband is
gone without a look. Now she sees Krishan.

"Will you go, too?"

"I should."

"Don't leave me. I'm always on my own, I hate being on my own."

"I really think I have to go."

"I am on my own," Parvati says again.

"You have your
Town and Country
," Krishan ventures.

"That's just a stupid soap!" Parvati shouts at him. "A
stupid television programme. Do you really think I believe it? Do you
think I'm some country yokel can't tell the difference between a
television programme and real life?" She bites back the anger.
The women of Kotkhai's training holds. "I'm sorry. I should not
have said that. It wasn't you it was aimed at. You should not have
had to hear any of that."

"No, I'm sorry," Krishan says. "He should not speak to
you like that; like you are a child."

"He is my husband."

"Forgive me, I've spoken out of turn. I should go. It's the best
thing."

"Yes," Parvati whispers. She is backlit by the deepening
sun, beaming through the apartment windows, turning her skin to gold.
"It would be the best thing."

The gold light is amber, trapping the moment. Krishan is sick with
tension. The futures balance on a brass pin. Their fall could crush
him, crush her, crush them all here in this penthouse apartment. He
picks up his bag. But the kick inside takes him.

"Tomorrow," he says, feeling the shake deep in his voice.
"Tomorrow there is a cricket match at the Dr. Sampurnanand
Stadium. England, Bharat, the third test. The last, I think. The
English will recall their team very soon. Would you. could you. might
you come?"

"With you?"

Krishan's heart thunders, then he realises. "No, of course not,
you could not be seen."

"But I would very much like to see a Test Match, and against
England as well. I know! The Cantonment Set ladies go to the Test. We
would be in different parts of the ground, you understand. But we
would be there together, sharing it. A virtual date, as the Americans
would say. Yes, I shall go tomorrow and show the ladies of The Mall
that I am not a rural ignoramus about the game of cricket."

The sun has dropped, Parvati is no longer golden-skinned, the amber
is broken, but Krishan's heart is in light.

"We'll do that then," Krishan says. "Tomorrow, the
Test." Then he picks up his bag and is whirled down the lift out
into the eternal traffic.

Dr. Sampurnanand Stadium is a white concrete bowl, simmering under a
beige sky, a pan of heat and anticipation circled around a disc of
fresh, watered, microclimate-controlled green. Varanasi has never
been one of India's great cricketing cities like Kolkata or Chennai
or Hyderabad or even her neighbour and former rival for capital
city-hood, Patna. The Doctor's stadium had been little more than a
bumpy, scorched stretch of withered grass, a crease no bowler of
international standing would risk a ball on and no batsman would dare
defend. Then came Bharat and the same transfiguring hand of the Ranas
that had swept Sarnath into a citadel of audacious architecture and
high technology changed the old Sanskrit University sports ground in
a hundred-thousand seater. A classic government white elephant, it
has never been more than half-full, not even for the 3rd Test of 2038
when Bharat crushed an ailing Australia to win the series, the first
and only time. Today its climate-field traps a lens of cool air
against forty-degree ambient heat, but the white men out the field
still need plastic bags of water slung on to the pitch. Bharat are 55
for 3, lunch is an hour off and high above the stadium Awadhi and
Bharati aeaicraft hunt each other. At the moment the action in the
stratosphere is more interesting than the action on the green to the
cricketing ladies of canopy-shaded Block 17. The block is owned by
Mrs. Sharma's husband, a property developer in Sarnath who bought it
as a corporate hospitality tax-break to treat friends and guests and
clients. In the season it is a recognised gathering place for society
ladies. They make a pretty patch of colour, like an unexpected
window-box on the face of a tenement. They squint up through their
Western-label sunglasses at the twining helices of contrails.
Everything is different since Bharat's brave jawans made their daring
move in the night from Allahabad to seize the Kunda Khadar Dam. Mrs.
Thakkur opines that they are scouting out an Awadhi attack.

"On Varanasi?" Mrs. Sharma is affronted. Mrs. Chopra thinks
that would be typical of Awadh, a vindictive, weasel nation. The
jawans took Kunda Khadar so easily because Awadh's troops are already
moving on the capital. Mrs. Sood wonders if they are spreading
plagues. "You know, like spraying crops." Her husband is a
middle-manager in a big biotech firm, booking air-dusting on
monocrops the size of entire districts. The ladies hope the Ministry
of Health would give enough warning to relocate to their summer
bungalows in the hills ahead of the rush.

"I should expect the more important elements in society would be
informed first," says Mrs. Laxman. Her husband is a senior civil
servant. But Mrs. Chopra has heard another rumour, that the Banglas'
ridiculous iceberg is actually starting to work and that the winds
are swinging around, drawing the monsoon back to true. This morning
as she took tea on the verandah she was certain, certain, she saw a
line of shadow along the horizon to the southeast.

"Well then, nobody will need to invade anybody," Mrs.
Laxman declares but the Begum Khan, who is married to Sajida Rana's
Private Secretary and has the word from the Bharat Sabha, is
derisive.

"If anything, it makes war more likely. Even if the monsoon
started tomorrow it would take a week for the levels to rise on
Ganga. And do you think the Awadhis are going to let us see any of
it? They're as thirsty as we are. No, I tell you, pray it doesn't
rain, because as soon as the first drop hits, Delhi'll want its dam
back. That, of course, is predicated on whether the Banglas'
ludicrous iceberg is anything more than a juggernaut of pseudoscience
and the opinion, frankly, is no."

The Begum Khan has a reputation as a hard, opinionated woman, with
too much learning and too few manners. Muslim traits; but that's not
the sort of thing you mention in company. But she is a voice men
listen to, in her articles and radio pieces and talks. And there are
strange rumours about her quiet, busy little husband.

"Seems we're dammed if we do and damned if we don't," Mts.
Sharma puns in English. The ladies smile and the cricket ground
rustles to applause as Bharat hit a boundary. A sport of gentle,
distant sounds, cricket; muted handclaps, a click of ball on bat,
muffled voices. The umpire lowers his finger, the scoreboard flips
over, the ladies turn back to the sky. The confrontation is ended,
the contrails blowing ragged on a high wind from the southeast, the
monsoon wind. The shy Mrs. Sood wonders who won.

"Why, our side, of course," says Mrs. Chopra, but Parvati
can see that Begum Khan is not so sure. Parvati Nandha shades herself
with her parasol from the sun that edges under the canopy. It doubles
as sunscreen for her palmer on which scores and Test statistics flash
up, beamed diagonally across the pitch, through the umpires and the
outfield and the infield and the wicket keeper and the batsman and
the bowler, from Krishan, down on the boundary line in the day-ticket
stands.

The English bowler winds up. TREVELYAN, says the palmer. SOMERSET.
PACE. 16TH

CAP FOR ENGLAND. CLEAN BOWLED SIX SRI LANKAN WICKETS IN THE SECOND
TEST IN COLOMBO. 2046 SEASON.

The batsman steps forward, bat hold out in front like a narrow
shield. He bears the ball down, his counterpart at the far wicket
tenses. No. The ball runs a little way before a fielder (SQUARE SHORT
LEG, says the palmer) scoops it up, looks around, sees no one
vulnerable out on the wicket, lobs it back to the bowler.