The Temple-goers (13 page)

‘As soon as he came near, I felt acute social embarrassment. Lodhi Gardens was full of fashionable people whom I knew, or knew a little, and I didn’t wish to be seen speaking to a man who was hardly better than a servant, especially a man as attractive as this one. He seemed to read my embarrassment and prolonged it. When I asked him for his telephone number, he responded with mock confusion: why would I want his telephone number?

‘ “Please, quickly,” I said, as if speaking to a servant. “I have to finish my walk.”

‘ “But first, tell me…”

‘ “Listen, I have to go. Do you have a mobile or not?”

‘The mention of that magic status symbol stopped the man’s playful delays. He whipped out his phone and held it insolently before me.

‘ “Give me your number,” he said.

‘I hurriedly gave him my number.

‘ “Name?”

‘ “Krishna,” I answered.’

Krishna! The moment I heard the name, though he went by Kris and not Krishna, I remembered where I had seen the creative writer. He also worked out at Junglee, but with Pradeep, the other trainer. He was a friend of Aakash’s top lawyer-client, Sparky Punj, and I had seen them many times, having a protein shake together after their workout. Aakash had taken an irrational dislike to him – linked no doubt to his choice of trainer – and called him Lul, literally dick, but more like limp dick.

‘He’s a gay!’ he would say every time Kris walked past, oblivious to Aakash’s hatred of him.

‘So what, Aakash?’

‘So what, Aakash?’ he would imitate in a girly voice and fall back into a sullen silence.

The thought of Aakash gave me a pang. I had hardly seen him since the night with the Begum of Sectorpur. He had cancelled trainings without notice, didn’t return missed calls and messages; he became moody at Junglee. His coldness, after the intimacy and excess of that day, affected me badly. I suspected that it was related to our episode with the begum. It was as if Aakash had rightly judged the unease it had left me with, but in a strange inversion, he pre-empted the possibility of my withdrawing by withdrawing himself. And in this way he had not only erased all discomfort I might have had from that day but also left me mourning his sudden absence in my life. I would find myself waiting for his text messages and phone calls. I’d reach for my phone first thing in the morning to see if something had come through. I thought up banal reasons to call him. If he didn’t show up at the gym, I wouldn’t work out, coming away feeling that not only had the hour been wasted but the day too. I cancelled plans made weeks in advance to see him, knowing full well that should something come up in his life, he would cancel me without a word. When I confronted him about his behaviour, he lied effortlessly. He had called, but my number was engaged; my text messages hadn’t reached him; his brother had borrowed his phone. If I questioned him further, he became upset and conversation shut down. His lying was also an aspect of his confidence, a supreme belief that even if the details of what he was saying were wrong, he couldn’t ever be wrong himself. His aloofness in that last week in Delhi put an added strain on my relationship with Sanyogita. She noticed that I was irritable and distracted and she sensed why. I couldn’t explain my exact condition because I didn’t fully understand it myself. I only knew that the euphoria I had felt on that Jet Airways flight back to Delhi, that cautious euphoria that reduced me to tears, had become tied up with Aakash and the world he opened up to me. But in the end, after many gestures of friendship, I’d stopped trying too; my last communication with him, to which I received no reply, had been a text message, reminding him of my departure and inviting him to Sanyogita’s party.

Caught up in these considerations, I found I’d missed some of the conversation in the creative writer’s story. The mention of his name drew me in again.

‘ “OK, Krishna,” the man said doubtfully. “I’ll give you a missed call.”

‘ “OK, OK,” I replied, in a voice that sounded as if I was instructing him to do some work for me, and moved on quickly. When I looked back, I saw that the man stood where he was and a smile played on his dark lips as he finished entering my number into his phone. He must have seen me because he looked up and waved his arm at me. “OK, Krishna. Remember me. I’m Jai. I’ll call you tonight.”

‘A few moments later, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I saved Jai’s number and carried on with my walk.

‘An assignation! I thought. I had made so many abroad, sometimes just walking past a man in the street: a suggestive look, a follow-up glance thrown over the shoulder a few paces later and an exchanged number. That was all. But now, despite being in my own country, exchanging numbers with another Indian, I felt on more unfamiliar ground than I had ever been on in the West, felt I couldn’t judge the man’s motives. This was what happened when everyone had a phone! It was amazing to think of the technology, available even to men like Jai, that brought us together and made possible the assignation, at once real but also indefinite and avoidable: the ingredients of anonymity.

‘I finished my rounds of the park. The winter brought clearer days and the sky, still blue on my first round and barnacled with scaly clouds, burned with scattered orange fires on my second. The subsequent rounds of the park, the dimness of evening and the drama of the second sky erased my memory of the encounter with Jai. I arrived back at my flat to tea and heaters. By the time I came out of the shower, a mild dusk had submitted to the curfew of a smoky night.

‘I ate dinner from a trolley in front of the television. The servants had gone to bed and I was checking my mail when Jai’s name flashed on my phone. His beauty had faded from my mind; the night seemed deep and inaccessible; I answered the phone reluctantly.

‘ “Krishna?” the voice said.

‘ “Sorry?”

‘ “Is that Krishna speaking?”

‘ “Oh yes, yes.”

‘ “Should we meet? Where do you live? I can come to you.”

‘ “No,” I said, asserting myself against the forcefulness of the voice on the other end. “We can’t meet here.”

‘ “Why?”

‘ “Because the servants are here.”

‘ “So? You can’t have guests in front of your servants?”

‘I realized the offence I caused. It was true: Jai was too much like a servant himself for me to have him over at the house as a guest. I felt my Hindi fail me.

‘ “My mother’s here too. It’s better we meet outside.”

‘ “Where?”

‘ “Can you come to the beginning of Tughlak Lane?”

‘ “You know I’ll have to come by rickshaw. It’s quite expensive and far.”

‘ “I’ll help.”

‘ “What?”

‘ “I’ll help you with the fare.”

‘A silence followed. “OK,” the voice said at last. “I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”

‘Jai’s desire to come to the house unnerved me. I removed my Breitling before leaving the house. I was aware as I entered the night of a pretence on my part: that this was like assignations I had known before, in other places.

‘The depth of the night alarmed me. The haze compressed the yellow street light into tight orbs. The faces of the figures around the chai shop were wrapped up completely in their scarves, leaving only a little space for their eyes. They gathered around a shallow dish in which they’d started a fire. A bulb in the shop illuminated the grime in its windows. I could make out the owner’s vast silhouette, over a blue flame and an eternally boiling kettle. Walking past the shop and its damp washing area, crowded with gas cylinders, crates and a young boy cleaning dishes in a metal sink, I felt I was leaving some final outpost. Though Tughlak Lane was hardly a hundred yards away, the short stretch of road ahead was deserted and badly lit. Occasionally, I passed other figures, all invisible men in their woollens; scrawny bitches, with udders flapping, crept along the edges of the road, scalloped with yellow pools of light.

‘Between my street and Tughlak Lane, a single fluorescent lamp flickered in the darkness, interrupting the stretch of yellow lights. I waited under it for Jai’s arrival. For the first time since I had arranged the assignation, I felt a pang of excitement twist in me, harden and settle among nerves and uncertainty.

‘A few minutes later, the headlight of a rickshaw charted its way through the darkness like a submarine. Jai leaned out of it, alert and ready. As soon as he saw me, he swung out of the rickshaw and ran next to it for a few paces. His ease, his obvious street smartness, were intimidating. He seemed to take charge, and when I put my hand in my pocket, he signalled to me not to and paid the rickshaw himself.

‘ “He’d have given you a different rate,” he said disparagingly as the rickshaw drove off. “So where do you live?”

‘ “Just around here.”

‘ “Where?”

‘ “Will you stop asking so many questions?”

‘Jai smiled. His manner seemed to change. “Come on, then. Let’s go for a walk; it’s a beautiful night.”

‘I had been on the verge of calling the whole thing off, but now felt a little calmer. I chose Tughlak Lane for its nearness to me, but also its beauty. The low, full boughs of the trees lining the lane formed a tunnel and the street lights buried in their canopies burnished parts of the tree with a metallic lustre. It seemed almost to plate the leaves, giving them a solidity they lacked in the daytime. Even the disease, covering the leaves of all the trees on Tughlak Lane with white blotches, now at night seemed part of the light’s alchemic imagination. The Lutyens bungalows of Tughlak Lane were home to politicians, including the heir of the country’s political first family, and the road we walked down was bounded by green sentry boxes, sandbags and high barbed-wire fences. Over the bungalows’ low red walls were ochre houses with arched verandas and large lawns.

‘Jai was impressed.

‘ “This is a VIP area,” he said quietly.

‘ “Yes.”

‘ “Are your family VIPs?”

‘ “No.”

‘ “What does your father do?”

‘My irritation returned, but this time Jai caught it. “Leave it,” he said. “I don’t want to know. I’ll just say one thing. Today, when I met you, I felt I’d made a friend who could help me. You know I’m not a rich man or even middle class, but I have this desire to succeed that prevents me from sleeping. And I know that if I was given just a little assistance, that small lifting hand, I would make it.”

‘ “What do you do?” I asked, annoyed at the mistake I felt I’d made. Only in India could you pick someone up and end up with a gulf this wide between their intentions and yours.

‘Jai said he worked as a chowkidar; that his family in Nepal were high caste and had not always been poor; his mother lived alone in Sectorpur; he wanted to improve her life. I felt I’d heard all this before. I was wretched about my unreciprocated desire for Jai, which had grown with expectation. I noticed his dark smooth skin in the yellow light and experienced an angry sense of entitlement.

‘We passed a house where a wedding was taking place. The blackish-orange heads of mushroom heaters, halogen floodlights and colourful satin cloth that skirted the tent’s white roof were visible from the street. Indian bagpipers in kilts played over the din of voices and laughter. In the dark foliage on the edge of the party, fairy-lit in places, chauffeurs and uniformed banquet staff lurked among steel cauldrons and the light from naked bulbs. Jai wanted to go in. He guessed correctly that I knew whose party it was.

‘We had come to a crossroads on Tughlak Lane. Ahead was a busy main road; on either side, dark service lanes; and behind us, the tunnel of twisted, gold-plated leaves. I looked up and noticed sharp, razor-edged barbed wire coiled around the bent necks of Tughlak Lane’s street lights.

‘I slipped my hand over Jai’s shoulders and led him into a dark service lane on the left. We entered those little streets of Lutyens’s Delhi, devoted entirely to servants’ quarters and dhobis. In the now much thicker darkness, I ran my hand over Jai’s chest and stomach, feeling its slim firmness through the cheap, synthetic fabric of his shirt. Jai, who had spoken without stopping about his aspirations, said, “You know, when I came here tonight, I thought I would be spending the whole night with you.”

‘ “I know, but we can’t go to my house.”

‘ “Why?”

‘ “Because of the servants…”

‘ “But…”

‘ “Because you’re like a servant too,” I snapped.’

Many different things – my familiarity with Tughlak Lane; the need for respite from the story and its creative-writing theme; the blunt violent line bursting from the author’s dead lips; the memory of Delhi in the winter – came together to make me look up and around the room, like someone surfacing for air. The others were captivated. The older woman’s braceleted wrist was rooted firmly on the author’s shoulder; another tall, young man, also in rubber chappals, took notes; Sanyogita listened wide-eyed; only Ra noticed the disturbance near the door of the lamp-lit room, and by following his eyes mine came to Aakash in a red Puma T-shirt, leaning against his tricep in the doorway.

‘Ash-man,’ I breathed.

‘Yes, man,’ he replied, relishing my surprise, then puckering up his blackish-pink lips as if about to blow bubbles, mouthed, ‘Lul. Lul. Lul.’

I lowered my head, laughing silently, but Sanyogita saw me.

‘Baby!’ she hissed.

I pointed to Aakash. She looked up, smiled and gestured to him to come over. He hesitated, then made his way swiftly through the crowded room. A few silver-haired women watched him keenly; the men looked gloomy and irritated. The creative writer stopped his story, perhaps from wonderment at Aakash’s appearance so far from Junglee. As soon as he had sat down at our feet, the writer began again.

‘Jai didn’t mind. “I want you to know,” he said, “that any time, I mean any time, night or day, you can call me and I’ll come. If you have friends, whatever. See, the thing is, living in Delhi, I’ve developed a taste for money and I’m willing to do anything for it.”

‘ “Do you want money now?”

‘ “Man, what are you saying? You’re my friend.”

‘On our right, a village of washing lines appeared. The white clothes that hung limply from bamboo poles in the cold night had a morbid, ghostly aspect. Further on, a park with a thin grass cover and a sandy surface was coated in dew. Suddenly a pack of dogs leapt at the gate of the park, growling, barking, showing teeth and gums. I jumped back. But Jai, as assured as he had been with the rickshaw, raced forward, picking up a stone on the way. When the dogs didn’t run from him, he flung the stone with a fast side throw and hit one of the dogs on the cheek. I heard the impact of the stone against skin and bone and the easy cruelty of it chilled me. The dog howled at so shrill a note that the others melted into the darkness of the park.