The Two Krishnas (24 page)

“Atif, it’s really not that simple.”

“Simple? Who ever said it was going to be simple? You think love is simple, Rahul?” he shouted. “Is that what you wanted when you came to me, Rahul? Simplicity? And what do you want me to do while you think us away into nothingness?”

“I can’t tell you what to do.”

“But you can. You can,” he cried. “Don’t you see? You can tell me to do anything and I will. Just…don’t ask me to give you up.” If he could only see Rahul in person, look him in the eye, ask him what had happened to harden him, to draw the love out from him, everything could go back to the way it was. “What happened? Talk to me, please.”

“I can’t right now,” Rahul said, his voice breaking. “I have to go, okay?”

“No! No, you can’t go. You can’t do this to me. I deserve an explanation, Rahul. Something. This is
me
you’re talking to!” Just then he heard a woman’s voice calling Rahul in the background. He froze. In all the time they had been together, he had never heard her voice, seen her picture, so Pooja had been a phantom presence. But now, for the first time, here she was, absolutely indubitable.

“Please,” he said, his voice lowered. “I must go now but I’ll call you later. I promise.”

“Rahul, I can’t be without you,” he said. “I won’t.”

“Where am I going?” he asked wearily. “Where can I go?”

Atif heaved with sobs. His anguish was so immense that he could barely hold himself up. He had promised that when the time came, he would let go without a struggle, without imposing any guilt-trips or emotional blackmail, but how could it happen like this, after such a special night? And how could he have known it would hurt this much, like someone rending his heart out?

All his life he had crammed his mind with the romanticism of the mystics—the likes of Rumi and his Shams, people from another time and place, who now lived only in the pages of books few even opened. But this wasn’t Rumi’s Konya, it was California. And the world had never fostered the soul-elevating yearnings of mystical love. Anybody could have told him how this was going to end. So many had.

“I’m scared, Rahul,” he said. “And you know what the fucked up thing is? You are the only one I can talk to.”

* * *

Over the balcony, just a few steps away from him, the cliff dove onto Pacific Coast Highway, teeming with speeding cars. Beyond it and over the strand of private beach houses, the sand was crowded with people, seemingly a thousand cocktail umbrellas flowering in the sun. Atif fixed his gaze on a pair of children frolicking with a large beach ball, the parents watching them from a distance.

What must his parents be doing right now? At this time, in Bombay, while the city raged on, the sounds of traffic its faithful soundtrack, his parents must be soundly asleep in their beds. His father’s snores would be filling the house and his mother would have wedged the pillow between her face and arm, almost as if trying to drown out her husband’s sounds, his totalitarianism.

Do they think of me anymore?
he wondered.
If not with maudlin emotion then even with surprise, in passing, by chance?
When they bit into the soft cheesy
mithais
that he loved so much and which his mother had sneaked out of the kitchen for him? On Fridays, when a new Bollywood film premiered at the Gaiety or a new hit soundtrack looped its catchy tunes on the TV, did they miss his irrepressibility? Did his mother miss massaging his head with the Amla oil he always protested about?

Look, Ma, a full head of hair. You were right.

But why should I care?
He thought, breathing in sharply.
I am dead for them. I have a father who, given the chance to do it over, would have snuffed me out at birth; a mother who strangled her maternal love to keep her marriage alive. I have a man who pours declarations of love into my ears, his seed in my bowels, yet wakes up next to a wife he has taken an oath to be with for his next seven lives. What do I have?

The ocean didn’t heave and chop like it did over the broad footpath and sea wall at Marin Drive. Even here gusts of wind carried its salt but the ocean appeared like a calm sheet, nature itself pretending to be something else in a city famous for its thesping and duplicity. He remembered reading somewhere that there was a reason why the ocean comforted us: because the smell of the ocean was the same primeval smell of woman. It was the smell of birth, of a life before life, that safe cocoon where we lay snug before we learned disappointment and hate and pain. Returning to the ocean then was like returning to the womb. Coming back home.

It would be so easy now. Just to let go, jump over, get it over with, to die. A leap and it would be all over, the pain, the humiliation, the rejection. He felt the breakneck dive, imagined the crushing of bones as he met with the tarmac, heard the commotion about him. The goading was loud and clear in his mind, that voice of defeat, the whimper of crushed self-esteem. But something in him stalled, a spark of hope still embedded within him, a distant, lost prayer finding him, enabling him one more breath pregnant with yearning.

* * *

Swerving through a puddle of creamy yellow
daal
, Rahul’s fingers made hillocks of drenched basmati rice before parceling them into his mouth. While hardly an act requiring concentration, Rahul looked so immersed in it that Pooja, seated across from him at the Ashoka Palace on Pioneer Boulevard, was certain her husband’s mind was adrift. And now too, she longed to lay her hand on his chest and soothe his suffering, continuing to surprise herself as to how her feeling for him remained unabated. She watched him for a while, wondering if her focus would jolt him from his reverie, and willing him to look up at her. But when it was clear that he was beyond her psychic grasp, she reached out and, touching his hairy wrist, reclaimed him. “
Aiy,
where are you?”

He looked up as if he had been pulled out from slumber, shrugged, like it wasn’t important. Ajay, making an exception in his diet, was already procuring another mountainous helping from the buffet table. “I don’t think they’ll be offering any more buffets after this one’s done,” Rahul said, throwing a look at Ajay. “Owner starts sweating every time Ajay gets up for more food.” She laughed delightedly.

Even though the air-conditioner could be heard toiling over the din of families gathered for brunch at the Little India eatery, and the windows were laminated with reflectors to keep the light out, the room felt hot and soporific. Nobody except for Rahul seemed to mind. They were all busy polishing off plates of spicy foods, pausing only to shake a reprimanding finger at their unruly children, gulp down cooling
lassi
, dab at the beads of sweat with their already turmeric-soiled napkins, or to chime in on some
filmi
song also competing for attention over the bass-burdened stereo.

Pooja looked up at her son as he approached the table with his black eye and two full plates, her joy more than apparent to Rahul. She had everything she ever wanted right there. Rahul knew that he too should be content with this; that this is where he belonged, with his wife and son, but something within him mourned. He had spent an entire lifetime in the shellshock of his disasters only to be jolted awake by Atif. Excising him now was like returning to death.

* * *

They first made a stop at The Patio, a bustling martini bar in West Hollywood where Atif had been a regular and which he hadn’t been to in an eternity. Thanks to Nuru’s connections, they didn’t have to wait in the dauntingly long line of bristling queens lamenting on their cell phones, and practically waltzed past the startlingly handsome though superhumanly built straight bouncer. Nuru had depleted his supply of “party petrol” as he like to call his drugs, and was meeting his supplier, a closeted Italian guy whom he claimed to have serviced in the parking lot after paying him an extra fifty. “Oh, they are only being the straight until they meeting Nuru.”

Still in a daze, Atif had allowed Nuru to convince him into going out because he couldn’t bear the thought of being alone. After his talk with Rahul, he had found it impossible to stay in his apartment, every inch of it reminding him of some shared moment. It had taken him his whole life to learn how to be on his own and now suddenly he had been reduced to the worst kind of dependency, crawling for love.

They stood by one of the four crammed bars outside. As the music blared from the sound system and swarms of cocktail-armed men tirelessly squeezed their way through one another under the open sky, Atif found that the place hadn’t changed much since the last time he had come here, even though the venue itself had been renovated and expanded. He found it hard to believe that at some point he had been able to relate to these people, and more dishearteningly, that he was back again.

What the hell am I doing here? What was I thinking, coming back to all this?
He looked at Nuru, at all the others around him, either lost in their delusions or searching hungrily for fresh meat, and found it hard to imagine he could ever have felt a sense of belonging here. He beseeched God under his breath, craving Rahul; wondering what he must be doing, how it was possible for him to be doing anything at all when he, Atif, could barely breathe.

He could remember even further back, when The Patio had been a simple, unpretentious coffee bar, less than a tenth its present size and frequented mainly by students who sipped the coffee from fishbowl cups and laid out their homework instead of their phone numbers over the patio tables, before the oversized martini glasses and bleached smiles. Once the place had been remodeled, many of these underage students had found themselves on the other side of the velvet rope, their backpacks getting heavier, unable to enter with their junior IDs and encouraged to hit some other forgotten java haunt down the street.

There were some of the old faces—their worn expectations undisguised by Botox or base foundation—and newer ones that had just taken over from those that had given up or found reprieve in someone or somewhere else. The dance, however, remained the same. He didn’t miss it at all. The constant jostling for right of way, the balancing of cocktails in precarious oversized martini glasses freely spilling over one and all, the gossip, the lusting, the hook-ups and rejections.

One of the old timers, Upul, a very dark Sri Lankan man of about forty, approached them as they waited. A perpetual smile on his face with bright teeth in startling contrast to his complexion, Upul was known to persist in teaching patrons phrases of Sinhalese whether or not they were interested. “
Karunakara
means ‘please.’ Say it!
Karunakara
!” he would say. Or, “Did you know the word ‘rogue’ is actually a Sinhalese word? The English stole it from us! It means big, savage elephant that lives by itself. What do you think?” Most people wished he could have been trampled by one rather than listening to him.

Upul appeared to be wasted but was clutching a full glass of Long Island Iced Tea, spilling little bits of it as he sashayed his way over, already smiling as hard as he possibly could without tearing his face. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” His voice rang over the pandemonium. “It’s been forever!
Ayubowan
, my darlings!”

He bumped into a bystander, spilling more of the cocktail on the boy, and instead of apologizing, grew terribly agitated. “Why don’t you watch yourself? Why?” Upul demanded.

But before the boy had a chance to respond, Upul had taken off and with arms spread out, embraced Nuru. “Hey, Miss Nuru! How you doing, girl? Oh, look who we have here. I know this girl too! Where you been?”

Atif shrugged, smiled.

Upul threw a look back at the drenched boy who was now being patted dry by one of his friends. They were looking at him furiously. “Stupid queens! Don’t know how to hold their alcohol!” Upul grumbled. “So, what’s going on, girl?”

“Well,” began Nuru, posing like a mannequin at his favorite department store, shoulder pulled back, hairy chest jutting out, eyes drooping to condescending slits and mouth pursed. “Since last week, I’ve become a personal whore for Dolce & Gabbana,
m-kay?
” He spun around and then, stretching both arms out, clicked his fingers in self-validation.

Upul responded by cutting an arch in the air and clicked his fingers back approvingly.
“M-kay!”

Around his neck Nuru dangled a massive tusk pendent that gleamed against the matt of curly hair, and with which he liked to perform a curious clawing gesture. He did this now as Upul encouraged him, “Go, Nuru! Go, Nuru! Go, Nuru!”

Typical dance music blared from the speakers around them but louder still, in Atif’s mind, were the razor sharp riffs of Abida Parvin, other
ghazals,
the sound of the
sarod
in his head, and the honeyed voices of Diana Krall, Randy Crawford. Together they gathered force within him, their melodies alternating back and forth in an aching medley, until he thought he would lose consciousness.

“You! You! You! You are not smiling! You must smile. Come on, smile!” Upul said, pointing at Atif.

Nuru nudged Atif back into the present. “Smile!”

He obliged but although the corners of his mouth pulled upwards, his smile failed miserably. “Oh, now that’s not a real smile!” Upul said, handing his drink over to Nuru, who snuck a generous sip of it. He pulled up at the corners of his own mouth, a rabid dog exposing his fangs. “See? Now this, this is a smile!”

Normally indulging and tolerant, Atif grew irritated. “You’ve gone a little crazy, haven’t you?”