The Two Krishnas (37 page)

Even God cannot change the past.

Agathon (447-401 B.C.)

THE VEDIC ASTROLOGER looked unusually concerned.

He squirmed, grimaced and punctuated all to himself as he sat, cross-legged on the ornate, plush sofa of the Kapoor household that Sunday, even as the cool breeze bounded off the mangrove-bordered Tudor Creek and wafted through the open doors of the exquisite bungalow on Rassini Road. With bits of fritters trapped in his robust moustache, he stared raptly with spectacled eyes at the colorful diagrams that the self-amused Ravi Kapoor thought resembled a Carrom board and into which his regal wife, Suchitra, devoted to the cosmic science, put all her faith.

This age-old science introduced by holy men and blessed by the Almighty, Suchitra reminded her husband constantly, was what had ensured their family’s prosperity for generations in Kenya. They had consulted it for life-partner matching for the marriages of their daughter Kiran and son Rahul, as well as their own marriage way back when. That nobody, including the famous astrologer, had foreseen their present financial turmoil was never brought up, Suchitra avoiding any taint to his reputation and Ravi wracked with too much guilt.

In the sunken living room that afternoon, extravagantly decorated with artifacts both Indian and African, sat the agitated Rajanbhai in his signature cream Kwanda suit, Ravi Kapoor with his constant companion—a heavy crystal glass of scotch on boulders of ice—Suchitra dressed impeccably in a red floral sari and the large tika on her forehead, and George Matiba, a highly educated Kikuyu native who had gone to primary school with Ravi Kapoor and now helped manage the Kapoors’ Coastal Commercial College on Salim Road in Mombasa.

In the 80’s, this was still quite unusual. Asians, as they had conveniently been dubbed after the independence of India and Pakistan, did not mingle this intimately or freely with Africans and invite them over for tea. But to Ravi Kapoor, George Matiba was more like a cousin than Mwangi, their live-in Kikuyu servant. George had grown so familiar with the Kapoors that he called Suchitra “bhabhi” and she did her best to respond with as much cordiality as a respectable Asian woman could demonstrate to a guest in her house, even if he was an African.

That afternoon, when Ravi had shown up at home with George in tow, expecting a homemade meal after beers and billiards at the Mombasa Sports Club, Suchitra had chafed at his forgetfulness. But first, like a good Indian host, she welcomed George into their home and instructed Mwangi to bring him a pilsner glass of Tusker. Then she goosed her husband into their bedroom where she slapped her own head disdainfully and said, “
Hai Ram!
What is wrong with you? What is
he
doing here today? You know Rajanbhai is coming. Even the children, I made sure they were out.”

“
O-pho,
Suchitra! There are no secrets with George.
Bwana,
he’s like family.”

“Family? He’s African, Ravi, not Indian. Just as we are Indian, not African! When will you get that through your
khopri?
To them Africa is for Africans. That’s all they know,
bas!
You are the only one, trying to be United Nations to everyone!”

While her husband lived in a make-believe utopian world, Suchitra felt that she had a better grasp on reality. True, Africans could see that Asians tended to live separately, shop separately, and almost never married outside of their own groups—all things that reinforced their racism—but what they didn’t see was that the Asians themselves were hardly homogenous. They were steeped in identities of caste, religion, and language, which regulated relationships within their own community as well, so race, no matter where they settled, would always restrict relations outside of their race.

Now Suchitra, trying to appear unruffled over an African’s presence at this most private and sacred of times, replenished Rajanbhai’s teacup a third time while he pondered the movement and positioning of the stars. Rajanbhai had been summoned by her because of the financial slump that Ravi’s gambling had landed them in. Unable to repay any debts, they were now considering the sale of the college which, they exaggerated, had been erected almost as far back as when the first Kapoors had set foot on Kenyan soil.

Suchitra’s only consolation was that they had already married off both their children with great pomp and pageantry. Their daughter Kiran had been wed to Prashant Jhaveri, the only son of a wealthy jeweler family. And only three months ago, their older son, Rahul, had been married to Kiran’s best friend, the respected daughter of a retired schoolteacher, Pooja Patel.

“So, Rajanbhai?” Ravi asked impertinently. “Tell us, tell us,
na,
are the planets dancing in our favor or should we make the music a little bit louder?”

Suchitra glared at her husband. Such disrespect and even that in front of an outsider! “But why are you dancing on his head? Let him concentrate,
na? Mauf karna,
Rajanbhai.”

Ravi cleared his throat as George raised a brow at Suchitra’s totalitarianism and suppressed a chuckle.

“
Koi baat nahin.
No problem, no problem, there’s no problem, Suchitraben,” said the astrologer, now assuming his meditative composure. “I am ready now—” but then he looked at George, who was seated on the left, and then to Suchitra.

“Oh. It’s okay, Rajanbhai, really.
Yeh hamare ghar ka hai,”
Suchitra said, giving him a pleasant smile and then repeating in English for her guest’s benefit. “George is family. Please, please, feel free.”

Rajanbhai hesitated some, thrust into an unconscionable position by the strange intimacies of the Kapoors. His face looked as if he had detected a strange, unpleasant odor. Then he shook his head, coming to some kind of inner compromise and began, “Relief will come, all debts will be gone,
achha,
everything gone. No, see, there is something else which is troubling,” he said, scratching one of his sideburns and kicking up a light dust of dandruff. He stared at his empty plate beseechingly but everybody was so engrossed in his predictions that no one noticed. Then Suchitra caught it and called out to Mwangi urgently.

Within a minute, Mwangi scrambled into the living room in khaki shorts and a dull white shirt. He carried a plate heaped with freshly fried fritters and placed it reverently in front of the now-palpably excited astrologer. Some of the oil from an errant
bhajia
dripped onto the wooden table, setting Suchitra off.

“Aieee! Wewe na fanya nini? Panguza hapo haraka!
What are you doing? Wipe this at once!” Suchitra screeched, a little too late to remember that George, a fellow-Kikuyu, was also seated right there. There was a moment of discomfort, and only the fan whirring above them and the trilling of birds was heard. But then George reached out for a
bhajia
(much to the dismay of Rajanbhai) and diffused the situation.

Once Mwangi had mopped up the table with the rag he constantly carried over his shoulder and disappeared into the kitchen, everyone went back to the sun and the moon and the stars.

“Rajanbhai?” Suchitra urged him on. “Go on,
na?”

“Yes, yes,” he said, energized by replenished savories glistening in oil. He then adopted a frown for his elaboration. “You see, when Mars, Saturn, Dragon Head and Sun—all are hard planets—when they are not in their proper positions, then there is trouble also. I see an end to your financial worries but we should all be worried. There will be events that will affect people, people in high positions, politicians, whole country,
Suchitraben.”

“
Arre,
but we will get the money,
na?
The sale will go through?” Ravi inquired.

“Yes, yes, Ravibhai. Debts will be gone,
chokas!
Debts will be gone.”

Here George tentatively stepped in, mildly concerned. “These planets, the bad position they are in, can you tell me what exactly is going to happen and when?”

Rajanbhai looked up at him, indignant. But then, diverting his gaze to Suchitra as if she had posed the question, he said, “Terrible, terrible things can happen but I can’t say exactly what. I am not God. That only Ishwar knows! The period from now until August 23
^rd
, this is the most critical. Can you not wait a little, Ravibhai?”

Ravi hmphed, slapped his thighs. “Wait? You think opportunities are lined up at the door? We have a buyer and we must act now before he changes his mind.”

But the astrologer shook his head, his reservations unshakable.

“Can we do anything, Rajanbhai? Must be something,
na?”
she asked.

“Well, Suchitra
ben
,” he said, stuffing his mouth with another fritter, fingers glossy with grease. “Of course, you know I can do special meditation for you. And some
yantras,
now those can always help,” he said, referring to special talismans.

Suchitra focused intensely on Rajanbhai. “Yes, yes, anything, Rajanbhai, anything that you can do!” she implored. Then she looked at Ravi sternly and jerked her head, instructing him to dole out some of the rapidly dwindling cash, while Mwangi was summoned from the kitchen yet one more time to replenish one thing or another.

* * *

Unlike his wife, it was not easy for Ravi Kapoor to accept his position as the perpetual weed in the soil of Kenya even though he had been born there like his father. As a child, he had been propped onto the lap of his frail grandfather and heard firsthand the heroic stories of how the Asians had come to Kenya, how they had helped build the country with their own sweat and blood.

He remembered as if it was only yesterday how emotional his grandfather got whenever describing the beguiling invitation that had made him seek his fortune in a strange, distant new land. “Always I will remember when I saw that poster from the British,” Rajat Kapoor said with that characteristic affirmative roll of the head from side to side. “Beautiful arched gates opening to a land so beautiful and vast,
wah!
Come, build the Uganda Railway! ‘The Gateway to British East Africa.’ I had just lost my employment at Mr. Chandra’s pharmacy. So, I took, you know, my permit, three hundred rupees, which by the way my father loaned me, and then I came to Kenya.”

In the three-tiered hierarchy prescribed by the British colonials in Kenya, industrious Indians like the Kapoors had been brought from as far away as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madras as indentured servants to build the British East Africa Railway in the late 1800’s. Rumor had it that the names of Indian workers, Ravi’s grandfather included, could still be found etched in Hindi script on the rails they helped lay down, at a time during which one Indian was killed every four miles by the infamous man-eating lions of Tsavo as the mechanical snake made its way from Mombasa to Kampala.

In time, they had gone on to become shop owners, hoteliers, commercial farmers and export merchants; some moved to the capital city of Nairobi, and the Asians slowly rose to the middle rung. Many of them had been young, poor laborers from middle castes, or peasants released from land debts in their agrarian villages, and they already had the experience of building railways back in India. Although beneath the white settlers who, through fraudulent freehold sales with native Kikuyus grabbed the fertile “White Highlands,” Indians remained nevertheless above the embittered Africans, who now felt trodden upon by two races, each a few shades lighter.

Ravi could not deny that they all lived in a segregated society. He resented that generations had come and gone and yet the Indians were always seen as the
“wahindis,”
brown-skinned settlers who had prospered and overstayed their welcome. But unlike his wife, he also accepted that this racism was reinforced by the Asians and he did everything in his power to bring equality to his relationships with his fellow Kenyans.

Whenever someone like George Matiba brought up this observation over ice-cold Tuskers, Ravi would explain with some annoyance, “We Indians are no less exclusionary than all of you! How are we any different than all the other ethnic elites that have lived in Kenya? Why are you not looking at the Kalenjin of President Moi? The Kikuyu of Jomo Kenyatta?” he asked, referring to the two presidents’ tribes dueling for political dominance in a one-party state. “Plus, where would Kenya’s independence be without the Asians?”

Although over time Indians simply came to be seen as the exploiters of Kenya, Ravi felt it was important to remind Kenyans that by 1914, the East African Indians, inspired by the anti-colonial resistance in India, had already formed the East African Indian Congress. They had not only demanded equal rights and compensation for Indians’ service in World War I, but also defended African interests before Africans won direct representation. His father had been one of those men. “So bloody hell, why should we feel like second class citizens? I am Kenyan first, Indian second.”

To which George, shaking his head and laughing, said, “Yes, be that as it may,
bwana,
you still keep yourselves apart from us. Do you want us in your homes? Your temples? Not unless we work there!”

“You know, George, us Kenyan Asians, we are just like those German Jews. We have a complex, rich culture. No matter where we go, we have to keep India alive in us. Without it, of what use can we be to ourselves or the country we adopt? But because we have been unable to depend on those British bastards or this government for protection, we had no choice but to become self-reliant. Built our own organizations. Organizations, mind you, which your people have come to use and depend on also. But forget about all that. Look at you and me. We are the new Kenya, no? There is India within us, but I am still, first and foremost, a proud Kenyan,
bwana!
This,” he said, pointing emphatically at the ground, “this is my home. I was born here. We have been here for generations.”