The Way Things Were (48 page)

Their food arrived. Uma looked at the dishes being laid out in the hope that they might bring respite from this tirade. But Gayatri seemed only to be warming to her subject. She tore up a naan in her fingers, as if to occupy her hands. When the waiter was gone, she began again, ‘And you know what else? You know what Toby doesn’t see? This new order – this bania century that is upon us – they will use the things of Toby’s world – the epics, the poets, Manu, Ayodhya, whatever – and they will hollow them out of meaning. They will make slogans of them. That is what they want them for, as symbols of their rise, and nothing more. They don’t want an intellectual rebirth;
that
requires hard work and labour;
that
, if it is taken all the way, can be a frightening thing. It can force you to confront things about your past that are uncomfortable. No, no, no, Uma! This lot, much more than us, wants the full tacky blast of modernity: the malls, the cars, the fat children shovelling McDonald’s and KFC down their throats, the wives, dolled up like Christmas trees, in Armani, from head to toe. They don’t want a renaissance, Uma: they want the West, onto which they will graft the little symbols of their culture, so as to give themselves the illusion of not having lost it. Here a little Indraprastha luxury mall, there a Maharaja Mac, Ram and Laxman action figures made by Mattel. And they will say proudly to you, these new Indians’ – and, here, she gave a little nod of her head, and adopted an accent – ‘“Look, you see, even the mighty McDonald’s had to Indianize itself before coming here.” What they don’t know – of course! – is that McDonald’s, before it came to our beloved country, made a hundred such adjustments in a hundred such places: it was their express strategy to make these adjustments.’

‘But, Gayatri, what has all this to do with Toby?’

‘It has everything to do with Toby. Because when it happens our messiah-in-waiting will see that change has indeed come, but that he is no part of it. And there will be the extra pain for him of seeing the things he has treasured most in his life turn to dust before his eyes. There will be more Hinduism – oh, yes! – more temples, more jagrans; the air will be high with chauvinism. But Kalidasa will be just as forgotten as ever. No one will be any better able to decline Sanskrit nouns. And the study of Indian things will fall quietly – as so much else has – to the scholars in Europe and America. Toby’s renaissance, in short, Uma, will be a big fucking dud. A lemon, if ever there was one, with no intellectual component! And what’s more: when this lot gets rich: they’re not going to build institutes of classical studies, oh no! They’re going to pay for chairs in Oxford and Princeton, and send their children to those places. Who, when they return to India – with the veneer of Western education sticking thinly to them – will, if you swap America for England, be just like us, Uma. It’ll be us all over again, but on a bigger scale, and a hell of a lot more vulgar, I can tell you.’

Her eyes gleamed. She sat back and lit a cigarette. In the window, the clouds had lifted, and the sun shone brightly over the mountains covered in old waxy snow.

Leaning in, the smoke tumbling out of her mouth, Gayatri said, ‘You cannot manage the hopes and desires of people. You have to feel them as
they
feel them. And the trouble with dear Raja saab is that ideas move him much more than people. I met a man in London—’

‘Bas, you’ve eaten?’ Abdul Rahman Mir said, returning abruptly, and stared with dismay at the largely untouched food.

Uma smiled. ‘We’re watching our weight, Abdul.’

‘We’re old ladies now,’ Gayatri added.

‘Nonsense. You want old, he’s old.’ He gestured to a small man, with a pale pink turban and an ashen face, crouched over a bowl of custard. He didn’t look up; he just sat there, filing away bright yellow spoonfuls of the dessert between his bearded lips, stopping only to wipe them from time to time.

‘Tunnu,’ Gayatri whispered, smiling cruelly. Then looking at the waiter, she said, ‘Would you believe me, Abdul, if I told you that when I was a ten-year-old girl in Delhi he was not even born.’

‘Mashallah!’ the waiter said flirtatiously. A younger man had arrived at his side, and soon they were clearing away the lunch.

‘You must remind me to speak to him before I go,’ Uma said.

‘Why ever for?’

‘I want to invite him tonight. I hope you’re coming.’

‘Of course. The whole jing-bang lot of us. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. So, you’re having Kitty then?’ she asked, making it clear she knew of the tensions that had emerged between the two women.

‘May as well.’

‘Quite right.’

‘Is she talking very badly about me?’

‘No. But I think she’s trying to cause trouble. Putting in a little word here, a little word there. I think she’s succeeded in part with Chamunda, at least . . .’

‘Chamunda? How so?’

‘Oh, she seems to have told her that you disapprove of the way that brute Ismail treats her son. Which, of course, we all do. But she’s an insidious little thing, Kitty. She sets these things up to seem worse than they are . . .’

‘Well, I hope Chamunda is not taken in. I mean, like you said, I disapprove . . .’

‘I know! We all do. You know how these women are, Uma. It’s a vipers’ nest. In any case, it’s all rubbish. What was I saying before . . . ?’

‘You were saying you met someone in London . . .’

‘Ah, yes! With Pretty Priti, at that ridiculous party for her son. Talk about vulgar! Uffff, and that obese child of hers, trussed up in that costume, looking like – I don’t know! – a pig at a toga party. Toby – I know – was very upset with you for allowing Skanda to go . . .’

‘Well, he was going to be there anyway. For his father’s wedding. Why, did he say something?’

‘Only in passing.’

Because Gayatri was an intellectual and not a socialite, she had a habit of approaching gossip in oblique ways – and it was, in a sense, more disconcerting, because she would say unsettling things, while seeming all the time not to care. But now, even by her own standards, she stretched the limits of credulity.

‘Yes, so I was saying, I met this fellow in London. Businessman of some sort. One of Priti’s finds. She was flirting shamelessly with him all night. But that’s not the important part, not, at least, from a sociological point of view. The part that was interesting for me – and let me say, frankly, I loathed the man. He represented everything that is terrifying about this new axis between Temple and Corporation. Reminded me of just the kind of businessman, who, in the thirties in Berlin, might have thrown in his lot with Schiklgruber and the brown shirts. But what was interesting was that he, though he had none of Toby’s learning, say, definitely had essence. Not an ideas man, but big on people. And he adored India, Uma. Not as a concept either; not as something it might be; but just as it was. His hope for it, ugly as his politics were, was quite moving. Quite affecting, I must say. I had, of course, to set him right about a number of things.’

Uma, though privately amused by this charade, played along. ‘Such as?’

‘Oh, everything. One of those people who approaches history already knowing what he wants from it. You know what I mean? He doesn’t seem to want to understand the past as
a shaping force
on the present, but wishes rather to shape the past in the light of the present, and the future. I had to say to him, finally, you have it all wrong, Mr Maniraja . . .’

The name! It was said so quickly that Uma hardly had time to admit a thought into her head – a feeling into her heart – let alone respond. She had half-suspected what Gayatri was doing, but the actual mention of the name gave her an ache of remembrance, a chilling need for repossession.
That Gayatri had seen him, and she had not!
She felt Gayatri, even as her words continued unabated, scrutinize her face for signs of the instability she had sought to cause.

‘ . . . You’re coming at it the wrong way, Mr Maniraja,’ Gayatri said again, for extra measure. ‘The past is not something that can be made to say what you want it to say; you have to let it speak to you, as it will.’

‘And what did he say to that?’ Uma asked, trying through her impression of casual attentiveness to seem unaffected.

‘Oh, nothing. He was unacquainted with the art of conversation. His eyes flared up, went all white and goggly. And he accused me of the very same thing that I only – two seconds before – had accused him of. But that is immaterial. Indians, by and large, have no gift for conversation; their idea of listening is talking. They have absolutely no understanding of complexity. No shades of meaning: everything must be this or that. And this fellow – I don’t know! – he’d read practically nothing, save for Vijaipal, perhaps. That was about it. Kept banging on about invasion this, feeling of defeat that. Sense of loss. I said, “But all that was hundreds of years ago. Everywhere’s been invaded. Everywhere’s had loss and upheaval. What’s so special about you?”’

‘And what did he say to that?’ Uma said, clutching at the little phrase till she could recover her composure.

‘Something quite nice, actually: the only thing perhaps that slightly endeared me towards him: he said, “history does not go quiet till you confront it.” Toby, you see, would not have understood . . .’

‘Of course he would have, Gayatri,’ Uma said, with irritation. ‘The remark is virtually straight from his lips.’

‘Well, OK. Maybe he would have understood, but he would not have known what it felt like. The past, for him, was already quiet. That was why he could approach it so coolly.’

It was only once they had left the Highland Park that Uma realized she had forgotten to tell Tunnu about the party that night. It had begun to rain again. The looping road around the meadow was starting to run; the air was alive with the shrieking of tourists; horses, their thin bodies drenched, their quarters frothy, were being cantered hurriedly to shelter by their owners, who kicked them hard in their stomachs, with heels that were bare and cracked. Nosing their way through this scene of chaos was a line of cars. Their circuit of brake lights sent its ruby colour high into the misty air, so that it flushed the faces of low-lying fruit trees, many still in blossom.

The two ladies stood to the side of the collapsing road, their saris drenched and immobile, their hair clinging to their faces.

‘Screw Tunnu,’ Gayatri said, when Uma mentioned it, ‘we got to get out of here. We look like a bunch of freaks, standing here all dolled up in the rain.
Two Lunching Ladies
, par Edgar Degas!’

‘Should we go back inside?’

‘Maybe! I’d kill for a fag.’

‘But they won’t really be able to help organize a car or anything. And we’re already so wet.’

They were debating this matter when a car pulled up beside them. A window came down. A small bearded man, with a drawn and tired face, said with a smile, ‘Bombay ka fashion aur Gulmarg ka mausam.’

‘Tunnu! Thank God. How strange! We were just talking about you.’

‘Tunnu! A saviour . . . We’re having this thing tonight at the cottage, this little party for my birthday, and I want you and Kitty . . .’

In this way, the car halting along on that rain-drenched afternoon brought the two ladies to CM1, where fires were being lit, where men and boys had returned from Srinagar, and where preparations were underway for the party that night.

Kartik is back from his play date. Even before he enters the house – when he is still on the drive screaming at his mother to come and see something he wants to show her – he puts Skanda on edge. He is small and intense, with dark watchful eyes. His mother fears there is too much of his father in him. And it is easy to see why. He is a natural moralist. From the moment he sees Skanda, a grown man drinking a beer in his mother’s house, his limbs stiffen. Something cold and rigid enters his manner. Skanda senses from him the pure hatred of the possessor. He comes in like a cat, following Skanda with his large eyes, while gliding swiftly towards his mother. His awareness of his own size and strength is acute, and it informs the mixture of fascination and repulsion he feels for Skanda. He wants him instantly to witness his dominion over his mother. He has a book and a Frooti in his hands.

‘Who gave you that, baba?’ his mother asks, seemingly oblivious to the tension between the men. ‘Did aunty give you that?’

‘No,’ he says, and laughs.

‘Who gave it to you then? I hope you didn’t pick it up off the ground.’

He doesn’t reply, but starts squeezing out drops of the sticky yellow liquid on the parquet floor. This is all for Skanda’s benefit, Skanda knows.

‘Kartik, stop that. Who gave you this Frooti?’

He turns to his mother and screams in her face, ‘Aunty gave it to me.’ Then he won’t stop. ‘Aunty gave it to me, Aunty gave it to me. Aunty gave it to me.’ Again and again, while sprinkling drops of the yellow liquid on the floor.

‘Stop that.’ His mother says, and snatches the Frooti from him. He snatches it back, and the anger in him, for a moment, is direct, no longer disguised with laughter. He tears open the little box. Its silvery interior is crawling with black ants.

‘Kartik! That’s disgusting. Give that to me.’

Then he is laughing again. A crazed and grating laugh.

His father, when he was born, had told his mother, ‘I’ve given you a son, the greatest gift a man can give a woman, from now on we will be celibate.’ But celibacy interested him less – he was soon writing semi-pornographic poems to a colleague in the English department – than a systematic wish to shatter Gauri’s self-confidence. He was unspeakably cruel. They would be out walking in the early days of their marriage – Gauri would be talking about this and that – and he would suddenly stop her and say, ‘Can you tell me if I’m going to learn anything from what you’re about to say next? Because, if I’m not, I’d prefer we be quiet.’ If ever she went out, to a party, say, where there was drinking and smoking, she would return to find him meditating in the drawing room. ‘Go to your room,’ he would instruct her, ‘You have polluted the energy of this house. I must cleanse it now.’

When Skanda first heard these stories, he was amazed she had put up with as much as she had. A full eighteen months under these conditions. ‘Why?’ he had asked her, again and again. And she had no answer for him, save for, ‘I was thirty-nine. I got pregnant within weeks of meeting him. I was afraid I wouldn’t find anyone else.’