Three Bargains: A Novel (33 page)

Their courtship began with a series of long phone calls each evening after work. Soon, every Saturday he would turn up at her doorstep and they would go out for dinner or a movie or a drive around town, meeting up sometimes with people she knew. With Preeti, suddenly everything in the city that he had found mundane or ridiculous became alluring and fun. He discovered a city full of lively establishments where the revelry continued into the early hours of the morning. He and Preeti slurped bowls of hakka noodles, shared wood-fired pizzas and watched late-night shows. Where he was quiet, she was full of chatter. She possessed a certain type of equanimity that reminded him of a young Swati, before their father had destroyed her. But Preeti’s imperturbability came from a different source. Preeti had never hungered or truly despaired or felt any hurt beyond minor transgressions. Her largest fears were abstract and far removed.

“When my dog Candy died, it was the worst day of my life,” she said. “She was a dachshund mix, so cute, and I can’t think of getting another dog now. Did you have a pet?”

He thought about Prince, and how he had carried the squirming Pomeranian in his arms up and down the back streets of Gorapur, afraid all the while of getting a speck of dirt on his white fur, the dog’s continuous yapping giving him a blasting headache.

“No,” he said. “Never liked animals much.”

A month after submitting their registration forms, Madan and Preeti were married in court, as Madan wanted. When her parents wanted a religious ceremony as well, Madan refused. There would be no temples and pandits. Her parents were stricken at the thought of forgoing God’s blessing for the union, and Ketan-bhai tried to smooth things over, but it was Preeti who took Madan’s side. “I know it’s unusual,” she said to her parents. “But it’s like you both always say: we’re blessed enough already.” She was firm in her position, but gracious and respectful, bringing them around without rancor. If he had any doubts about her, or marriage or the step he was taking, they were gone in that instant.

After their wedding, Madan would rush home, paying no mind to Ketan-bhai’s teasing, knowing that when he entered he would be greeted not with silence, but with laughter, as Preeti’s friends were always dropping by, staying for dinner, playing silly pop songs, sharing opinions and raucous tales over bottles of gin and single-malt, and at night, with her next to him, her arm flung across his chest, with his every robust breath he could slowly, surely, feel himself getting stronger.

T
HE GATE SWUNG OPEN, AND THE DRIVER PULLED THE
black Mercedes into its usual spot by the steps leading up to the entrance of a stout, glass-faced building. Madan stepped out of the car, glancing up at the sign spread over the entrance,
MERIDIAN INDUSTRIES
. The guard jumped up and saluted before pulling open the heavy glass door, releasing a blast of air-conditioning. The tapping of heels on parquet floors accompanied the soft hum of conversation as managers and assistants made their way to their desks with cups of steaming tea or files and papers. They greeted Madan when he came in, nodding their heads and murmuring good morning as he strode past the leather sofas in the visitors’ lounge, and past the glass cases along the wall displaying a sampling of their wares—smooth and supple leather jackets, calfskin gloves, embossed belts, pebbled leather handbags, luggage and briefcases of every shape and size.

He took the stairs to the top floor, to his office: a functional, carpeted room with a long hand-hewn desk of dark walnut, a matching credenza, an oval conference table and art worth over a million rupees on the walls. He thought, always, of the other office he had known so well, Avtaar Singh’s room with its yellowing walls and sagging sofa, the scratched desk and the rickety metal filing cabinet. How well he remembered the mingled scents of incense, motor oil and Avtaar Singh’s cologne, the air outside heavy with sawdust and black smoke.

His past was still unknown to Ketan-bhai or Preeti. He told them enough to satisfy their initial curiosity. He had a family once, he said. “What happened?” Ketan-bhai prodded. “Where are they now?” Madan found he could not say. Anytime he tried to put the story together, to take Ketan-bhai in his confidence, he was filled with unease and a certain fear. He had taken succor from his memories. They were his, and he recoiled from sharing them, as if, once he did so, they would become diluted or unreal. Already, with time, everyone seemed to be getting more distant, as if they were part of a folktale he’d heard.

In the end, he had said to Ketan-bhai, “Sometimes a storm comes and knocks just one tree down, and sometimes the same storm lifts away your house and takes everything with it.” It was as close to the truth as he could get.

He had moved on. Any day now, Preeti was going to have a baby, a thought that filled him with as much anxiety as excitement. In Gorapur, they would have moved on too. There would have been changes. Avtaar Singh was still there, he was sure. Avtaar Singh’s soul was so entrenched in Gorapur that to separate one from the other would kill them both.

Meridian Industries, meanwhile, was growing from leather-goods manufacturing into a multifaceted organization with concerns in many sectors of industry, such as telecommunications and wind energy initiatives, and they had recently partnered with a luxury hotel group to open five resorts in India. When Sourav approached Madan with the idea of building a township, Madan had been as skeptical as Ketan-bhai still was today. It would be a massive project, bringing them great acclaim, yet Madan was hesitant to tie up their company’s time and resources. But Sourav had found a way to persuade him. When Madan entered his office, the two men were already there, Sourav speaking animatedly, making the same arguments that he had to Madan.

“This will not be the same old townships we’re seeing everywhere,” Sourav was saying. “It’ll be a world-class town, accessible to Delhi but far enough away from the crowded city. A lot of these international conglomerates are moving their back-office work from Gurgaon and Manesar. We will make it a green city, use technology in ways that will make everyone hold it up as an example. It will change the landscape wherever we decide to build it. Out with the old, in with the new. And, make no mistake, everyone will know your name because of it.”

Madan could envision it now, this new city drawn from scratch, built to specifications, built with intention instead of whim. Not like the metropolis of Delhi, where the old constantly battled with the new, and modern, cookie-cutter apartments worth crores of rupees were superseding crumbling colonial bungalows, and everywhere people squeezed in and fought for space, while the everyday conveniences of water and electricity and drainage struggled to keep up with their burgeoning demands. Nor would it be like Gorapur, which started as an afterthought, a place to store the refugees streaming in at the time of India’s partition, and then never growing, never flourishing beyond the control of men like Avtaar Singh.

No one appreciated a novel idea, a grand plan, a triumph of ambition more than Avtaar Singh. It would be exactly what Madan would give him. And the township would make way for his return to Gorapur, proud and unafraid.

“Your recent wedding has had a good effect on you,” Ketan-bhai said to Sourav now. “We don’t want anything to do with the old Sourav, you understand? No dirty business. Madan brought to my attention that with the current rate of attrition from rural to urban areas, India will need a slew of new cities to accommodate the migration. Our current cities won’t be able to handle the load for much longer. If we’re building planned, sustainable cities, then perhaps we’re doing the best we can in the situation.” He picked up Sourav’s proposal and shook it at him. “But, for what you suggest, we’re going to need land, and plenty of it.”

Land. Even a small patch could make you a king. Madan could see in his mind the land stretching so far and flat one could forget that beyond it there were the deepest, darkest oceans and mountains of unscalable height.

“Leave that to me,” Madan said.

They were wrapping up, discussing specifics when the call came, at last, from Preeti’s mother that Preeti had checked into the hospital. “No need to rush,” Ketan-bhai said. “These things take their own time.” So after he and Sourav left the room, Madan, telling them he wanted a moment alone, returned to work. He had promised to see to the land for the project. It felt important to him, all of a sudden, to begin the progress on the township before the birth of his child.

They could spend years buying small parcels from this person and that, but he had a quicker way in mind. Within the space of a phone call to their detective agency, his messenger was on the way with their retainer and starting expenses. With the two nuggets of information Madan had provided—jewelry shop in Mumbai—they shouldn’t find it hard to locate the man who, Madan hoped, had outlived the death sentence bestowed on him by Avtaar Singh nearly a quarter century ago. Having set this first surge in motion, he was ready to go and see Preeti.

Madan did not notice the entrance to the hospital, or the way to Preeti’s room when he got there. Preeti glowed through her exhaustion, and he sat with her before being relegated to pace in the waiting room, while Ketan-bhai and Dilip flipped lazily through magazines and talked into their cell phones. Every time the elevator doors swished open he snapped to attention, not knowing whether to be excited or terrified, swinging between relief and anxiety, until the doors revealed Sarla, walking toward them, beaming, her open arms enveloping them all. She said something to them but Madan could not comprehend a word.

Sarla took him to Preeti’s room, and when the nurse moved toward Madan, he planted his feet as if to block her in case she whisked away the bundle in her possession. She did not notice, placing the tightly wrapped bundle in his arms. “Congratulations, sir,” she said. “It’s a boy.”

He glanced down. This time he did not let go. This time, he held on.

“Looks like his father,” Ketan-bhai said, coming in behind them, but Madan barely heard him. He eased away the wrap, and the baby squirmed in protest. Madan tightened his grip. How could he have known that everything he had endured was to bring him to this moment? To this bundle in his arms?

A second chance yawned and raised his tiny fist in greeting.

M
ADAN TRIED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE DETECTIVE ON
the line but his baby son was playing in his bassinet, distracting him.

“I’m sorry,” Madan said. “Give me the particulars again. You said where in Mumbai?” He took down the details quickly so he could get off the phone. He pulled Arnav’s bassinet closer. “Look,” he said, after hanging up the phone, “Papa has to go to Mumbai. For a short time. For this,” Madan unrolled a swath of waxy, opaque paper. Arnav gurgled when he heard the rustling, and smacked his lips.

“This, my son, is Jeet Megacity,” Madan said, presenting the rendering of the township.

Preeti came in, the maid trailing behind her with Arnav’s bottles. “Time to eat,” she said.

“Feed him here,” Madan said.