just told the woman to make sure that the following day her husband’s funeral procession should pass by the temple before it went to the cremation grounds. Then he went back into the temple. The crowd was enraged, but they agreed to wait until the next day before acting.
‘The following day, as he had asked, the dead army officer’s funeral procession passed in front of the temple.’
‘Aakash, when did all of this happen?’
He looked blank, as if I had asked him a childish question. ‘Fifty to a hundred years, maybe two hundred,’ he replied, ‘maybe more.’
‘More? But he’s your great-grandfather, right? Your father’s grandfather? Were the British here?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Aakash said, ‘it was definitely the time of the British Raj. So anyway. When the procession comes by the temple, my great-grandfather appears outside, and addressing the corpse of the dead army officer, says, “Your death has disgraced your village and your community. And so I, as your priest, give you my remaining years. Rise now. I have renounced my life.” ’
The light in the flat had diminished. Aakash had smoked and drunk continuously. I stood up and turned on a few lamps. Aakash looked sombre, too moved by his own story to speak. I avoided his gaze, unsure of what to make of this afternoon visit. His conversation had included tales of forced blow jobs, social mobility and now magic. And though he himself had a hazy idea of time, his family’s history in roughly three generations mapped perfectly on to the country’s transitions: from its old religious life and priesthood, to socialism and his father’s work as an auditor, to now and Aakash.
He lay back on the sofa, still in his grey vest, his wide arms sprawling behind him.
‘Did he come back to life?’ I said in the lamp-lit softness of the room.
‘That evening!’ Aakash replied. ‘That evening he rose as if from a deep sleep, and when the people went to the temple, they found that my great-grandfather was gone.’
I wanted to ask any number of questions that would expose the story as untrue, but before I could he abruptly said, ‘You know I’m telling you all this for a reason?’
‘What reason?’
‘I want you to come somewhere with me. My family go every year to the village where all this happened. We take food and offerings. People come from all over. I want you to come with us.’
‘Why me?’ I asked.
Aakash smiled, and draining his glass, said, ‘Because I think it’ll be good for you.’
And those words felt like reason enough. Aakash had broken into my afternoon with a gesture of friendship, made possible by its spontaneity; and from its success seemed to come this second invitation, now given rather than taken. Like the first, it was an acknowledgement of the mutual appeal our lives held for each other. But because it was instinctive, and inarticulate, and because behind that appeal I sensed some vague contest for power, it had to be taken for now – like certain childhood friendships – on trust.
I accepted his invitation and he gave me a date a few weeks later on which to be ready. Then looking round for his T-shirt, he rose to leave.
He had put his arms in as far as the sleeves when he stopped. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s been so peaceful here this afternoon. I really needed it.’
When he had gone, I felt that he had come with one intention and realized another. I went home smelling of beer and cigarettes. And that night, on Sanyogita’s garden terrace, I noticed that the potted frangipani had died.
7
When I came back to Jorbagh, Sanyogita was in the drawing room. She wore her faded T-shirt and tattered tracksuit bottoms. Her legs were up on the sofa and the room was filled with pools of lamplight. They reached to the far corners of the high ceilings and emphasized the evening darkness. Sanyogita’s small, squat toes gnawed the edge of the sofa. She had her computer in her lap and was tapping away thoughtfully.
‘Baby!’ she said when I came in. She observed me carefully and seemed to sense something strange in my manner, smelt something perhaps, but said nothing directly. ‘Where have you been? I must have tried you half a dozen times.’
‘I’m sorry, I ran into my grandmother. I must have left the phone upstairs. What are you doing?’
‘Oh, nothing.’ She smiled. ‘
‘That’s great. Do you want to have a bath?’
‘Yes! It’s just what they need,’ she said, wiggling her toes.
‘They?’
‘Baby, them!’ She gestured to her toes; they wiggled happily.
We had an ongoing joke where we ascribed human characteristics to her toes.
‘Oh, them!’
‘Yes, they would hate to be left out!’ They fanned from side to side as if they were about to get up and follow me into the bathroom.
‘OK, but come quickly.’
‘Baby, don’t make it too hot.’
I walked towards Sanyogita’s room, past my study with its red carpet and the garden terrace with its dahlias. There was no moon and the night filled the little terrace. I was about to enter Sanyogita’s room when, from the light of a naked bulb, I made out the shape of a potted frangipani. From where I stood, its leaves seemed to droop and its trunk and branches had an unhealthy, pulpy texture. I pushed open the door to the terrace to take a better look.
Even before my eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness I could see that the tree was dead. Its trunk and branches had begun to soften and their ends were shrivelled. The large broad leaves hung on like the open eyes of a corpse. We hadn’t planted the garden ourselves; we had inherited it. And the death of the slim-limbed frangipani only weeks before it was meant to flower gave me a terrible intimation of the whole garden dying on our watch.
In the time between leaving the terrace and opening the bath taps, I came to blame Sanyogita for the tree’s death. It was not because she was in charge of the garden – I was – but because I had noticed and I knew she never would have. I worked myself into thinking that her not noticing was an aspect of a deeper complacency: how almost two years after finishing college she had no more idea of what she wanted to do than when she graduated; how she preferred cities like London and New York, with their cinemas, restaurants and Sunday papers, to all that India had to offer; how she was always late for everything; and how she now sat in her drawing room, wasting her time doing someone else’s work.
I got into the bath, full of irrational rage. I knew that Sanyogita, in her mulish way, would carry on doing her work till the bath went cold. But I didn’t want to call her because I enjoyed letting my anger grow. The water was hot and burned my skin. I sat there until it became tepid and seemed to cling to me. I felt a sick excitement when Sanyogita came in at last. I said nothing about the bath’s temperature. I just lay there looking up at the saucer- shaped ceiling light.
When Sanyogita took off her clothes, I watched her. I saw her pale skin, her big bones, the caterpillar scar that ran across her hip from the skiing accident and her low-slung breasts. She saw me looking at them and became shy about the way her nipples had expanded. She dipped her hand into the bath so that she could harden them. It was then that her frank smile turned to confusion. Why was I lying in a bath that had gone cold? She could see that all wasn’t well with me, but she was happy to get in the bath anyway, happy just to add some hot water and bear it for my sake, happy just to be in the bath with me. But as soon as she put one foot in and then the other, letting her large, smooth body sink into the few feet of soapy water, I got out of the bath and left the room without a word.
I saw her face as I left the bathroom, the smile, the confusion and at last the hurt.
When Sanyogita came out of the bathroom a few moments later, she was crying. She always cried silently, but
