When we reached the eighth floor, Aakash slipped his arm around the man’s wiry frame, and whispering purposefully, took him into the gloom at one end of the corridor. They were still talking when the front door nearest to me swung open. A woman in a pale green kaftan stood behind a black metal gate. She was a warm brown colour, with straight waxy hair and slightly jowly cheeks; her smooth hairless skin and raised eyes made me think she was north-eastern or Nepalese. The outline of her large, full body was visible through the fine cotton she was wearing. She clutched the gate with one hand and under the white tips of her French manicure she had tiger-print nails.
She smiled broadly at me and laughed girlishly when she saw Aakash.
‘Suitors, Begum saab!’ the thin man sneered before vanishing down the stairs.
She snapped abuse at him. When it was returned with a wayward cackle, lost in the darkness, she looked back at us and was gracious once again.
The gate opened and we entered a clean brightly lit flat with tiled floors. The begum shut and bolted an iron front door behind us. Apart from the main lock, there were some five or six other locks crudely welded on. A tile of Ganesh near the door read: ‘May he bless every corner of this house.’
An Alsatian with cataract-clouded eyes bounded up to greet us.
‘Stop it, stop it, Zabar,’ the begum said, pushing aside the dog’s snout and showing us into a drawing room, which contained a glass dining table, white leather chairs and sofas under plastic covers. A partially drunk bottle of Diet Coke and a glass-cleaning spray, half-full of blue liquid, stood on the dining table.
Within moments of our sitting down, the begum had rushed off into the kitchen and reappeared with glasses, ice and a bottle of Seagram’s Indian whisky. Aakash looked at me and winked as she poured the whisky. The begum spoke rapidly, complaining about security, then about how Aakash never came to see her any more.
‘At one point,’ she said, looking over her shoulder at me, ‘it was all, “Begum this”, “Begum that” – “Begum, my friends will protect you”, “Begum, can I give you a lift somewhere on my bike?” but now, since he’s on his way to bigger things, since -’
‘Ah, ah, ah,’ Aakash said firmly.
The begum shut up, then a moment later looked mournfully back at me and said, ‘Begum’s been forgotten.’
When she brought us our whiskies Aakash took his, and quoting an Urdu poet, said, ‘An age has passed, and your memory has not come to me, but that I have forgotten you – it is not that way either.’
The begum melted. ‘Oh-ho-ho,’ she said. ‘Quoting back to me the couplets I taught you? How easily they come off your tongue.’
Aakash laughed and grabbed her through her cotton kaftan as she gave me my whisky, nearly causing her to fall over on to the sofa.
She moaned and recovered herself.
We drank two or three more whiskies. The begum spoke continuously. She made light flirtatious conversation; she complained about what a burden the Alsatian had become – ‘A blind guard dog! That’s all the begum’s left with’; she lashed out at women more debased than herself but protected by the false sanctities of marriage; she complimented Aakash on his physique; she said her son, who was ‘a carbon copy’ of Aakash, was working as a chowkidar in some rich industrialist’s house, couldn’t Aakash help him get a job in fitness? This request caused friction between them. Aakash cautioned her with a cold stare and her tune changed. She became maternal even as she trailed her tiger nail down his cheek: ‘How good and strong my little boy has grown up to be. I still remember when he was sixteen and -’
‘Begum.’
‘OK, OK, I won’t say.’
Aakash affected a macho silence, the whisky and the begum’s chatter seeming to relax him. But for the pinstripe ‘pardy’ shirt, he was like a man who’d just come home from a hard day at the office. To see him twice in the same day, and in such different ways, a hero among the people he grew up with, made me feel again the power of his position. His versatility was like a confirmation of how authentic and robust his world was. His Delhi was a city of temples and gyms, of rich and poor people, of Bentleys and bicycles, of government flats and mansions, of hookers and heiresses, and he asserted his nativity by moving freely between its varied lives. He made it seem like no less his right than taking one of the new green buses, riding the metro, seeing the sound and light show at the Red Fort or renting a pedal boat at India Gate and floating over the reflections of dark trees and pale sky in its sandstone water tanks.
He seemed to read my admiration, and perhaps helped by the whisky to see himself as I saw him, as many men to many people, here rubbing a baby’s face against his to comfort it, there performing the ancient rites of his caste, he suddenly made a grab for the begum’s breasts through her pale green kaftan, his mud-coloured eyes fixed on me. The begum wriggled joyfully, shrugging off her maternal instincts and becoming what she was. She had been sitting in his lap, but now she rose slightly and pushed her thighs and rear towards him. Her jowly face moved closer to mine while Aakash pulled hard at her breasts. She was inches from me, wiggling and gyrating, making a drama of her arousal. Aakash’s eyes followed mine, his arched lips taut with amusement. My first reaction was anger, feeling this could only be some kind of sexual intimidation. But when he squeezed the begum’s fat thighs and slapped her bottom, causing her to fall forward, her tiger nails clawing my thigh, a smile must have crept into my face. Aakash laughed loudly at seeing it. The begum tried looking behind her to see what was so funny, but Aakash turned her face back towards me, and taking her left hand from my thigh, pressed it into my crotch. It had no effect; I shrank with embarrassment.
Then Aakash lifted up the begum’s kaftan and began to roll it back. He did it with mock assiduity, just as when he had prepared the towel as a neck rest during the squats. It formed a neat band just over her hips. I could see the outline of her exposed thighs and bottom. Aakash, making a face like a laboratory assistant or vet, raised two fingers in the air. When he was sure I had seen the gesture, he inserted them into her with the ease of a man sawing off a piece of wood. The begum groaned.
‘Not here, not here. Come on, to the bedroom.’
Aakash pushed her head down roughly. The Alsatian, who had been watching everything with its cataract-filled eyes, saw this action and jumped up, at once barking and wagging his tail. Aakash looked at the dog, then at me, and feigning confusion, offered the begum’s exposed bottom to the dog with a sweep of his arm.
The begum saw and her face filled with anger. She lurched up, pushing out Aakash’s fingers in the process and slapped her palm against his chest. Aakash nearly fell back.
‘Motherfucker. Bastard. Wretch. Limp dick.’
Aakash folded his hands and begged forgiveness. The begum stormed round the room, sipping her whisky, staring at blank spaces, swinging round to glare at us. The back of her kaftan fell down and hung like a pleated blind. We sat unmoving next to each other on the sofa.
‘Begum, please, forget it now, no? It was just a joke.’
‘Just a joke? You dare humiliate me in front of your rich friends! Me? Who has known you since you were sixteen. I know everything about you. I could destroy you with a click of my fingers.’
Her tiger nails snapped in the air.
Her anger didn’t seem real, but whatever threat she tormented him with had its effect. Aakash, prone to theatrical anger himself, looked around him for his phone and his bike keys, and rose to leave. He gestured to me to get up, and without looking at the begum, made for the door. The begum became hysterical. She clutched Aakash’s arm, which he pulled away. She shook and pulled at her hair. She grabbed Zabar, the Alsatian, and dragged him along until she was at our feet, weeping, imploring Aakash not to go, holding up the dog’s face, with its moonstone eyes, to hers.
I don’t think I believed her exaggerated show of female emotions; I just didn’t feel like leaving. I liked the flat’s anonymity, the whiskies coming easily; I liked seeing Aakash play the role of the Sectorpur boy who’d grown up and gone away. I was also curious about what the begum had said about destroying Aakash with a click of her fingers. Destroy what? How? And for all these reasons, I tapped Aakash on the arm and said, ‘Let’s stay.’
He scanned my face, seemed quickly to make a decision, then turning to the begum, said, ‘Ey, ey, listen, Begum. My friend here wants to stay. So out of respect to him we’re going to stay. But you try anything crooked again…’
The begum sprang to her feet, kicking aside the dog. It was as if we were arriving for the first time. She straightened her hair as she slipped past us to pour two more whiskies.
