‘He’ll just get worked up over it. And there’s no knowing what he might do.’
I wasn’t sure myself why I didn’t want him to know. I think, bizarre as it might sound, that I had a superstitious fear of his dormant Brahmin’s powers.
And perhaps some of my nervousness was felt by Megha too, because when Aakash appeared, bare-chested on his balcony, having heard her voice but not what was actually said, she didn’t repeat herself.
‘Bas, nothing,’ she said, ‘we’re coming up.’ She gestured to me to follow her and marched up the stairs. At the first landing, in part perhaps from fatigue, she swung around and said, ‘And by the way, one other thing. My father, he doesn’t know that that brother of mine is a chakka.’ She used the Hindi word for hitting a six in cricket, which also meant eunuch, and flicked her wrist effeminately. ‘But he’s got a pretty good idea. If he finds out, he’ll not just cut him out of the will, he will also kill that half-starved gandu.’ With this, she swung back around and climbed the remaining steps.
In the now empty flat, Aakash walked around in his towel, his hair wet and messy. His nipples were small and high, and his body, expansive and well made. We followed him to the end of the flat, past cluttered sideboards where a telephone table, tooth mug and bedclothes were stacked close together. The kurta, a VIP kurta with a gold and white collar, lay on his bed. Aakash vanished, only to reappear a moment later in just a pajama, the drawstring hanging out.
‘Tie it, no?’ he said to Megha, seeming to enjoy the execution of this intimate gesture in my presence. Then he put on the kurta over the grey vest he always wore and experimented with hairstyles, messy, the eighties, which Megha vetoed instantly, settling in the end for something in between.
Megha looked adoringly at him and said, ‘Aakash, you’re looking very black today.’
Aakash looked hard at himself and replied, ‘Appu! Why do you say such things! It’s because I haven’t slept. You know, whenever my sleep is incomplete, I look blacker.’ Then scrutinizing his reflection, he added, ‘Actually, I’m not looking black. It’s your imagination. Sir, am I looking black?’
‘No,’ I replied.
Megha glowered at me, then smiled and produced some of the other things she had made for him from the green metal cupboard.
‘Pure linen,’ she said, showing me a short-sleeved shirt with many little pockets and straps, ‘and all for rupees five hundred. If you went to Giovanni, the same thing would be two thousand. No point spending too much on a kurta because he never wears it.’
‘I never wear it,’ Aakash confirmed, still fixing his hair and applying deodorant.
‘Then why to waste money?’ Megha said. ‘This way even if he wears it five times, it’s only rupees hundred each time.’
Downstairs, the tent was almost full. We made our way towards the stage, passing armies of children sitting cross-legged on the floor beside women in bright, hot synthetics. There was a smell of warmth in the tent, but it was not unpleasant. Aakash went to the front of the crowd and began ushering people backwards to make room. He was like a hero among the children, whom he would pick up and swing back, or run at, stamping his feet, causing them to shriek, laugh and retreat. The rest of his family sat solemnly on a white podium – Amit’s wife, the ‘sharp one’, had a pink mobile phone tucked between her legs – where a young boy had begun chanting in Sanskrit into a mike. He was identifying where the ceremony was being performed, beginning with Jambudvip, India, Isle of the Jambul tree, and zooming in on Bharatvarsh, Delhi, and finally, the little colony where we were.
‘What’s the name of this place?’ he asked, hardly taking a breath.
‘Chitrakut,’ the others answered in one voice.
‘Chitrakut,’ he repeated, working it into his incantations.
He was dark-skinned, with a pubescent moustache and pinkish lips. There was a confidence, bordering on a glint in the eye, about him. I thought it came from an awareness of his own fluency, the knowledge that, despite his youth, he uttered powerful things effortlessly, filling the people around him with admiration. As the prayers continued, the senior priest took over and his apprentice began going through the crowd, tying orange threads to our wrists.
At that moment, the master of ceremonies for the evening appeared. He was a great fat man in an off-white shirt with gold rings on his fingers and a gold medallion of Kali around his neck. His teeth were bright orange from eating pan, and like a cross between an Elvis impersonator and an evangelist, he reminded me of medieval friars in Europe, rotund and jovial, with a hint of corruption about him. As people stood close to the durbar, all holding their hands over the pyramid of lamps, a knotted red thread covered in butter and oil was set aflame. Ghee and fire dripped from it. And it was with this oily fire-dropping thread that the MC lit the central lamp. From its flame, men who had been crouched round the podium began lighting the other 107 lamps. Soon they were all flickering contentedly in the light breeze that came through the tent. The MC, who hadn’t said a word so far, now yelled into the mike, ‘Victory to the true durbar!’
‘Victory to the true durbar!’ the congregation yelled back.
The MC’s orange teeth gleamed and he began taking donations, speaking the donor’s name into the mike and blessing him in public.
Aakash and Megha were in line to receive the blessing. Directly behind them stood Amit and his ‘sharp’ wife. Everything was going smoothly until the MC leaned forward and seemed to ask Megha something. Megha took a moment to answer, but when she did, Amit’s wife, now sharper than ever, gasped aloud, ‘How can one lie in the presence of the goddess?’ Aakash’s face went pale even as Megha’s burned with anger. She swung around and there was a loud exchange between the two women, which spilled over into a fight between Aakash and Megha. Aakash seemed to be trying to cool the situation, but soon there was an opening in the crowd and Megha charged out, tears of rage streaming down her face. Aakash dived out behind her and the crowd closed again.
In the meantime, the MC, who had a powerful singing voice, launched into a devotional song, raising his hands over his head and clapping. The pyramid of lamps burned brightly behind him, the colourful mountains shone in the halogen light, and soon the tent-full of people were clapping along and joining him in the song, stopping only to say, ‘Victory to the true durbar.’ It was eleven thirty.
I always knew that I wouldn’t have lasted the night. Within an hour of the singing beginning, my bottom began to hurt and my feet fell asleep. I tried wiggling my toes, but it made no difference. The feeling would subside, only to return with greater force. My restlessness was heightened by Aakash, now with a red and gold Om scarf around his neck, coming in and out of the tent with an expression of deep worry darkening his face. So after another ten minutes of song and hand-raising, I slipped out into the cool night with its spokes of yellow street light. Uttam sat on a chair with his shirt open in the dark. I went up to him and said that we should leave. Aakash was standing near the tent. When I told him I was taking a break but would come back, he said, ‘You’re going now? Fine, go. Looks like everyone is letting me down tonight.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘What’s the point of telling you? You’re leaving, what help can you be to me?’
‘Where’s Megha?’
‘Does it look as though I know?’
He was like a man who had been struck at by his superior and was now striking down at the man below him. But I had been too low on this food chain for too long and I was beginning to tire of it. I had only myself to blame; I had allowed, I had welcomed my own diminishing. My belief that Aakash could rescue me from being an outsider in India had led me into a kind of self-effacement. The place had been so strong and yet out of reach that now that it felt nearer I wished it to wash over me, even as Aakash wished to define himself against it. But that night I felt my own particularity acutely, and tired of the crowds, and of Aakash’s antics, I questioned him no further. I promised to return, but he didn’t seem interested. It was from his father that I learned that I should return at three thirty a.m., when the story would begin. With this, I left.
21
When I returned at four a.m., Megha had returned too and the night was entering its second phase. Aakash still stood at the wings where part of the tent flapped open. The anger he had shown me earlier had gone and tiredness like that of a child, joined with some feeling of satisfaction, had taken its place. The red in his eyes brought out their
