Chamunda, aware of us watching her, shielded her eyes from the sun and looked up. For a moment she giggled with girlish embarrassment, then firmed up her voice and said, ‘Come on, boys. Come down for lunch.’
We followed an internal staircase, with old movie posters on the walls, and came out through a bright blue door into the courtyard. The sunlight went right through the pond’s green water, where orange fish flashed from time to time. The foliage round the pond was thick with palms and ferns. Behind the lunch table a tall forest-green bamboo fence protected the little courtyard from the view of those working in the house. Chamunda now sat at the table sipping a glass of pomegranate juice, a brood of pugs yapping at her feet.
‘Hi, baba,’ she said, with some distress in her voice, as I reached down to touch her feet. But with Aakash following my example, it melted quickly into embarrassed laughter, and, ‘Oh no, you don’t have to. It’s only because I’m like his aunt. I’ve known him since he was this high.’ Then, ‘May you have a long life, my son,’ she said at last, with resignation in her voice. But when he rose and she saw his face, seeing perhaps even more clearly than me the marks of his caste, I thought I saw a different light in her eyes. It was as if her various screens – of being chief minister, Sanyogita’s aunt, politician, older woman, princess – fell away and those vast eyes were now for a moment limpid. There was nothing innocent or unguarded about this gaze; if anything it was blacker despite its heat. And as quickly as it came it was gone.
A moment later, Sanyogita appeared from a corner of the house and we sat down to lunch. It was a grim meal during which everyone seemed to be negotiating their way out of some private mood. I had served myself meat curry and rice when I saw that Chamunda wasn’t eating.
‘You aren’t having anything?’
‘I’ve eaten, baba,’ she said. Then perhaps to deflect attention from herself, she added, ‘Here, have some wine,’ and filled both mine and Aakash’s glasses. Sanyogita looked sourly across at her. ‘Can I have some too, Chamunda massi?’
‘Tch! Yes, of course,’ Chamunda said, and passed the wine.
Silence fell over the table. Only Aakash, though still watchful, had a surprising calm about him. He ate and drank wholeheartedly, like a man celebrating a victory. He looked up occasionally at Chamunda with sidelong glances, seeming to finesse his study of her. At length we began talking about the case.
‘It’s a stain,’ Chamunda said bitterly. ‘It’ll blow over, I know, but it’s a stain and that bloody Shabby will do everything to draw attention to it in the run-up to the election.’
‘How can she not?’ Sanyogita said. ‘You’ve got the wrong…’
Her words were lost in her throat. Chamunda, though having gauged their meaning, made her repeat them. ‘What?’
‘Guy!’ Sanyogita said. ‘You have the wrong guy.’
Chamunda’s face darkened, but she didn’t say anything.
‘Isn’t there any way to save face?’ I asked.
‘No, not at this stage,’ Chamunda replied. ‘We’ve made one mistake already.’
Aakash looked up from his food and smiled, his lips glistening.
‘This other one’s more serious. It’s galvanized the whole city. Now if we come out and say, “It wasn’t him either, we just arrested him because my SSP got it into his head that the girl was of loose morals,” we’re going to look really bad. We need to keep the case going with this brother of hers as a valid suspect for at least some time. Till we can find an out.’
The remark seemed aimed at Aakash, but he said nothing.
‘Keep it going,’ Sanyogita said, ‘i.e. keep my friend in jail until then?’
‘You think I bloody want to?’ Chamunda exploded. ‘I have to!’
‘Why do you have to?’
‘Because your fat friend Shabby will crucify me if I don’t. This is politics, all right? It’s not fun, it’s not creative writing, but it has to be done.’
‘I don’t understand, if people like you don’t stand for justice and the rule of law, how is it -’
‘I can’t listen to this shit,’ Chamunda snapped. ‘I’m not Gandhi. I’m working with an imperfect system. Yes, I don’t want an innocent boy to go to jail, but I’m not losing my job over it.’
Sanyogita put a last mouthful of rice and lentils in her mouth, coldly moved the fork a little right of centre on her plate and rose. She looked at me, but I pretended not to notice. Then after kneeling down and stroking one of the pugs, she slipped away.
Chamunda had upset herself so much that she reached for a plate. She was about to serve herself some food when Aakash stopped her.
‘Ma’am, don’t. I have a solution. Everything will be fine.’
Chamunda looked stunned, perhaps both at what was said and the tone with which it was said. Recovering her poise, she asked, a smile playing on her comic-book lips, ‘Well, can I at least have some lunch?’
‘Better not, ma’am,’ Aakash replied quickly. ‘I was hoping to repay your hospitality by giving you a session after lunch.’
‘A gym session?’ Chamunda said with wonder, then looked at me as if I’d brought a lunatic into her house.
‘Yes, ma’am. I’m a professional person,’ Aakash said in English, and let out a short laugh.
Chamunda fell silent, her eyes wandered and for a moment it seemed as though she didn’t approve of this over-familiarity. Then looking up, she breathed, ‘Why not!’
Aakash laughed at the success of his overture and looked to me for approval.
Chamunda in the meantime had stood up. ‘All right, then,’ she said, as if convincing herself that she was truly about to work out in the middle of the afternoon on a day when her government was close to falling. ‘I’ll get dressed. Raunak Singh! Raunak Singh! Get my exercise things ready.’
‘Very good, ma’am,’ a voice returned from some hollow section of the house.
‘Aakash, in the gym in five minutes?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
With this, Chamunda gave me a little kiss on the head and disappeared behind one of the rust-painted courtyard’s many blue doors. I turned in amazement to Aakash, who at that moment had submerged his entire hand into a silver finger bowl.
‘What now?’
‘Nothing now. We’ll see.’
‘Well, what’s the solution?’
I thought he relished saying that he couldn’t tell me; that he wanted to but couldn’t; that his future was at stake.
Chamunda appeared a moment later in her exercise clothes. She wore denim shorts, exposing her brown, faintly dimpled legs, New Balance trainers and a T-shirt. It was a simple white T-shirt, with a cartoon image of a Hollywood blonde in grey sunglasses, the lenses each mapping perfectly on to Chamunda’s large breasts. Hanging from the cartoon blonde’s neck, and stretching over our chief minister’s soft, slightly protruding midriff, was a pair of binoculars. Giving me a little wave, she trotted up the couple of steps that led from the courtyard into the gym.
Aakash followed her a moment later, leaving me in the courtyard alone.
Oppressed by the solitude, I went upstairs to get a book. Sanyogita was checking her emails in an involved, distancing way. The house, which had been driven since the morning by a jolting, uneven energy, was at last quiet.
It would have been an hour, an hour and a half later, once the late-afternoon light had almost left the courtyard, that Chamunda emerged from the gym, sweating heavily, her long hair in a bun, visibly exhilarated.
‘He’s very good, your friend,’ she said, ‘much better than my fellow. I think I might get him to come and give me trainings. He had me do ten to fifteen minutes inclined walking, then very light weights and finished me off on floor exercises. My body is breaking.’ She rested a hand heavy with rings on my shoulder, and becoming quieter, said, ‘Baba, he’ll probably tell you what we spoke of. Please, not a word to Sanyogita. Not till tomorrow.’
At that moment a band of fairy lights coiled around one of the trees in the courtyard came on. They followed a cycle: one strip at a time, they worked their way up the trunk, then all the lights glowed at once and burst into
