‘Yes,’ I replied, though I wasn’t really a smoker, ‘but outside.’
We smoked a Win cigarette on Sanyogita’s front balcony. There, overlooking the single mango tree, he brought up money.
‘I can’t accept less than five thousand,’ he said, taking back the blue and white packet.
‘A month?’
‘Yes.’
My face became hot with shame, but I said nothing. Neither his sores nor his haggard face could have expressed his poverty more extremely. He wanted five thousand rupees for two to three hours, five days a week. I didn’t know how to say I wanted to give him more. I didn’t want to upset his calculations.
Then there was a soundless disturbance in the air and a splatter. I turned to Zafar and saw that a moist indigo wound had appeared on his safari suit. I followed its dripping to the floor. A red rubber hoop lay among the drops. Zafar’s face screwed up like a child’s about to cry.
A white sedan with tinted windows drove by, leaving behind a trail of hiphop.
‘Holi,’ he spat, and dropped his cigarette into the colour. It fizzled and ran blue.
‘A water balloon. Oh, God, I’m so sorry.’
‘Why are you sorry?’
‘I don’t know, for bringing you out here.’
Just then the front door rattled and Sanyogita came in. She had been Holi shopping. The wooden ends of steel water guns stuck out from the bags she carried. I tried to signal to her to put them down. Zafar saw and looked irritated. I think he felt I was portraying him as a Holi curmudgeon.
‘By all means play,’ he said, ignoring me and addressing Sanyogita, ‘I’ve played too. But these balloons are not nice. Spoiling people’s work clothes when they’re not prepared. Zafar Moradabadi.’
Sanyogita smiled, suppressing greater amusement. She held out her hand. He seemed unsure what to do with it. He dropped his head in greeting. Then he said he would call me after all the madness was over. It was Holi that weekend.
‘Baby’s found a creature!’ Sanyogita said after he had left. ‘He seems so sweet.’ She made her eyes big and sorrowful and scrunched up her mouth in imitation. ‘How old do you think he is?’
‘He said he was born in ’51.’
‘But he’s young, then!’
‘That’s what I said, that he was nearly a decade younger than our parents. But he said life had made him old.’
‘Oh, you must keep him. Where will we put him?’
‘Sanyogita, he has his own house. He’s only coming for a few hours in the afternoon.’
‘But it’ll be so nice to have him here, in the evenings, when all the other creepy-crawlies come out.’
I suddenly felt very sad, thinking of him going home: the ‘conveyance’ he mentioned, an auto-rickshaw; through the smoke and roar of Connaught Place; past naked bulbs and into the evening congestion of the old city; his safari suit stained blue; his wife and her acknowledgement under dim fluctuating light that it couldn’t be saved.
Sanyogita thought I’d taken her joke amiss. She pulled me towards her.
‘Come here, baby. I’m only joking. I think he’s the sweetest man I ever saw.’
5
Before the metro claimed her house, my aunt had a Holi party every year. The house was in the centre of Delhi with a large lawn and the party was famous. Hundreds of people came. And armies of children, of which I had been one, attacked them at the door, shooting jets of blue and pink paint on to their white clothes. They shrieked, shielding cold glasses of beer and Bloody Mary. Their starched muslin clothes caved in and clung to their bodies; paunches and lace bras appeared through the cloth. Then grown-ups who had already been coloured came with handfuls of green, yellow and pink powder. They smeared the faces of the newcomers, who put up token resistance but knew that there was no isolation greater than being left uncoloured. By noon the colours began to coalesce into a single rust red. As the sun climbed higher, the festival became more adult. Clay cups of bhang and small portions of food in leaf plates went through the crowd. Glasses of beer were traded in for full bottles. Musicians appeared with drums around their necks. By lunchtime, as the children wandered around vagrantly, the dance floor began to fill. The sun’s blaze fell on the yellow bungalow and its pale reflection appeared in steel tubs of red water. These late-afternoon hours, a painted crowd with gleaming eyes and teeth, dancing on the lawn, were difficult for me as a child. I think, though I didn’t know it then, that I felt their menace. My good memories of Holi were formed by those hours that came before.
But at the
We came into a large lawn protected by dark, heavy trees with strangler roots. On one side of it, a dance floor was full. A multi-headed sprinkler system spat clear water clockwise, then anticlockwise over the crowd below, making their colour run. A DJ with a goatee sat on a high stage, fortifying old film and Holi music with dull, electronic thuds. Beyond the dance floor was a wide makeshift bar crowded with people. It was the first time I had seen so many people since I arrived. My eyes played with the faces like with a hologram, but no one was recognizable. They were younger and more beautiful than I remembered them; many more Junglee-made bodies – and freer with each other. Couples kissed openly in the sun, the pink of their tongues showing like exposed flesh against their smooth, purple faces. Around us, forming a faintly threatening girdle, were additional security men in black, the splashes of pink and green on their T-shirts seeming to mock them.
Sanyogita knew many more people than I did. She had spent her teenage years in the city while I was in boarding school; she went out more often than I did; and her family, especially Chamunda, was well known. She liked to play the role of a protector when we went out together, making me seem unfriendly for her amusement. She now flashed me an urgent look as her friend Mandira came towards us. She had a strong, masculine face with prominent gums and small filed teeth. She carried silver paint, screeching ‘Sanyo!’ as she bounded up.
‘Mandira, please, no. Not this chemical stuff. It makes my skin break out.’
‘Don’t be silly, yaar. It’s Holi.’
Sanyogita dodged her and hid behind me.
‘Fine, then,’ Mandira said in her slow, booming voice. ‘Maybe your boyfriend won’t be so pricey.’ She laughed loudly, showing her stubby teeth, and with a silver finger drew a cross on my face.
‘No, not on his face,’ Sanyogita yelled, pushing away her hand.
Mandira laughed, flared her eyes and threw her muscular arms around Sanyogita.
‘So do you live in London?’ she asked me abruptly.
‘No, I’m here now.’
‘London has the best food. I love London. We go every summer,’ Mandira said. ‘Nobu, Zuma, Santini’s. So, yeah, I know London pretty well. Then I love this one place called Pucci Pizza. So sweet. You know, I just wish there were more restaurants in Delhi. Every time there’s a new place, like the Chinese at the Hyatt, it’s full because everyone has to go there. One doesn’t even want to go because you have to say hello to so many people. So much kissy kissy. No time to eat. How d’you like Junglee, by the way?’
Sanyogita grabbed my hand before I could answer and took me in the direction of the bar. The sun fell sharply on a line of cane pavilions with people lazing on white mattresses inside. The party here was at a more advanced stage. At a buffet nearby stainless-steel dishes shone like helmets in the sunlight. We settled down in one of these pavilions and soon I was sipping Sanyogita’s bhang from a clay cup and taking small bites of a potato cutlet.
The party affected each of us in different ways. It made Ra set off into the crowd with a pouch of coloured
