Delhi (4 page)

We take leave of Tilpat. At Badarpur we turn left, go over a railway level crossing and turn left again along a narrow road. We descend through a defile. A peacock scuttles across and takes wing raucously crying
paon, paon
.

‘A real live peacock!’ exclaims Hoity-Toity.

‘The place is infested with them.’

‘And humans! India seems to be infested with human beings.’ She waves towards the buses, scooters, cars and bicycles in the parking lot at Suraj Kund. Picnickers are scattered everywhere. Transistors, tape recorders and gramophones compete with the snake charmers’ pipes.

Our arrival causes a stir. By the time we pull up alongside the verandah of the rest-house, transistors have been toned down; three snake charmers blow lustily through their gourd pipes; an old man with a king cobra twined round his neck approaches us. ‘Christmas!’ exclaims Lady Hoity-Toity. ‘I don’t like snakes and I don’t like picnickers.’ She surveys the scene for a moment, shudders a long
ooh
of disgust. ‘How long do we have to stay here?’ she asks.

‘There’s this amphitheatre. Then there is an old dam about two miles from here, village Anangpur another mile beyond the dam. There are the remains of the wall which protected Anangpur. It’ll take us most of the afternoon and evening.’

She’s a lady of quick decisions. She orders the flunky to unload the hamper. She goes in, examines the room and the bathroom, sniffs at the towels, turns up her nose at the bundle of clipped newspapers in a box beside the toilet. She dictates the order of the day to the chauffeur, ‘Take the car back. Come back around 9 p.m.’ She does not ask me if I am free till 9 p.m.

The flunky puts the hamper and her suitcase on the floor. The chauffeur and the flunky salute and take their leave. She flops into an armchair, glances at her wrist-watch and says, ‘I am dying for a drink. Be a darling and mix me a gin and tonic. And help yourself to anything you like—Scotch, champagne, beer, gin—all on your old President.’

I act the butler. I mix Her Ladyship a gin and tonic. While I am still making up my mind what to take, I have to mix her another and light her cigarette. I make myself a dry martini and sit down on the edge of the bed. I raise my glass. She ignores the gesture. ‘Tell me about this place Suraj... Suraj...’

‘Kund
to rhyme with the German
Bund.
Simply means pond.’ I tell her about the Tomara Rajputs who ruled Delhi in the seventh and eighth centuries and their chieftain Surajpal after whom the amphitheatre is named.

She holds out her glass, ‘Be a honey!’

I be a honey and give her another gin-tonic. ‘And this dam and the village?’ She puts her legs on either arm of her armchair just as she would do to let a man enter her. How can I talk of the Tomara Rajputs with her opening her thighs in this wanton manner? I try to keep my mind off her middle. ‘The dam was built by another Tomara, Anangpal. He also built the fortified town Anangpur; we can go there in the afternoon. Then he shifted his capital westward and built a citadel of red sandstone which came to be known as Lal Kot.’

She’s lost interest in my lecture. Her eyes are drooping. ‘Go on,’ she orders.

‘No, I won’t,’ I reply rudely. ‘You are half-asleep.’

She laughs, coughs, spits. She throws her cigarette on the floor and squashes it under her foot. ‘Forgive me! I’ll have a wash and get out of this,’ she says holding her blue denims. ‘Won’t be a jiffy.’ She pulls out a skirt from her case and goes into the bathroom. The bathroom has a curtain which only covers the middle part of the doorway. It also has a door; she does not shut the door. She unzips her denims and hangs them on a peg. She wears white lace panties to cover her little bottom. She bends over the basin to wash her face. I know she is doing it to rouse my curiosity. My curiosity rises. She buries her face in a towel. She turns round, bends over and slips on her skirt.

‘Chalo,’
she says.
‘Juldi
(quick). Is that right?’

We step out. It is quieter. The snake charmers are bundled under trees and the picnickers are huddled round their transistors; the women are frying
poories.
Boys in bum-tight trousers, girls in bosom-and-bum-tight long shirts stroll about the amphitheatre.

Hoity-Toity examines a bush of thorny caparis in flower. She looks across the ridge and is entranced. On one side is the vast Romanesque amphitheatre with large steps going down to the pool. A man is washing himself on a slab of stone. A safe distance from him a couple of moorhens are bobbing up and down. Swallows skim over the water in unending circles. On the other side is a densely wooded valley of flame trees and wild date-palm. She clasps her hands beneath her chin in adolescent wonder: ‘So that’s the flame of the forest! How perfectly beautiful! Where is the Sun temple?’ she asks.

I point to the flights of steps on the other side of the amphitheatre. I lead her down the large steps to the pool. Then up the same steps to the ruins of the Sun temple. I show her some of the surrounding countryside: massive boulders with flame and acacia sprouting from the sides.

‘I have had enough for the morning. I am hot and hungry,’ I plead. ‘Aren’t you?’

She glances at her wrist-watch. ‘Okay! My watch says time for another gin-tonic and a bite.’

We return to the rest-house. I mix her more gins and tonics and lay a plateful of
tandoori
chicken and Russian salad on the table. I help myself to a bottle of chilled lager and some
kababs.
She gobbles up her lunch and brusquely orders me out of the room.’ I must have my siesta. Wake me up at 4.30. We can do your dam and fortified village in the evening.’ She does not care to find out whether there is another room or even a chair for me, just puts me out on the verandah and shuts the door. ‘Shake me up; I sleep heavily.’

I scrounge a chair from the kitchen, put my feet up against a column and make myself comfortable. I watch the picnickers dozing under the trees. My head is heavy with sleep. I close my eyes. I am roused by the snake charmers’ pipes. The picnickers are packing up while the snakewallas make a last attempt to extract something from them. I doze. I hear charabancs, cars, scooters leave. The snake charmers’ pipes fade away in the distance. Only pye-dogs snap and snarl over garbage left by the picnickers. I daydream. Hoity-Toity is trying to seduce me. I am not very difficult to seduce. I have no conscience about Bhagmati. Bhagmati is a whore; why should I feel guilty about her? I am taking Hoity-Toity when Bhagmati turns up and asks, ‘Couldn’t you find anyone better than this old memsahib?’ It would be nicer if Hoity-Toity was younger and her mouth did not smell of gin-tonics, roasted tobacco and old age!

It is 4.30 p.m. I press open the door of Hoity-Toity’s room and shut it behind me. She sleeps with the bedsheet drawn over her head like a corpse in a shroud. I shake her by what appears to be her shoulder. She flings the sheet off her face. ‘What time is it?’

I tell her.

She yawns and stretches her arms. Yellow, fungoid growth in her armpits. She props herself against her pillow and holds the bedsheet under her chin. ‘Be a darling and hand me a cigarette.’ I give her a cigarette and light it for her. She sends jets of smoke through her nostrils,
ahs
and
oohs
with pleasure. ‘Hand me my dressing-gown,’ she says pointing to the garment hanging on the latch of the bathroom door.

I get her the dressing-gown. She leaps out of bed. Stark naked: small, wrinkled breasts; nipples looking downwards and dejected; wrinkled belly with a slight paunch beneath the navel; scraggy-brown pubic hair. I put the gown round her shoulders and close my hands over her breasts. She turns to stone. ‘What do you think you are trying to do?’ she demands.

‘Well I...’

‘Well, you what? Don’t get silly notions in your head.’ She picks up her shirt and denims lying at the foot of the bed and walks into the bathroom. She does not bother to shut the door. I do not bother to look.

She comes back, puts her hands on my shoulder. ‘Don’t be cross. I’m a bit of a cock-teaser.’ She gives me a smelly kiss on the nose to seal her forgiveness. My feelings are hurt, I want to hurt her. Her halitosis encourages me to be rude to her. I snigger. ‘What’s the joke?’ she asks.

‘You! You remind me of my city Delhi. We have a saying: “Ruins proclaim the past splendour of an ancient monument.’”

She shrivels. ‘That’s not a nice thing to say.’

We step out of the bungalow as strangers. We walk alongside with a wall of silence between us. It is hot. Sandstone boulders burn under the sun. In the shade of trees sit peacocks panting for breath with their beaks open. We walk a mile or more without exchanging a word or looking at each other.

We come to the end of the Ridge. In front stretch cultivated fields growing wheat and mustard. Out of the flat sea of green and pale yellow rise rocky islands covered with the flame. Beyond the islands is the village Anangpur. It is the kind of scene that cannot be appreciated by people with a wall of misunderstanding between them. I take Hoity-Toity’s hand and ask, ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ She replies, ‘Isn’t it! Let’s sit down somewhere.’

I lead her by the hand. We descend on Anangpal’s dam. We turn our backs to the fields and sit down facing a valley of date-palms. Fifty feet beneath us is a pool of water, crystal clear. It sparkles as minnows’ bellies catch the sun. From a date-palm darts a halcyon kingfisher aglitter with peacock-green and molten-gold. It hovers helicopter-like above the pool, drops like a stone into the water and is off with a wiggling minnow in its beak. The pool returns to its placid self; once more fish move in shoals of grey dots. Suddenly they leap into the air like a shower of sparks, plop back and dart to the sides of the pool. A snake wriggles upwards, raises its head above the surface and wriggles back nosing its way through the shadows of submerged rocks. Hoity-Toity smokes yet another Caporal and throws the butt into the pool. Minnows come back for the cigarette. The stub bobs up and down like an angler’s float, then goes down into the water.

We spend the rest of the afternoon walking through the fields of Anangpur. We watch a camel-driven Persian wheel. We watch Gujar women patting buffalo dung on their walls. We skirt round Anangpur and see the ruins of its battlement. As the sun goes over the Ridge we retrace our steps to the dam. We return through the valley of palm trees, wading through swamps overgrown with bullrushes. As the sun sets, we are back in the rest-house.

Not a human being in sight. The
chowkidar
puts chairs and a table out for us and retires to his quarters. I bring out the President’s Scotch. We sit with our legs on the table and sip our whisky. After a long walk, it is like elixir in the entrails. I stretch out my hand to her. She gives me hers to hold. We watch the sky turn a luminescent grey. Flocks of parakeets streak across squawking as they flash by. It is peacock time. They cry lustily from the valley of the date-palms. Two perched on the roof of the rest-house return their calls. Then the twilight hush. Hoity-Toity stands up and stretches her limbs. I stand up as well. She nestles her head against my chest. ‘Thank you! It’s been a lovely day.’ She kisses me on my mouth. I enfold her in my arms, lift her off her feet and kiss her all over her leathery face. ‘Would you like to make love to me?’ she asks very humbly.

‘Yes, let’s go inside.’

We get as far as the verandah. The President’s Rolls-Royce catches us with its headlights. I swear: ‘Fuck!’

Very frustrating! Also somewhat of a relief. I do not have to waste my
bindu
on a battered, malodorous woman. I can preserve it for Bhagmati who despite the bashing she gets from men goes for sex with the zest of a newly-wed nymphet. And her mouth smells like a bush of cardamom in springtime.

Hoity-Toity becomes the Lady once more—cold and aloof. She sits at the other end of the seat. When we pull up outside my apartment, she says very dryly: ‘Thanks for everything. Do look me up when you are in London.’

‘It was a pleasure.’ I do not invite her to come in. There is the omnipresent Budh Singh armed with his stave. As soon as I step out of the Rolls-Royce he springs to attention and yells: ‘Parade, present arms!
Thak, thak, thak.’
As Hoity-Toity leans out to wave to me, he intones a Punjabi version of ‘God Save our Gracious Queen.’

I wave to Hoity-Toity. I acknowledge Budh Singh’s salute and ask: ‘How’s everything?’

‘Parade, slope arms!
Thak, Thak.
Everything okay. Your
hijda
is waiting for you. I let it in because you were so
gussa
with me yesterday. Excuse my saying so, take a woman, take a boy, but a
hijda...’

I complete his sentence for him. ‘That’s not nice.’ And hurry indoors.

3

She sits cross-legged in my armchair turning over the pages of a book. Her left hand is clenched into a fist with a cigarette sticking out of her fingers. She sucks noisily at the cigarette and flicks the ash on my carpet. Her hair is heavily oiled and arranged in serried waves fixed by celluloid clips shaped like butterflies. She wears a pink sari of glossy, artificial silk with a dark blue blouse of the same material. A pair of white slippers with ribbon bow-ties on their toes lie in front of the chair. Bhagmati is the worst-dressed whore in Delhi.

The light of the table-lamp reveals a layer of powder and rouge on her face. It does not lighten the colour of her black skin or hide the spots left by small-pox. The
kohl
in her eyes has run down and smudged her cheek-bones. Her lips are painted crimson. Her teeth are stained with
betel
-leaf. Bhagmati is the plainest-looking whore in Delhi.

‘Ajee!
You are back from
vilayat
!
’
she exclaims as I enter. And without giving me the chance to say yes, continues ‘What kind of books do you keep? They have no pictures’ She waggles her head with every sentence and gesticulates with her hands in the manner of
hijdas.
‘No pictures, only black letters like dead flies.’ She changes the subject. ‘Did you ever think of your poor Bhagmati when you were riding those white mares in London?’ Bhagmati is the coarsest whore in Delhi.