The Temple-goers (2 page)

Part One

1

I had come to Delhi eleven months before to revise a novel. After college in America, I had lived for a couple of years in England, working as a reporter on an American news magazine. There I met an American journalist who read the novel I’d written in college and sent it along to an agent in New York. The agent wrote back a few days later, saying, ‘Finished your novel this weekend and was mightily impressed. You are a wonderful writer – hyper-observant and able to convey real emotion… I was totally involved with the narrator’s experience and the prose alone kept me riveted. Alas, the plot didn’t develop enough and sort of veered off course for me when I least expected it… But a voice like yours comes along rarely and I would love to work with you on this, or any other book you are working on. It is worth fixing!’ She also sent a separate editorial letter with a detailed list of suggested changes. I don’t know if I really believed in the book; what I did know was that I wanted to leave Britain and return to India.

My mother had argued hard to make my stepfather pay for college in America, and more for her sake than his, I didn’t want to return empty-handed. The agent was the ideal cover. My family in India didn’t know much about the workings of publishing, but they knew about advances; everyone knew about advances. And just flashing the edge of this golden ticket before the eyes of my mother, who in any case wanted me back, was enough. A wider circle of friends and family was persuaded that my time abroad had not been misspent. I, in the meantime, signed a contract with the agent and told her I was leaving my job. This alarmed her. ‘Go with your heart,’ she wrote. ‘Just remember there are no guarantees on advances (from passes, not interested to six-figure advances… everything is game), so take that out of the equation.’ I did; and in less time than I thought possible, I found myself on one of the new Jet Airways flights from London to Delhi.

The reading lights in the cabin were icy white. In the darkness, they refreshed a childhood memory of playing with torches under blankets. The spotlit whiteness; the knobbed, dark blue headrest that could be adjusted into a gorge for the base of the neck; the personal screens in economy; and the staff – young, polite college graduates – drifting by in blue and yellow, offering red wine as if they’d stolen it from their parents’ bar; these were the thrills of India’s first private international airline.

I ordered some wine and watched a new film. It was about four college friends who lead an idle life, drinking beer, skateboarding, riding fast bikes in an old Delhi ruin called the ‘classroom’. They are discovered by Sue, a young English girl trying to make a documentary about a group of Indian freedom fighters executed in the last days of the Raj by her grandfather, a British army officer. The grandfather had left behind a journal in which he had written of the courage the men showed and his own disenchantment with the colonial enterprise. The empire over, his granddaughter, six decades later, wants to use the group of young friends as actors in her documentary. But they resist her. And it turns out that their idle life and Western ways are more like a fear of life, a disillusionment with modern India. In a stolen, romantic moment, one of the boys says to Sue in Hinglish, ‘It’s been five years since I left university, but I’m here only. I just want to stay in university. On campus people know me; I have status. People say DJ will make something of himself. But out in the world, better DJs than me have been ground down in that crowd of millions.’ Another says, ‘What freedom, Sue? Have you seen the state of this country? No one believes this bullshit.’ But Sue prevails; the documentary is made; the young men begin to rediscover their history. They travel around India; they shoot the documentary; they run through fields, tearing off their T-shirts; sepia sequences of the documentary, with them playing the historical parts, are spliced into the film.

It must have been the altitude, the wine, or maybe just homesickness, but I suddenly found that I was crying. A kind of frightened euphoria at seeing India like this seized me. I muttered indistinct words to myself, tears ran down my face, my jaw hardened.

I reopened the screen and finished the film. It ended in carnage and nihilism. Just as the group of friends rediscover their country, a fighter-pilot friend of theirs dies when his MiG crashes. They watch it live on TVDelhi at a tea stall. The Minister of Defence, instead of taking responsibility for having bought bad parts, blames the pilot for the crash. This is too much for the group, so recently restored to idealism. They decide to assassinate the minister. One crime of passion and patriotism excites others and the film ends in further assassinations, patricides and the takeover of a radio station. In the closing scenes, commandos besiege the station where the friends are holed up, explaining their bloody deeds to the nation and welcoming callers. One by one – and on air – each of them is killed off; they bleed, laugh and sing as they die. Sue, in a taxi, listens to the broadcast.

I put away the screen and tried to sleep.

When I next opened my eyes, two flight attendants were walking past. They spoke in the dawn whispers that precede waking up the cabin for landing. Through a half-oval window, past dark sleeping figures, a thin fire burned precisely along the edge of a colourless sky. One of the attendants was a young woman with brown lipstick and hair held firmly in place by a wide clip. Her colleague was a tall man with darkening circles round his soft, attentive eyes. They were courteous, ambitious and bilingual. How different they were from the Indian Airlines ogres of my childhood. Those women with their boiled sweets and matronly tread, the stench of stove and state woven into their clothes, weary at serving men other than their husbands… were they the mothers of these bright, beautiful children?

Peering out of the white light at the two attendants, I attracted their attention.

‘Sir, may I serve you with anything?’ the man with dark, soft eyes asked.

The woman attendant smiled benignly, like a politician’s wife.

The cabin lights came on.

‘Lime water, please.’

‘Sir, right away.’

The attendants went off.

I was flicking through the last of the channels when, a few seats down from me, I noticed a large woman with black, dimpled arms transfixed by what she saw on her screen. Thin clouds raced across the video display, then a patchwork of fields in changing shades of green appeared, dotted with cement roofs, swimming pools and corrugated-iron sheds. Pale quarries with green water and coppery edges came into view. The wandering eye of the camera caught slum roofs, a blue and pink polythene waste dump and brownish, algal rivers choked with hyacinth. A red earth road ran like a vein through the land. The widening bulge of train tracks, the yellow and black of taxis and, at last, the striped walls of Delhi airport.

The camera pulled the land closer and I saw what I loved most about Delhi: its trees. They managed a surprising unity, declaring themselves the first line to touch the city’s white sky. Not so white today. As the land came close, I could see a dust storm rage, blurring the camera’s vision. It stole through the trees like a spirit, ready to pounce on the city below.

Delhi vanished, the camera swung down and the runway’s bumpy, oil-stained surface came into view. The large dark woman, watching peacefully until now, let out a cry.

At home, in my mother’s study, Chamunda sat behind a silver tea set in a green chiffon sari. When she saw me, she extended a sharp, jewelled hand and clutched me to her breast; I tried to reach to touch her feet. ‘Welcome home, baba, welcome home,’ she said to the tune of may-you-have-a-long-life.

Then pulling away as if overcome with emotion, she poured me a piped column of tea. In her other hand she held the silver strainer’s handle. One wrist had green bangles on it, the other a Cartier watch and two inches of red religious threads, tight and damp from a shower.

‘You’re wearing so many,’ I said, amazed at the thickness of the red threads.

She glanced at them as she finished pouring the tea. ‘Politics, baba, all from politics.’

‘Oh, of course. Congratulations. How long has it been now?’

‘Nearly four years. Elections next year, baba. I want you to come and help me. Your mother will come too. It’ll be hectic, but we’ll have some fun. They’re early in the year, so the weather will be lovely.’

Chamunda was my mother’s best friend, and my girlfriend Sanyogita’s aunt. She had been married into a small princely state, but her husband had deserted her just months after their marriage. She had joined politics as a young bride, defeated her husband in his own constituency and risen steadily. She was a member of the legislative assembly in the 1980s, an MP in the 1990s, a junior minister in 2000. Then four years ago, she had gone back to the state as its chief ministerial candidate and won. It had made her the Chief Minister of Jhaatkebaal, a small breakaway state on the border of Delhi, important for its twin satellite cities, Sectorpur and Phasenagar. I had no idea what she was doing in my mother’s flat.

‘Chamunda massi, Ma is in Bombay, right?’

‘Yes, in Bombay. She asked me to be here to welcome you home.’

This was doubtful. Chamunda was busy and selfish; I couldn’t imagine her welcoming Sanyogita home, let alone me. And besides, I’d spoken to my mother on the way into town and she’d said nothing about Chamunda. I noticed that the edges of her hair were wet.

‘Can you imagine,’ she said, handing me a cup of tea, ‘me in politics? Who would’ve thought it?’

‘Is it difficult, being a woman and everything?’

‘Yes, very,’ she replied, pleased to be asked. ‘But there are advantages.’

‘Such as?’

‘I like to take advantage of, exploit one might even say’ – she smiled, showing little teeth and mischief – ‘the very things that make it difficult to be a woman in politics. So for instance, I always dress the part. I always wear beautiful saris, never any ethnic crap. I always wear make-up and jewellery. I make a point to look like the Maharani of Ayatlochanapur. And if I’m talking to some bureaucrats or opposition leaders, or even treacherous elements in my own party, and my pallu accidentally falls…’ She pushed the green chiffon end of her sari off her shoulder to demonstrate what she meant. Her cleavage showed soft and brown, dimpled in places. ‘Then I may let it stay fallen for a few moments till I’ve finished my point and sweep it up when I’m done.’ In one motion, she swung it back over her shoulder and the breasts were once again half-concealed behind a papery chiffon screen. ‘And inevitably the response in these cases to what I’ve been saying is…’ She paused, altering her accent to a strong Indian one and moving her head from side to side. ‘ “Yes, yes, madam,” or an emphatic “No, no, madam, of course not.” ’ Chamunda chuckled wickedly, her pert comic-book lips arched. ‘Or, I’ll lean forward and let the pallu drop, very slightly.’ She did; her breasts collected warmly, and though they remained hidden, the cleavage became long and dark. A gold chain with a Kali pendant dangled hypnotically in front of the tunnel.

Then suddenly, she was in a rush.

‘Baba, I can’t stay long. You might have heard, I’m having a small rebellion in my state. Bloody Jats. I have to go back and deal with it.’

‘Jats?’

‘It’s a sub-caste. They want reservations in government jobs and schools. I tell you, the Congress Party has let a monster out of the bag with this reservations business. Women, dalits, scheduled castes, Muslims, now Jats… Soon the Brahmins and Kshattriyas will be saying, what about us? Then we can go ahead and carve up the country and no one will have to do a day’s work again.

‘I can’t lose the election even before you and Sanyogita have come to stay with me. But enough about politics, tell me about your book.’

‘No, nothing, massi. There’s just interest in a revised version. Now I have to actually fix it.’

She smiled placidly.

‘And your relationship with Sanyogita, all good there?’

‘Yes, very good.’

‘She’s moved back too, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘Does she know what she wants to do?’

‘She wants to write too.’

Chamunda looked serious. ‘It’s a racket, this writing business. You’re writing a book, my friend Jamuni is writing a book, now Sanyogita wants to write a book…’

‘What’s Jamuni writing about? She hasn’t written anything in years.’

‘I don’t really know. She wants to do a funny book, a rehash of her earlier book, but about Indian ostentation.’

‘And Sanyogita?’

‘She doesn’t know yet.’

Chamunda bit at a cuticle.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘No, nothing. Nothing.’

‘Come on, Chamunda, tell me.’

‘It’s just that these girls, you know, these privileged girls, like I once was, I suppose, and like Sanyogita is – they feel that because these are modern times, the world owes them a job, a career. Your mother and I, we never thought this way. If our husbands hadn’t both been such rotters, we would have been quite happy to settle down and produce a brood of children. We worked because we had to work. You want to learn something about women in India? Learn this: India is a country where women work right from the top to the bottom, but they work because they have to work. And it’s the best kind of work. Always be suspicious of these rich and middle-class girls who go off to college in the West and come back feeling that the world owes them a living just because they’re modern women. I say this about my niece too and I’m saying it because you’re a smart boy, you understand these things; I want you one day to marry her, but don’t put up with too much of this silliness.’

‘Come on, massi, she can’t stay home and make me lunch and dinner.’

‘Tch,’ she spat with irritation. ‘Is that what I’m saying? Do I look like a woman who would say something so stupid? No. All I’m saying is that you’re setting out to be a writer, you’ve worked hard at being a journalist, you’ve secured a book deal –’

‘An agent.’

‘Whatever. All I’m saying is I don’t like the sound of my darling niece Sanyogita, who is basically just following you back, also wanting to write.’