The Temple-goers (3 page)

There was a knock on the door. Shakti, my mother’s servant, came in with a cordless phone. She took it from him. ‘Yes, yes, Raunak Singh. Yes. Tell them I’ll be there very soon.’ She punched the lime-green button and looked absently at me, as if for a moment forgetting where she was.

‘Right, baba. I’m off. Come and see me soon with your mother, or with Sanyogita. Welcome back.’ With this she was gone, leaving a trail of tuberose perfume behind her.

I wandered about my mother’s flat for under an hour. Its familiarity, its inevitability, far from comforting me, oppressed me, seeming to force our old association. It made my few foreign possessions – a red Old Spice deodorant stick, an electric toothbrush, a Lush soap – appear out of place, as though I’d brought unwelcome friends to dinner. ‘It
is
my mother. This flat is my mother,’ I said, almost aloud. ‘I’ll have to scrape her off the walls if I’m to live here.’ And so, just hours after I arrived, I escaped the flat for Sanyogita’s.

2

The hot months before summer were months of flowering trees in Delhi. The silk cotton, a stony, shadeless tree, was among the first to bloom. I passed one on the way to Sanyogita’s flat. Its fleshy coral flowers had appeared like women’s brooches on its thorn-covered branches. Though I could have gone through Lodhi Gardens, I chose instead to take Amrita Shergill Marg, a laburnum-lined crescent that ran along one boundary of the park, connecting my flat with Sanyogita’s.

The storm I thought I had seen from the plane turned out to be only a wind. It tore through the city that morning. Many of the trees were losing their leaves even as new ones grew. The wind swept away their old leaves, littering the streets with an autumnal scene. Bees and ladybirds crawled through the debris. The leaves that remained, though new, were in some trees brown before they were green. So it seemed like spring and autumn had come together in one afternoon.

The quiet on Amrita Shergill Marg was broken at even intervals by the tinkle of a cycle bell and the wail of a man in a lilac shirt collecting junk from house to house. At the end of Amrita Shergill Marg was a busy main road. Black and yellow taxis, now with green stripes across their flank that read CNG, rumbled past, their colours clashing with the black and yellow of the lane divider. Everything beyond was the post-independence Delhi of colonies; Jorbagh was among the first of these.

I entered through a tall iron gate and walked past low white houses with clean simple lines and small lawns. On my right, there was a narrow lane under a dense arbour. The cool and shadows of that lane had transfixed me as a child. I used to come here with my mother in our green Suzuki. Halfway down it was Chocolate Wheel, where a jovial woman sold bread and fudge brownies. Ahead was the Jorbagh florist, still selling yellow gladioli. The pan shop. The Jorbagh colony market.

Sanyogita’s flat was on one corner of a U-shaped garden with houses on three sides. Her building was white with a narrow plaster screen built into its façade. It ran down the building’s entire length and a pink bougainvillea hung like a hive from its floral hollows. Outside there was a single dark mango tree with long twisting leaves and greenish-yellow flowers. I saw Sanyogita on her balcony watering plants. She hadn’t grown up in Delhi; she was from Bombay. And to see her in so distinct a Delhi scene, I felt the special joy people feel for the migrant who masters their ways. Sanyogita, as if aware of her triumph, blushed when she realized that I was standing below.

The white marble stairs were dim and dirty. A green stone skirting followed them up to Sanyogita’s flat; blue and red wires swelled out of an electricity box; the banister shuddered.

Sanyogita had planned a surprise. I saw her, with her back against the door, as soon as I reached the top of the stairs. She wore tattered tracksuit bottoms and a faded T-shirt. Her wavy black hair was twined into a rope and pulled forward.

‘Baby,’ she breathed.

She was large and shy and beautiful. That’s not to say she was fat, she wasn’t; but there was a prominence about her bones and joints, and a softness in her limbs and breasts. When she hugged you, you could feel her architecture. She had broken her thigh bone as a child, skiing in Kashmir. A man had crashed into her, leaving her crumpled in the snow. She had a scar from where they put pins into her leg. It was a great smooth-backed caterpillar crawling over her pelvic bone. Which itself was so prominent, and strong, that whenever I saw the scar I felt the force of the collision.

The flat inside, almost as if the squalor of the staircase were a deliberate part of the aesthetic, was a sanctuary. Its high ceilings, its rooms overlooking a secluded balcony, its shade and screens of twisted matting hanging like wet tobacco in front of the windows, faintly scented and cool, were like a preparation for summer. Though much of the flat was still empty, an entire wall of white shelves had been filled with colourful paperbacks. Seagrass carpets and runners with dark blue borders had taken their places in the bare rooms and corridors. So even empty, the flat seemed ready to be lived in.

Sanyogita led me by the hand down one of these shaded corridors. Past black metal grilles, I could see a small terrace with vine roses, potted frangipani and giant yellow and maroon dahlias. We came to a brightly polished double door with an old-fashioned bolt and a brass Godrej lock. Sanyogita took out a key she had kept pressed in her hand. It went loosely in and the lock fell open. We entered a long narrow room, the most furnished I had seen so far. It had a thin red rug, a black wood and cane chair and a maroon leather-topped desk with a green banker’s lamp on the far end. A window on one side overlooked the garden terrace. Sanyogita, standing on the balls of her feet, watched me take in the room.

On a wall covered with bare white shelves, one shelf contained new books. There was a dictionary of Islam, something called
Infidels
by a Cambridge professor and bathroom books: Oscar Wilde’s epigrams, a Second World War American soldier’s pocket guide to France,
Elements of Style
. On the desk’s maroon surface, marching along its gold border, was a family of blue and white porcelain elephants. I picked one up.

‘Be careful, baby,’ Sanyogita squealed on his behalf. ‘He’s the smallest!’

I sat down at the desk, slowly comprehending the surprise. Sanyogita watched with tense delight. At length I opened one of the desk’s drawers. The lamplight obliquely struck a neat pile of letterheads and envelopes. They were held in place by a paper band that read: ‘Alastair Lockhart. Fine writing papers, etc., Walton Street, London SW3’. And on the thick cream-coloured paper, under a faintly raised margin, it said Aatish Taseer in burnt red letters.

‘Baby, a present for your book,’ Sanyogita said, slipping her hand over my collarbone.

The room was the surprise.

She didn’t have one to spare; she had writing ambitions of her own; and though her flat was barely ready, she had made me a present of a study. I was speechless; it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me.

Sanyogita’s face shone with my delight. She became organizational: ‘Vatsala could make you coffee. I’ve just bought her one of those Italian things.’

‘Who’s Vatsala?’ I asked, trying to recover myself.

Sanyogita’s eyes brightened. ‘Vatsala, baby, the little goblin who brought me up?’ She stuck out her teeth and flared her eyes.

Vatsala Bai! I did remember her: she was a devious little widow in white who had moved with Sanyogita to Delhi. Her family had been with Sanyogita’s for centuries. She was devoted to her and suspicious of me, always taking every opportunity to remind me of how old and grand Sanyogita’s family was. We stayed in the room a few minutes more, then Sanyogita locked it and pressed the brass key into my hand with a kiss.

The flat, but for one small terrace and drawing room, had its back to the park. The bedroom was still bare, but for a low bed. Cane blinds shut the room off from the terrace and a modern steel light, with a salon drier head, drooped over the bed like a flower.

Sanyogita sat on the white lace bedcover, her toes hanging off the edge. She was full of Delhi news. She told me of my old friends, her new friends, gay men she’d had lunch with, fashion parties and the agitation in Chamunda’s state. It was Holi in a few days; she broke the sad news to me that my mother’s sister was not having her party this year, as the metro had claimed her house. She’d organized instead for us to go to the
Times of India
party with Ra.

‘Ra?’

‘Ra. Rakesh. My friend the jewellery designer.’

She wiggled her head. Two earrings dangled happily. They were long, with a line of glassy, rectangular diamonds set around a many-faced greyish stone in a paisley shape. There was a single, prominent ruby at the ear. The effect of that colour, like a sudden red light on a misty day, was startling.

‘He gave them to me as a present,’ she said. ‘You know, that way people see them around as well. He’s just getting started, but he’s good, I think.’

‘Have I ever met him?’

‘I think so. Short, squishy, like a pincushion? Adorable.’

‘Maybe. And Delhi? What’s been going on here? Any new things?’

‘Delhi? Everything’s new. New roads, new buses, new metro, new restaurants, new neighbourhoods, new money, everything except new people.’

Then I saw that she felt bad. This was not the arrival she had planned. Our stilted conversation seemed to trouble her. She began flipping through the pages of the
Times of India
. Her hair fell around her. I thought of the study, and then I felt bad; I saw that she might have wanted to make love.

I got up from where I lay at the head of the bed and crouched behind her. For a few minutes we sat like that, like two pods about to hatch; I read the paper over her shoulder. There was a picture of the new green buses. Their orange electronic displays transformed their destinations. Saket, Rajouri Gardens, Sectorpur and Phasenagar, running across a black screen in English letters, seeming suddenly like international places, places people ought to know of. The passengers, once just a crowd, became distinct in the bright modern buses, with their sunny yellow grab handles. In the background was a weary colossus from the old days containing distressed passengers. It was grey and yellow with deep scratches along its flank and an exhaust pumping out brown smoke.

Some bureaucrats had decided that the new buses should have bus lanes. They imported whole a model from Bogotá. It advised that bus lanes be driven through the middle of crowded arteries. And so blue lanes, with little brushed-steel bus stops appearing at even intervals down their length, had been threaded through long stretches of roaring traffic. But what had worked in Bogotá was not working in Delhi. The crowds that mob the bus when it approaches in Delhi blocked traffic. The cars, already squeezed for space, were further deprived of a lane. They refused to adhere to the new rules. Young boys with orange vests and flashing batons were hired to enforce the new system. There were delays into the night. The picture showed a late-evening scene in which a car owner was abusing a policeman. The car’s headlights shone in his face. It was dark, haggard, on the verge of breakdown.

I was still looking at this scene of frustration when Sanyogita ran her fingertips along the edge of my face. I felt her body easily through her faded clothes. It was broad and soft, slightly damp. Her fig perfume mixed with Delhi smells of food and grime. I kissed her shoulder and came near something stronger.

‘Baby’s hard,’ she said with laughter and surprise.

I hated it when she laughed in these moments.

‘Why don’t we go to the big room?’ I said.

‘You want to!’

‘Yes.’

We walked to it through the corridors, reaching for each other in the afternoon gloom.

We made love simply and quickly in that outside room, overlooking the mango tree. She felt big and roomy. I longed to have her close around me, for there to be more friction on the edges. She was also dissatisfied. When I was finished, she climbed on top of my thigh. We did this often. I held her as she rocked up and down my thigh, moaning and muttering, ‘Baby, it’s so good,’ as though I was somehow responsible for what was little more than masturbation. Finished myself and oversensitive, they were minutes of disgust for me. When it was over again, we lay there with our legs spread out, the sun coming in. I felt fat. I squeezed my stomach into a mound with both hands.

‘I’m going to lose all this.’

‘Why, baby? You’re not fat.’

‘Perhaps, but now that I’m here, I’m going to join a gym and get a trainer.’

‘Really? What else are you going to do now that you’re here?’

‘Get an Urdu teacher and learn to read my grandfather’s poetry.’

‘Baby! I didn’t know your grandfather was a poet. The turbaned gentleman who was in the army?’

‘No, not him. My father’s father. He died when my father was six.’

‘Oh.’

Sanyogita didn’t like hearing about my father. She felt that his absence from my life was an unspoken source of pain whose emotional consequences she had inherited. To speak of it casually was almost to belittle the wrong she felt he had done my mother and me. She could be unforgiving in these matters.

I had thought I would return to my mother’s flat that evening, but Sanyogita dissuaded me.

‘Yes, stay here, baby,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing staying in my aunt’s sex pad anyway.’

‘What?’

‘OK, this is totally confidential, and comes from my mother, who you know hates my aunt, but she told me that Chamunda uses your mother’s flat to meet lovers.’

‘What lovers?’

‘She has tons. There’s one in particular whom everyone calls the “French lieutenant”.’

‘Does my mother know about this?’

‘Of course, baby. Your mother’s the fixer.’

‘Fuck off.’

Sanyogita laughed out loud, then smiled thoughtfully as if she’d said something with more truth in it than she’d intended. ‘I think it’s great. If I was a high-profile politician, I’d like my close girlfriends to make sure I had some fun in later life, especially in this hypocritical society.’

‘Well, it’s settled, then.’

‘What?’

‘I’m never going back.’

‘Don’t! I’ll tell Vatsala to send for your bags.’