The Two Krishnas (41 page)

“Arre,
it’s all
mowla’s
meherbani!”

Ravi was unable to hide how impressed he was. Underneath his cheer, envy gripped him. “Still,” he said, a distinct tremor in his voice, “In today’s day and age,
this,
really this is just something else, Alnoor.”

Suchitra could not remember the last time she had heard her husband comment on the conditions in his beloved Kenya being anything less than optimistic and she stopped the vigorous spicing of her bland food to listen more attentively, as did Kiran and Pooja.

“Oh, come on now, Alnoor! Really, don’t be so modest,” Farida jumped in, laughing almost lustily. “He is
such
a genius, you know.” She affectionately touched Alnoor’s sideburn with a long finger so manicured it looked as if it could slice flesh.

“Tch,
but you see, Ravi, that’s the good thing about our times, about this government,” Alnoor said, a little more softly. “Here the color of your skin, it doesn’t count, not really, when you think about it. You know what counts? Only the color green counts!” he said, rubbing his fingers together lustily. “We Asians, we have but two options left to us now if we want to survive; either pack up and leave—go to Canada or London or back to India—or like Rahul, go to America, why not? Otherwise just shell out money and grease those hands.”

“I had just hoped there would be a different way.”

“What different way? You can’t make money in this country and not pay the ‘big man.’ Not unless you want to end up at Nyayo House!” he said, referring to the notorious torture chambers in Nairobi that were allegedly filled with heinously tortured political prisoners.

Ravi, finding it hard to accept this grim reality said, much to his family’s surprise, “Ah, politics, it has always confused me.”

“But that’s because you’re a bloody idealist, my friend. Really, there’s no need to worry about large, abstract ideas. Who here has the time? We are all just trying to survive, that’s all. And if the man at the top wants to fatten his bank account, then you just split some of your profits with him and then you can continue making more. Simple,
na?
”

“But then what does that lead to in the long run, Uncle?” Kiran jumped in, looking for support around the table at Pooja, who was seated to her left, and her parents across the table. “I mean, is that really the answer? More, more and more corruption? We have to all work together, save this country from the tyranny of greed and—”

“Oh, Kiran, how very silly,” Farida said, smiling. “Who do you think elected Moi after all?”

“Work together?” Alnoor balked. “These people don’t know how to run companies, how to build businesses! Did you know, Kiran, that after Independence there was a whole movement to Africanize everything, to take businesses away from Asians and give them to the Africans? Can you believe
that!
” Alnoor had no idea that the Kapoors were only too aware thanks to the tragedy with Suchitra’s uncle, and nobody said anything, Suchitra just shifting uncomfortably in her chair. “
Tch,
what do they know? And what did they do? They could not even manage.
Bas
, within six months, the Asians again owned those same businesses. That’s why, my dear, no government now will dare to get rid of Asians, doesn’t matter how they feel inside. We’ve become, what do they say?
Tch,
a ‘necessary evil.’”

“But, Uncle, isn’t it important that we start behaving like Kenyans first? Not Asians or Kikuyus or Luos or whatever you have?” Pooja said, her hand against her throat. “After all, Uncle, we all fought for independence together, right? We all love this country. It’s home to all of us.”

“No, no, no, Pooja. We do not
all
love this country. As for the people running it…” he grunted and then looked around the room furtively. When he had deemed it safe, he began elaborating on what Farida had touched upon moments earlier. “Pooja, presidents like Moi are elected to safeguard the interests of the elite. And to a large extent, we have also benefited from this, don’t you see?”

“Alnoor,” Farida intervened, touching him gently on his hairy arm and instantly placating him. She then turned to Pooja and said with an even tone, “Dear girl, in choosing who should run the country after Kenyatta, as if the needs of the Kenyan electorate were ever sought. It was the ‘white’ settler community and the Kikuyus, the same ones that own land in the Rift Valley, and who supported Moi and made sure he would be our second President so that their interests were protected, that had all the power. You think a radical like Odinga or moderates like Murumbu and Mboya would help those elitist bastards?”

Pooja and Kiran exchanged a look. Obviously the irony of her statement was lost on her.

“The appointment of Moi guaranteed that the ‘whites’ and the Kikuyus could keep their privileges, and also it silenced other radical thinkers from Moi’s own tribe on the issue of appropriated land,” Farida dispatched from her impressive arsenal of political knowledge. “In a tyrannical regime, darling, competence in a deputy is a dangerous thing. Only interest matters.” She sat back, ever so slightly, a faint smile playing upon her immaculately painted face.

“Tch,
but where do you think you are,
beta?
These ideas, all these lofty, lofty ideas you have, they all sound very great but you are not in America yet, are you?”

Pooja looked at him quizzically. “But what does America have to do—”

“This is a one-party state. Just KANU,
bas!
Sure, we’re a democracy but in name only, nothing else. This one here is talking about, what is it? Tyranny of greed?” Alnoor was shaking his head and laughing. “We live under a dictator, Pooja. Dictator! There is only KANU from now until the day we die. These lofty ideas you young people are having are better left here,” he said, jabbing at his head. Alnoor looked directly at Ravi. “Come on now, Ravi. Are you telling me you have never given chai in your life, eh?”

Here nobody could deny what Alnoor was saying. Indeed Ravi himself had been guilty of using bribes to get things done, smaller things, like getting a copy of a missing birth certificate or expediting a passport, and had participated in the corruption he was so vehemently against. Certainly it was nothing compared to the Alnoor Samjis of the world who were immersed in murkier waters. It was a well-known fact that Alnoor was in cahoots with a Banyani tycoon who had the President’s personal phone number and was rumored to be responsible for an elaborate foreign exchange scheme. But in the end, these were all varying degrees of corruption, Ravi reminded himself as he quietly cut through the chicken on his plate.

And who could argue against Kenya’s single-party system? He was only too aware that such systems of government often arose from decolonization because one party was credited with playing a dominant role in the liberation of the country, but that eventually the party became despotic; that single-party states just paid lip-service to democracy and the will of the people. After all, without the choice of different parties, in a government where no opposition parties were allowed, weren’t the elections just a joke?
How stupid am I?
Ravi chastised himself.
I have learnt nothing! Absolutely nothing!

“Perhaps you are right, Alnoor,” Ravi conceded. “What do I know?”

Alnoor looked at Suchitra. “Where did you find this one,
bhabhi?
Disneyland?” And then he laughed some more, especially impressed with himself for having woven America in.

But Ravi’s face fell from embarrassment and Suchitra was surprised because she thought she could see tears in his eyes. She smiled, keeping face, but inside she wanted to behead Alnoor Samji and his scrawny witch of a wife for trying to reduce her husband to a simpleton. Her husband was a good, kind man, one who saw beyond color and creed and the Samjis of this world should never have the kind of power to reduce someone like him to a position of need and ignorance. She reached out to him, held his hand on the armrest but Ravi, confusing her gesture for pity, pulled his hand away and proceeded instead to drink deeply of his Scotch.

“You’ve heard the joke,
na,
about the Kenyan hell?” Alnoor said, and when everyone looked around blankly or shrugged, he launched away. “So this big old bastard sinner dies and goes to hell, okay? And you know what, there’s a different hell for each country. One for Britain, one for Australia, you know, one for each country. Naturally he decides he’ll just pick the easiest one, the least painful hell to spend his eternity. First he goes to Germany’s hell and there he asks the couple of people waiting in line, ‘What do they do here?’ and he is told, ‘First they drop you into an electric chair for an hour, then they make you sleep on a bed of big, big nails for another hour and then the German devil comes in and whips you for the rest of the day.’ The sinner thinks, ‘
Arre baap-re!
Oh, this sounds too painful’ and so he goes to the U.S. hell. There he discovers it is exactly the same. So then he goes to the Russian hell and here also it’s exactly the same. But then, he comes where? To the Kenyan hell!” he says, pausing for effect, eyes widened. “And by God, there is such a long line to get in, he starts wondering, ‘
Arre,
what the hell is going on here? All these people waiting to get in! Why?’ He’s so amazed he asks one of the guys, ‘What do they do here,
bwana?’
And he is told, ‘Well, it is like this. First they put you in an electric chair for an hour, then they make you sleep on a bed of nails for another hour and then the Kenyan devil comes and whips you for the rest of the day.’ The sinner says, ‘
Arre,
but that is exactly the same as all the other hells. So why are there so many people waiting to get in here?’ And the man waiting in line replies, ‘That’s because in Kenya’s hell,
bwana,
there’s never any electricity, so the chair does not work. The nails were paid for but never supplied, so the bed is comfortable to sleep on. And as for the Kenyan devil, he used to be a civil servant, so he just comes in, signs his time sheet and goes back home for private business. So you see, it pays to be in Kenya’s hell,
bwana!”

They were alone again, Pooja and Kiran in their own room, when Suchitra changed into a cotton nightgown covered with large hibiscus flowers and said to Ravi, “
Hai! Hai!
God only knows who enjoys that sort of rubbish food!”

“English food,” Ravi mumbled.

“Yes, yes, I know,” she said, sticking out her tongue in distaste and making a sound of contempt. “Boiled in water! No salt. No nothing! And those silly jokes!”

“It was rather funny actually. I really laughed.”

“
Hunh!”
she snorted in disdain. “You! You laugh at everything!”

* * *

From where Rahul stood, almost at the edge of a precipitous cliff diving into the Indian Ocean, he could smell the sea. To his right sprawled out a lush golf course, its white flags flapping desolately in the strong wind. Behind him, across Mama Ngina Drive, which even at this time of night had an infrequent yet sustained procession of cars enjoying the cool air bounding off the ocean, was the golf club where the party was in full swing now; a double celebration for the Mombasa Cricketers victory over the Nairobi players and Rahul’s bon-voyage.

“Remember Hanif?” Rahul asked, taking the joint from Riyaz’s hand.

“Come on, man
.
We should get back. It’s almost midnight already.”

“You remember him?”

“Who, Hanif?
Tch,
bwana,
why are you thinking about
that
one?”

“I don’t know, maybe it’s the ocean.”

“Can’t even see it in the bloody darkness.”

“Just thinking, you know? Our lives just continue but his…” He took a drag, thoughts percolating. Although this wasn’t where Hanif had drowned—it had been at Bamburi Beach, the island’s touristy north coast—something about the water’s presence beyond them made Rahul think of those who had been claimed by it, never to be seen again. He wished things had ended differently between Hanif and him, that the last time they saw each other Rahul had been anything but cold.

“It’s been years,
bwana,”
Riyaz said, happy to let the passing of time somehow diminish the incident, its sadness. Then something, a memory, must have passed through his mind, a lash in his eye, because he grunted.

Rahul handed the joint back to him with a look bordering on disapproval.

Riyaz scratched the mat of glistening chest hair through a virtually unbuttoned shirt, obviously enjoying the breeze tickling through it.
“Tch,
ah, come on now,
bwana,
you know I don’t mean it that way. But you know, he was—” and here he assumed an exaggerated feminine pose, jutting his waist out to the side and batting his eyes at Rahul, and burst out laughing. “Poor shit, man. Just went and drowned. Can you imagine? How does anyone born in Mombasa not know how to swim? Ridiculous!”

Rahul wondered what it must have been like. Had Hanif struggled, fought for life? At what point must he have released his grasp, given up, known it was futile, just surrendering to the tides? What if he had given himself up willingly, dipping into the lapping water, dead long before it invaded his weary lungs?

“
Bwana,
you know I really don’t want to think about these kinds of things, okay?” Riyaz said. “Tonight is a celebration, buddy, a happy occasion. Why you want to ruin it by thinking such things?”