by Mahesh Rao
And now Silky Chhabra was throwing a wedding anniversary party in St. Petersburg. She could imagine the jollity, the fountains and marble floors, the stony looks on the bodyguards’ faces. A hundred people were being flown to Russia to witness her tawdry tsarina dazzle. But Nina would not be in attendance.
Year after year, Nina had watched Silky inhabit her role as Mrs. Chhabra, settling into its splendid nooks as though she had been born to it. She had traded in her social insecurities for a jangly new personality, in whose service bad manners masqueraded as benevolent plain-speaking. She made her female staff dress like French maids. She renamed all the Chhabra houses, and now one of them was called “Rhapsody.”
Once a year Silky gave a lunch for her lesser relatives and friends, usually in the third week of June, when many in her close circle had not yet returned from their summer holidays. After dessert, but before the coffee was served, she would clap her hands, and they would all troop into one of the spare bedrooms. Hanging on a couple of rails would be a selection of Silky’s clothes from the previous year: a sari that had been widely admired at a party and therefore could not be worn again, a pair of slacks that had proved to be a little baggy at the hips, a skirt whose bold print in the clear light of day had proved to be a misjudgment.
“Help yourselves,” she would announce with another dainty clap.
Silky was at least a couple sizes smaller than the most petite of her guests, but no one dared point this out. The group would sullenly pick out items that they could at least try to resell. Silky would make enthusiastic suggestions, pressing a lace blouse into a pair of resistant hands or tying a foulard around someone’s neck, the knot a little too tight. The guests would thank her for her generosity, and Silky would say that it was the least she could do, which, in fact, was true. They would have coffee and then leave with their new acquisitions, some of them swearing to themselves that they would not return the next year. Invariably, they did.
Nina reached for the invitation envelope and scribbled a few calculations on its flap. She drew a line across the final figures, the nib ripping through the paper. It was clear that her situation was impossible. The cigarette’s long finger of ash crumbled over the onyx edge of the ashtray. She began an e-mail to her ex-husband, describing her financial predicament in vivid and not altogether truthful terms. It was a note that, on the whole, was conciliatory, although she left in a couple of subdued accusations. She decided she would send it the next day, after reading it one more time, even though it hardly warranted such careful attention. He would read it in a few seconds and make up his mind instantly, his face hardening. His voice rang in her ear, the one he used to cut people down to size. Even after all these years, it was as though he was in the room with her.
She began another e-mail, addressed to her son’s doctor at a treatment facility in Utah, even though she knew that her entreaties would be rebuffed. Her ex-husband, as the named guardian and the person who paid the bills, would have left strict instructions. But trying to renew contact with her son had become as much a part of her routine as the tortuous enumeration of the people who had wronged her. It had been years since she had heard his voice.
When he had been born, she could scarcely believe that he was hers, that pink, wrinkled creature with the skin flaking off his tiny fists. All his life, she had continued to search but she had found nothing of her in him. Perhaps a few antibodies coursed around his blood, that was all, the result of those horrific few weeks of breastfeeding, her eyes screwed tighter with each agonizing suck. There had been moments when she recognized some trait—a stubborn refusal to be embarrassed, a distaste for public displays of affection—but in the end they turned out to be something completely different. It had always been disorienting: feeling such anguished, helpless love for a creature that could just as well have hatched in a pit or grown from larvae.
Nina shivered; she was always cold these days. She checked to make sure that the maid had not turned on the air-conditioning and pulled on a pair of thick socks. If she had a little bit more work done to the apartment—a new bathroom, an overhaul of the ancient wiring—surely it would be worth far more. The last valuation had been a few years ago and all anyone talked about was Delhi’s galloping real estate prices. She might even be able to borrow some more.
For the time being, however, she needed a rapid fix. She would have to go to lunch with Dileep and employ her breeziest manner to allude to her financial difficulties. He would, of course, come to her assistance with the delicacy and discretion that she had come to expect. But she did not imagine that it could continue forever.
* * *
—
ANIA ARRIVED AT the restaurant early, still mulling over her phone call with Dimple. She had apologized once again for the fact that Fahim had turned out to be so disgraceful, but had kept the incident at the Mehrauli club to herself. There had been a strange pause over the phone, and a conversation that was meant to reassure them both had been taut and unsettling. Even the sight of the restaurant’s famous flummery pudding on the menu failed to lift her mood.
Once a year Ania had lunch with CS Dayal, one of Dileep’s numerous legal advisers but also the trustee of a primary family trust of which Ania was the sole beneficiary. They met at a restaurant of excellent vintage on the outer circle of Connaught Place, apparently once graced by Lady Willingdon, in one of her many mauve dresses. They were led to the same table each time, the leaded window behind it still unwashed; he always ordered the pork cutlet, followed by a double portion of trifle.
Ania was never sure of the purpose of this annual meeting. It took place in public so no trust affairs could freely be discussed; and besides, Mr. Dayal was not a voluble man. He would ask her how various members of the family were keeping and then fall silent. After these preliminaries, Ania was left to take charge. She felt, during that gloomy hour, that she had to account for her life in some way. So she told CS Dayal about her work at Dr. Bhatia’s oncology department and at the animal shelter. She mentioned any travel plans and skirted round one or two of the better-formed ideas she had for a novel. CS Dayal would nod and try to dislodge a shred of food stuck in his lower right molar.
She persisted with the meetings because they gave her a sense of stability and significance. She had first experienced a far cruder version of this sensation as a child, accompanying her father to a bank in Zurich. They had walked into an enormous room with mottled marble floors and tiers of foliage cascading down around them. At the far end of the room sat a severe-looking woman at a desk, the authority who would decide on admittance farther into the building. Even at that age Ania knew what confidence and courage it would take to cross the vast distance toward the woman, exposed and conspicuous, the sound of footsteps echoing through the cold air. But her father held her hand and approached the woman with an easy stride. They had a right to be there. And today she took strength from that same awareness.
Far away from the inconsistencies and eccentricities of her family, there lay in place binding arrangements to secure her future. Trust deeds in impregnable language were locked in a vault. And once a year, CS Dayal, a man with complete knowledge of their terms, came to meet her for lunch.
“Did you just ask me something? I’m so sorry, I’ve been a little preoccupied,” she said.
CS Dayal shook his head.
She took a sip of water and continued.
“Mr. Dayal, if you don’t mind, could I ask you something? You may think it’s a little strange. But has there ever been a time when you let a friend down? I mean, a time when you were genuinely convinced that you were acting in their best interests but in fact made a total mistake.”
CS Dayal stared at her. His gray mustache was always a little unkempt, making him look like a melancholy seal.
She sighed.
“I’m not expressing myself very well. What I mean to say is, have you had a situation where other people behaved terribly, a
nd so out of no fault of your own, or maybe just a small fault, but really, an unforeseeable situation, you have ended up hurting a dear friend? That sort of mistake.”
CS Dayal licked the mustard sauce off his fork, examined it to make sure there was none left, and then laid it down.
“I would say, with friends, once or twice,” he said. “Professionally, never.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE OLDER RICH had ways of perturbing the newer rich. A direct snub would be too foolhardy, given the unpredictable places where political influence now arose. So they shut them out with ambiguity, glances shot across the table, a stifled smile, all the signs of a beautifully preserved way of life. It was true that this way of life had been handed down in part by the English upper classes: a tenacious respect for hunting-and-shooting rituals, moth-eaten bits of taxidermy, a boarding school brutality, a fitful promiscuity that pledged, and often failed, to be discreet. But there were other more ancient codes that were wholly their own, alive as far back as anyone could remember, which raised their self-belief to near divinity.
There was an artistry in disconcerting the newly rich and immense satisfaction in its correct execution. Invitations would be accepted but apologies would be sent at the last minute due to unavoidable circumstances; or events would be attended for a mere fifteen minutes; or a proxy from the extended family would be dispatched, a lisping second cousin. One dowager from Civil Lines would come to dinner but not eat, asking in the most charming way if her food could be sent over later: her doctor had told her not to consume anything after six in the evening and so she would have it for lunch the next day.
Perturbing the newly rich also involved praise—lavish praise. Everything was lauded. A lazy, practiced rapture flowed over all their choices. But the compliments were so profuse and inflated that they were bound to raise doubt, which was, in any case, the intention. Later, after the last guest had left, there would be a reckoning, an anxious attempt to separate the sincere tributes from the insincere, identify the failings and the missteps, correct them for next time.
Dileep was no exception, but he was more cautious than many in his set. He was all too aware that power reared up in unlikely places, and he made a point of weighing up his actions carefully. But Dileep would also admit, only to himself, that there were other reasons for him to show himself. He loved making an entrance. He looked forward to the way people would jump up from their seats when they spotted him; to the fact that married women gave him compliments about his clothes when the trill in their tone made it obvious that they were referring to what lay under them; to the glances from young people to whom ordinarily a man his age would be invisible.
At the wedding of a billionaire meat exporter, Dileep turned up exactly two hours late. He congratulated the bride and groom, he posed for photographs, he told his host that the mock Times Square was the most beautiful wedding venue he had ever seen. He accepted and held a drink, which he deposited on a passing tray five minutes later.
On his way out, he pulled out his phone and walked quickly, not making eye contact with anyone. No more could be asked of him.
Serena Bakshi answered after one ring.
“Are you on your way? One thing about him is that he detests people being late,” she said.
“I know, I’m sorry, yes, I’m on my way. But I won’t pick you up. Can you meet me there?” he said.
“Why?” she asked.
“We’ve been seen together. God knows how. People are starting to talk,” he said.
“Who?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.”
“Shall we go at separate times?” she asked.
“No, just separate cars. I feel much more comfortable if we’re there together. If you don’t mind.”
“Of course I don’t mind. You’re probably the only person I trust in this nightmare city.”
“You park in their building and message me when you’re there. I’ll get dropped off there and ask the driver to park somewhere else,” Dileep said.
“Done.”
* * *
—
UNTIL RENU WAS married, she had never spent the night in an apartment. Sleepovers with school mates had unfolded in mansions of varying sizes, and holidays were spent in hotel suites or friends’ villas. She’d moved into the colonel’s apartment as soon as they returned from their honeymoon, conscious that it was a place where he had lived for more than twenty years; whatever she felt about its interiors, it was not for her to breeze in and transform it. The color scheme ranged from tan to rust, and in the hallway there was a ghastly brass plaque depicting some gruesome battle. His mother’s many watercolors hung in almost all the rooms, the usual dragonflies and riverbanks, and in one surprising instance, what looked like a nude couple playing badminton. She was relieved that the master bedroom contained little apart from the bed, whose mattress provided excellent lumbar support.
Renu discovered that the most extraordinary feature of living in an apartment was the close manifestation of other people’s lives. When sounds drifted in through her windows in the Khurana mansion, they tended to be only the wet hiss of the sprinklers or the steady crunch of the security guards walking down the gravel paths. The colonel’s building, however, rattled and hummed all day long. There were titters in the foyer, squabbling in the corridor. The doorman made calls all day to someone called Dolly, which were hurriedly interrupted when he heard the elevator doors open. At around four in the afternoon several times a week, the young girl in 2B went off in a red BMW with a much older man. The occupant of 1A seemed glum and secretive, barely acknowledging her in front of the mailboxes. He always wore a black fedora and muddy boots. Occasionally, on an active day when Renu took the stairs, she lingered for a few seconds as she passed his door, listening out for the strange thumps that she sometimes heard. Bodies, perhaps.
She took her tea out onto the balcony at the same time as the two aged sisters in the apartment downstairs. Their rasping voices carried, and she felt a delicious thrill at being their unseen guest.
“They are very strict on airlines these days, no cutlery allowed in your bag, no knives, nothing.”
“I wonder how Pankaj Uncle manages now. You remember how particular he was about having fresh food. He always used to travel with a servant on international flights. The servant would sit in economy and cut up all the fruit for his salad and then take it up to him in first class.”
“I don’t think they allow you to carry fruit anymore either. It’s all so sad, the way the world has become.”
“How are your knees today?”
“Better. Yours?”
“Not very good.”
Some afternoons she would open a bottle of merlot to share with Clara Ruiz Salinas, the eighty-year-old occupant of 3B. With each glass Clara’s memories of her time as a Communist activist in her native Mexico became ever more wistful. As the evening smog closed in and the light dimmed in the apartment, she swallowed various pills and capsules, throwing her head back in a determined way with each swallow. All of this mixing of drugs and alcohol worried Renu, but she felt that it was hardly her place to point out these dangers to a woman who claimed she had spent her youth shooting at fascists. The colonel took a dim view of revolutionary activity, and so these tête-à-têtes were conducted while he was away at the tennis club.
“My nephew will be here in a couple of weeks. It’ll be lovely to have a young person around again,” said Renu.
“I don’t understand the young anymore,” said Clara. “They seem so docile and colorless. At their age, we were planning the liberation of the country, singing and dancing and making love under the stars at El Pedregal.”
“I think they are still doing some of that. Many of them take sex videos and put them on the Internet.”
Clara patted her on the hand and said, “It’s not really the same thing.”
Now that
Nikhil’s visit was imminent, Renu felt emboldened to make a few changes in the guise of readying themselves for their first guest. She had the interior of the apartment repainted in alabaster and duck-egg blue, ordered new curtains, and asked Dina to send over the chaise longue from her old bedroom. The brass plaque was stowed in a cupboard in the utility room.
Then, on the afternoon of Nikhil’s arrival, she had a hefty drink, mostly gin, hardly any tonic, while she waited for the doorbell to ring. The colonel had never told her that he regarded Nikhil as a son, but she had read his strength of feeling. She had never yearned for children; after a point, she had not expected to have them and had dwelled on the matter no further. She had stepped in, with great joy, as a parental figure whenever Dileep had deemed it necessary, always aware that father and daughter took primacy in the Khurana house.
The question she had asked herself most often was how much Ania knew of the circumstances of her mother’s death. She had never dared discuss it even with Dileep, and it would have been unthinkable to broach the matter with Ania without his permission. Ania’s quests for perfection had always worried Renu. The thought came to her in disquieting flashes that she would have been a much better friend to Ania if she had been honest and allowed her to see how much rot always lay under the surface.
* * *
—
ANIA HAD PREPARED herself for the worst. There was every possibility that Nikhil would be a cocky, high-achieving East Coast nuisance, determined to disapprove of darling Renu just because she had the temerity to marry his uncle late in life. He would try to condescend at any opportunity and be an expert on everything. He would probably chew gum. By the time Ania arrived at Renu’s flat, she had almost convinced herself that she had already met and detested Nikhil. Her body was stiff with disapproval; she had worn her hair up; she was dressed for a fight.
