The One Who Wrote Destiny

by Nikesh Shukla

  But this guy, British desi guy, he seems okay. Plus, he’s right about the chai tea latte thing. I looked it up.

  I changed the menu that night after work. It’s chalkboard, so whatevs. I changed it to ‘masala chai’.

  The owner didn’t notice. Neither did Maggie.

  ‘What name do you want on the cup?’ I ask.

  ‘Raks,’ he replies. And he doesn’t spell it. Because I should know.

  I pick up a cup. And I write R-A-X on it. I add a winky face emoticon so he knows I’m joking.

  He smiles and the break of white through the unkempt beard and messy curly hair is a beacon of hope.

  Seven-fifteen, I mouth.

  He nods and walks along the line to collect his waiting coffee.

  I nearly dance on the spot but there’s another customer waiting. She’s staring at her phone, and orders without paying attention.

  I give her the best customer service she will ever have in her life. And she doesn’t even know it.

  There are some benches navigating a flower bed outside our coffee shop. They’re not supposed to be there, but the tree in the flower bed offered such magnificent shade, people started sitting there in summer with their cups of coffee, to watch the world go by. Except their fat asses kept breaking the fence. My manager took the law into his own hands, literally, by building the fences again, this time with seats made from floorboards that have been in our basement for the longest time, just lying against the wall, taking up space – from before, when this was another Brooklyn coffee shop under a different name.

  Raks is waiting for me. He has changed into a plain white T-shirt, a navy blazer and some brogues. He’s wearing the same khakis.

  ‘Date clothes?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he replies. ‘I forgot how you Americans love to label everything a date. Want to go to the movies? Sure, it’s a date. Hey, I’m hungry. Let’s grab dinner. It’s a date. Who are you dating at the moment? A bunch of people. I went on a date to buy a stapler, a date to post some mail, and a date to see one of the new Marvel films. Which one? I don’t know, I was too busy making out in the back row. Because it was a date.’

  ‘I wholeheartedly feel like the British should avoid saying “making out”.’

  ‘I agree. It sounds like I’m telling your mum on you.’

  ‘So what do you want to do?’

  ‘What does one typically do on a first date?’

  ‘Get coffee, I guess.’

  ‘I bet you’re sick of coffee.’

  ‘You used that line before.’

  ‘I did. Sorry.’

  ‘So,’ I say, placing my hands on my hips. ‘This is a date?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Raks says, extending his hand. ‘Official date introductions then: I’m Raks.’

  ‘Rakhee,’ I say.

  ‘Wait, I asked out a girl called Rakhee? This is amazing. This has never happened before. I’ve literally been waiting for this moment my entire life,’ he says, standing up. He gestures with his hands to the sky like someone receiving manna from God. ‘This is the best news.’

  ‘Raks and Rakhee?’

  ‘Rakesh and Rakhee. We are equals.’

  ‘Define equal,’ I say, smiling. ‘You’re still a man. That makes you pretty much in some other level of fucking food chain, you know.’

  ‘Yes, Rakhee, but we’re both Indian. So in that respect, what trumps what? Dick or pigment? Because if pigment trumps, then we are equal. If dick trumps, well, I mean, that just sounds very funny.’

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ I say. ‘We’re kinda just riffing in front of my work at this point. And I’m tired of this place.’

  ‘Beer,’ Raks says. ‘Let’s get a beer. We need beer. See, this is what the British do on dates. They don’t date. They go somewhere that serves alcohol, let that cut through the awkwardness and inhibitions, and then they get off with each other, or they find something political to disagree on. In my experience, anyway.’

  ‘Get off?’

  ‘It’s like make out, but it sounds way more handsy, don’t you think?’

  ‘A beer would be lovely,’ I say.

  Raks pauses as if to remind me it’s my neighbourhood.

  It’s been hot today. I can see that from the number of people standing in the shade of the buildings with cold coffees. I probably made half of them. I haven’t been outside once today. Workday A/C blinkers. I can feel the middle of my back slimy with sweat now I’m exposed to the elements.

  I walk Raks to a bar that has a shaded courtyard. At this time of the day, the sun perfectly splits the street in half down the middle. Both banks have thick shade. The sun gives the street that strange au naturel Instagram filter you associate with New York City. Actually, that thing you associate, it’s a Brooklyn thing. You wouldn’t get this much axeing of light in Manhattan.

  I feel anxious for some reason.

  Raks has a nervous energy about him. Not in a way that makes me feel unsafe. Just in that he seems to talk a lot, he keeps a lot of thoughts spinning, and if he let these thoughts fall to the floor, he would have to start dealing with life.

  I spy a table in the courtyard and skip over to it, exaggerating my steps, so that any other interloper knows the wild moves I put in to secure a seat.

  Raks joins me in my bound; he skips towards the table as though he’s doing the running man. I spin round and moon-walk to the table.

  ‘That’s the worst moonwalk I’ve ever seen,’ he says.

  ‘Hey, buddy, no negging on a first date, write that rule down for sure.’

  ‘I’m not negging you. It genuinely was terrible.’

  We sit down. I wipe off a fleck of lettuce from the surface of the table. It leaves a single sesame seed. I flick that off too.

  I look up at Raks. He has put on sunglasses. Even though we’re in the shade. I can’t see him now.

  ‘What do you do, Raks?’ I ask.

  ‘Why do Americans always ask that first? Defining the parameters of engagement, as though our careers are social status. It feels so labelling. It’s like, my first question to you would be, how are you doing? What’s been happening with you? I think that’s not necessarily British, but all I can think of is that the British say, how do you do? And the Americans say, what do you do?’

  ‘Do you think you’re British?’ I ask. ‘I mean, I’m American. I get that. My national identity is clearly defined to the point where I have a cultural understanding of where I’m from, where my parents were born. But Lord above, I pledged allegiance to that damned flag every damned day for so many years at school. I’m American. Every desi from the UK I meet is always like, my dad’s from this village in Gujarat, my mum grew up near this village in Kenya, or whatever.’

  ‘We have this cricket test thing in the UK. Well, it was a thing. Maybe it wasn’t. Anyway, there was this politician, pretty old-school, and by old-school, I am implying he was probably a racist, but you know, don’t sue me. Norman Tebbit, he who invented the saying “on yer bike . . .”’

  ‘I’ve never heard that saying,’ I laugh.

  ‘He once said he didn’t understand how people don’t have jobs. Every morning his dad got on his bike and went out looking for work.’

  ‘So what’s on your bike?’

  ‘It’s like, get out of here, do something useful.’

  ‘Right, cool. And the cricket test?’

  ‘Norman Tebbit was annoyed that all these immigrants were coming over here and not supporting our sports teams. Instead they were supporting those of their countries of birth, and worse than that, their children were not integrating, because they were following their parents’ sports teams, and not England. So, if you want to be English, you support England. Or fuck off back to India.’

  ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ I say, nodding at the waiter to indicate that I am thirsty. ‘A major politician is telling you that integration is all about sports teams. Sports, sporting teams, people playing sports. Sports are stupid. I know that is the most un-Americ
an thing I can say, because society views you with the utmost suspicion if you do not like sports in this country. But how can you make such a declaration about your sense of self, your sense of identity, your sense of nationalism, according to who you support in sports?’

  ‘It’s dumb, right?’

  ‘The dumbest.’

  ‘And here’s the ridiculous thing – I did some gigs in India, and I was doing material about this very stuff, about being supposedly Indian but my dad being from Kenya, and growing up in an England where people wanted me to canonize Ian Botham over Kapil Dev – they’re both cricketers – and instead, all I wanted to do was listen to New York 1970s garage punk and watch Wes Anderson films. And you know what everyone said?’ I shake my head. ‘Nothing, not one laugh, not one acknowledgement of relatability, not one amen. Someone came up to me afterwards and said, my friend, stop living in a world that wants you to feel post-colonial and know that the feeling you have is post-colonial colonialism, that shit never dies. So just get on with life. So I stopped. I stopped doing stuff about race for a bit. Because it’s not important to everyone. It’s only important to the children of immigrants. And we’re spoilt anyway.’

  ‘Wait, so you’re an electrician?’

  Raks laughs, quietly, but it’s still a laugh.

  ‘No, I’m a comedian. I’m here doing some gigs.’

  ‘Oh, cool. That’s what you do.’

  ‘Indeed it is.’

  We order beers.

  The waiter lingers in case we want food. I shake my head.

  ‘You know, I haven’t laughed once,’ I tell him.

  ‘Yes, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that stand-ups are either unfunny morose obsessives or desperate for your laughs. Sorry.’

  ‘I’m joking, dude. But seriously, it’s sad that you didn’t want to do stuff about things that are important to you.’

  ‘My last show was about race, I guess. It was about me and my sister, and our place on the brown scale. And how, when we were growing up in London, it was so much more binary than it is now. And actually, I kinda wish I was growing up now. I wouldn’t have been ostracized by my cousins for preferring Radiohead to Safri Boys. And how frivolous it is to self-define by what band you like.’

  ‘All this stuff, it’s important.’

  ‘Only in the sense that it can make people universally comfortable or uncomfortable. Material without maximum relatability or shock doesn’t work.’

  ‘True. Yeah, the reaction to the show was strange. People laughed, sure, but there was a lot of crying. It was very, very personal. About my sister who died, and the things that made us different and the things that made us the same. Through the lens of a weird trip we took to Kenya once and how our ba told us both what our destinies would be. People really went for it. They kept saying how universal it was. And I was like, I’m glad you saw the universal stuff, but don’t forget the specific stuff about culture and heritage. I guess you’re right.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your sister.’

  ‘Thank you. The show was my way of dealing with it. I wrote it in like two weeks before Edinburgh started. I went on this weird date and got told off for my original idea. When we texted after, she was like, just write something personal. And I did.’

  ‘That’s cool,’ I say. ‘So what did your ba tell you about your naseeb?’

  ‘She told me I would be great.’

  I laugh.

  Our beers arrive. I take a sip. Raks takes off his sunglasses and squints at me while he sips his beer.

  He sneezes.

  ‘Bottled beer, man,’ he says. ‘I’m definitely allergic to whatever gas they squirt into this stuff to keep it bottle-fresh.’

  ‘You want something else?’ I ask, looking around for the waiter. He shakes his head.

  After a pause, I say, ‘I think it’s interesting. That in India, our struggle to belong is completely bewildering. It’s like, my cousins, my desi ones, whenever they come here, they’re just, like, I’m squatting here but actually I belong in India. I couldn’t live there.’

  ‘The fact that we’re even talking about it would infuriate them.’

  ‘What else is there to talk about?’ I ask.

  ‘What do you do?’ he says.

  I think about the question. I think about how to best self-define. It feels uncomfortable, untruthful, even, to say anything other than that I’m a barista. My Liberal Arts degree. My blog. The one article I put up on Medium. All of them feel like things I did when I wasn’t working.

  To be a barista.

  It’s a growth industry.

  The thought of being a writer, worse, an essayist, as a career terrifies me.

  What would that life look like? Remember when you got up at your own tempo, dressed in your favourite tweed and went and sat outside a café all day, filling your notebook with sketches that would eventually become your novel, watching the ebb and flow of those toing and froing between their jobs and homes, you thinking, I am living a waking dream right now. I am exactly where I need to be.

  No. Me neither.

  There’s nothing worse for the modern writer than the reminder of a time when we got paid, a reminder of the times of the boozy lunch, a reminder of the time when we were the main source of home entertainment. Now we’re competing with video games, streaming television, the internet, we have to work harder. And hey, we have to work. Someone tweeted this article in the English Guardian recently bemoaning the death of the novelist’s life. There was an author who couldn’t afford to build a writing shed because he couldn’t write in his house. Wah wah wah. If you can’t afford to write your next book, get a job. It’s not hard. The publishing industry is shrinking while the craft coffee experience is expanding exponentially. The world needs baristas. It makes financial sense to train up as a barista. There’s no shame in it. It’s a trade. The world loves coffee. It’s an experience that can’t be replicated on the internet. Where’s the shame in working a job?

  I am a good barista.

  ‘I’m a writer,’ I say.

  *

  Our check arrives.

  The gentleman, Raks, takes the folder and looks at it. He pulls a shocked face and returns it to the centre of the table.

  ‘I always do that joke where I pretend to be horrified by any bill. But I stacked it because I was worried you’d think I was one of those men who automatically assumes they’ll pay for the company of females and issue an edict of power.’

  ‘I’m a struggling writer,’ I say. ‘You can pay for me.’

  ‘I’m a comedian doing a night in Brooklyn,’ he replies. ‘We’re a long way away from the Tonight Show.’

  ‘But you’re destined to be great,’ I say. ‘You may not be able to afford two beers now. But when you hit manifest destiny, you’ll laugh about this moment.’

  I take the folder and open it to look at the bill. $17. I get out my wallet and scan down the items listed, to make sure we haven’t been screwed. I’m just like my dad. The accountant. With his own calculator. His own diligence at ensuring that nothing was being sneakily added to the total.

  The man assumed the entire world was trying to take advantage of him. I assumed, for years, it was because of the way our family had left Uganda. Then I realized it was his nature. He wasn’t suffering from a longstanding grief of exile from the country of his birth. He was naturally paranoid.

  We’re good.

  Table 13, I note. Underneath, it says Mr and Mrs Apu.

  I look up at the waiter. He’s innocuously tattooed, a patchwork quilt of maritime and ’70s cartoon references snake around his forearm, like a cast of characters, lining up to say hello. He wears a Miami Heat basketball top and he wears his hair in a man-bun.

  Apu. From The Simpsons. Us. Really.

  Raks raises his eyebrows at me. I grimace.

  Thank you, come again.

  ‘What?’ he asks. I push the folder towards him. He opens it and scans the receipt. ‘That’s expensive, innit? It’s just bot
tles.’

  I tap on the offending section of the receipt. He looks at it, then he looks up at me. He looks around. There aren’t that many people in here. He looks at the waiter and back at me before rolling his eyes.

  ‘Fucking hipsters,’ he whispers.

  ‘Right?’

  ‘He’s not getting any tip.’

  ‘He’s not getting any of our money either.’

  ‘He probably thinks it’s cool.’

  ‘Is that okay? Is that good enough?’

  Raks thinks hard about his answer. He pauses. He scratches in the epicentre of his mass of curly hair, searching for the crown.

  ‘No, I guess not,’ he says.

  The waiter walks over to us; he’s removed his cap.

  ‘You all set?’ he asks.

  I stare at him. He has bleached blonde hair, with no roots. That, coupled with his very pale skin, the sallow Draco Malfoy milky-skin look, the hollow small eyes and omniscient smirk, it angers me so much.

  ‘What the fuck, man? Apu?’ I hold up the receipt to him.

  He goes to grab it.

  ‘What’s that?’ he says.

  I pull it back.

  ‘Oh, no, I’m holding on to this one. I’m going to make it internet-famous. Apu? Thank you, come again? Is that how you distinguish us? As Indian? We came here to drink a beer and you racially abuse us and charge us seventeen bucks for the privilege?’

  ‘I – I’m sorry,’ he says. He throws his hands up as if to absolve himself of any guilt. ‘Look, I’m no racist. I’m from Virginia. That’s just how we talk down there. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d see that.’

  He makes a grab for the receipt.

  I stand up to face him. I look down. Raks has placed his thumbs at the top of his nose and is pressing down, looking up at our confrontation, almost embarrassed.

  ‘You didn’t think I’d see that? Is that really your idea of an apology? I’m sorry you saw my racist receipt. You weren’t meant to see my racist receipt. So because you saw the racist receipt you weren’t meant to see, I mean, that’s on you. Is that your argument? Is that what you’re telling me? That’s just how we talk down there? How does that have any impact on my life whatsoever? You telling me that your common racist parlance in your state of wherever-the-fuck is acceptable everywhere else? I mean, how dare you? How dare you blame me?’