by Arnab Ray
But he wanted to do it. For Arijit’s sake.
So he started. Some of what he said happened. Some didn’t. Soon he was on his own, spinning one story after another – the sparkle in Arijit’s eyes was all the encouragement he needed to go on, for if this bright kid believed the stuff he was making up, he was doing all right. Then after some time, what would comfortably be more than an hour, they both heard the sound of the key turning in the lock outside. Arijit looked at Arjun with alarm, put his finger on his lips, and ran away out of the room, a spring in his step, dropping the badminton racquet where it had been.
Arjun’s mind was made up. He was not going to let his story be told to his children by someone else.
He would live not through others’ words, but his own.
He was going to go to war.
‘Why are you doing this? Why?’ The surprise in Arjun’s voice had now been replaced by fierce exasperation. ‘I don’t know why I told you anything about the money. One should never tell women anything.’
Nayantara smiled indulgently, sliced a piece of the kabiraji cutlet off with her knife, and scooped it into her mouth elegantly with the fork. Arjun had an early morning flight back to Delhi the next day and Nayantara had suggested they have dinner at Mitra Cabin, the little place they had had their first dinner together, unchanged through these years with its small private cabins, ageold walls with peeling plaster of paris, ancient soot-clad fans, food that left little ringlets of oil on the plate long after it had vanished, and officious waiters smelling of deep-fried pakoras.
Arjun explained, a hint of desperation in his voice, ‘When I said money was going to be tight, I never meant that I would be sleeping on the street. The house will stay, at the least the one we live in. I will sell the foreign car but we will still have the Ambassador. I will keep my family, perhaps not in the way they are used to, but still in a way that is more than good, and if I can do all that, I sure can look after you and Arijit.’
Nayantara stopped chewing, and said, ‘It was here in this place that I made a deal.’
‘And your point is?’
‘I am freeing you from it.’
‘Aren’t we getting just a bit filmy? I am telling you I will have the money.’
Nayantara’s eyes, large and placid, remained as calm as ever. Arjun’s steadily rising voice and his clenching of his fork seemed to have no effect on her.
‘Every little bit helps.’
‘What am I telling you? I have the money.’
‘I know what you spend on us isn’t a little bit. I made sure that it was not. Anyway, it’s not about money. It’s about your family. I want you to keep them close. Bring the boys back from their boarding school, keep them around, talk to your wife, make your marriage work.’ A piece of the kobiraji cutlet dropped off from the end of her fork on to her plate and she picked it with a quick stab. ‘It’s you who says that the only thing that matters in life is family.’
‘Yes, I do. What about it?’
‘Well, now don’t just say it, show it. You have to know what you are fighting for, or you will never win.’
‘But…but you are like my family too. I have never thought of you and Arijit to be different.’
She did not reply. They sat in silence for a minute till Arjun finally said, ‘Something else is the matter, isn’t it?’
‘It’s over.’
‘What?’
She went back to her cutlet.
‘Look at me.’ Arjun reached out across the table and held her hand firmly. ‘What’s over? What are you saying?’
‘When I came here to Mitra Cabin all those years ago, I was scared. Very scared. You wouldn’t have made that out from the way I talked, all forward and confident, but I was shaking all over inside. I was desperate then, I had a son and no money, and nothing to sell except myself, even if it was to the man who I knew had killed my husband. I knew I could get a job but I also knew that sooner or later it would come to that only. Me in exchange of security. I figured it was better to give myself to you than to a stranger though God knows why I thought of you as not a stranger, since I had met you for only five minutes before.’
‘Why are you saying all this? What’s going on?’
‘But it’s wrong, Arjun. All these years it has always been wrong. I was sleeping with a married man for money. I tried to put that simple fact out of my head, in the same way I guess you put what people do with the guns they buy from you out of your head, but I really could not. I was scared that God would punish me, punish us, for our sins. Maybe he already has.’
‘And you realize it’s a sin right about the time I get kicked in the teeth? Is there someone else now? Or do you think I can no longer keep you?’ Arjun’s voice stayed icy cold and Nayantara’s hands felt colder still.
Nayantara smiled, and this time there was a wan sadness to it. ‘See that’s the thing. I don’t want to be your keep. I don’t want to be anyone’s keep. I want to live my life as a person. I want to be me. Nayantara. Not the moll. Not the little escape on the side. Just a woman. Just a mother.’
‘If you want, I can marry you. I know of people with two wives. I can do that. Is that what you want? Recognition of our relationship?’
Nayantara shook her head firmly, biting her lip with determination. ‘No. Never. I do not want to be your wife. Not your second, not your first. Remember that day you had asked me if that was what my game was, whether it was to trick you into marriage? I said no, and I meant it.’
‘Ab bas bhi karo yaar.’ Arjun slammed his palms on the table, making the crockery jangle. ‘Will you stop talking about what I said years ago? I didn’t know you then, I know you now.’ He leaned forward, and said the words very slowly, with more passion than he thought he had. ‘What do you want me to do? To go down on my knees?’
‘No.’
‘Well, what can I say? I need you more than ever. You are the only person I have in my life.’
‘No, I am not. That’s exactly why I need to go. I am just a hobby, an expensive one at that, and you have to put your hobbies on hold for now.’
‘You know how happy my marriage is.’
‘Whose fault is that? It’s not your wife’s. It’s yours and it’s mine.’ She adjusted a strand of hair from her forehead. ‘A wife can never compete with the other woman. I know. I was someone’s wife once.’
The waiter gently lifted the curtain and peeked in and his stern expression told Arjun to keep his voice and the cutlery banging down. Arjun reached into his pocket, took out a fifty-rupee note and banged it down on the table and gestured to the waiter to leave. He promptly took it and backed out.
‘It’s because your whole attention is on coming to Calcutta that you can never enjoy being in Delhi. That’s why your marriage is in such a mess. That’s why you never saw RP coming. That’s why all of these things happened. My husband…he did the same thing. And see what happened to him.’
‘You are saying RP is God’s revenge because I am not a faithful married man?’
Nayantara opened her mouth to say something, stopped, thought for a second and then continued. ‘Love your wife, take care of her, make your marriage work. Beat that bastard RP to the ground. I know you will do it. I just know it.’
‘Why are you doing all this? Just before I am leaving, all this? We had one week and you never said anything.’
‘Because I didn’t want this conversation to ruin everything. I wanted to take care of you, in the best way I could, not at the Grand but in my own place, not as a keep but as a friend. I don’t know if you care any more, but this was the best week of my life. Me and you. Friends.’
‘You really are serious about breaking this off?’
‘I am. Very serious.’
‘Can I call? Can we just meet if I am in Calcutta? I promise I won’t take you to the Grand, since you seem to hate that so much.’
‘I am going to leave the city. I hope I can trust you not to come looking for me or to put one of your men on my tail.’
‘Why are you running from me?’
‘It’s not going to work for either of us otherwise.’
‘How will you survive?’ asked Arjun, his voice breaking a bit.
‘You have been generous enough. I have some money now. I am thinking of starting a Rabindrasangeet school. Plus I am good with a sewing machine.’ She patted Arjun’s hand. ‘If I were very principled I would have given back the jewellery you bought for me. But I am not that much of a Harishchandra. So don’t worry. I do know how to look after myself.’
Arjun pushed away his plate. ‘You take me for a fool? You are dumping me because you think I won’t have money. You think I am going to lose.’ Arjun could now barely bring the words out, he was so angry. ‘You think I am not man enough. Don’t I know? You are just moving on to a new target.’
Arjun stood up and walked out in a huff, slamming more notes on the fake-silver plate that had the bill, not noticing that Nayantara had taken out her handkerchief to quietly daub away the tears at the corners of her eyes.
9
Once back in Delhi, Arjun focused all his energy on restructuring his finances. There was no way around it – he would have to sell off most of what he had. The problem was that it would be impossible to hide all this selling from Preeti.
Of course, Arjun did not plan to tell her about RP because she would not understand. It was worse to consider a scenario where she might actually understand, and that scared him even more. Maybe like Nayantara, she too would see him for what he was right now, less of a man, unable to provide for his family in the way that he always had. She knew her husband had never been an upright law-abiding citizen but had never quizzed him on the details, what exactly it was that he did or where he went. As long as there was money to do the things she wanted, servants available to dust and clean, ayahs available to look after the children, cooks and gardeners to make sure that the dinner table and the garden looked straight out of high-living glossies, she had been happy to keep herself occupied elsewhere. The silent provider and the unquestioning housewife, this was the contract on which their marriage had stood for all these years, and now Arjun was going to have to change the terms.
He broke the news to her gently, a few days after coming back from Calcutta, just before they were going to bed. As usual, she was at the dressing table, rubbing moisturizing lotion on her arms and shoulders as she did every night before settling down with a film glossy. He had avoided making eye contact throughout the uncomfortable conversation, sparing as many details as he possibly could. With the Emergency and the police becoming more and more aggressive, business was becoming tough. She had thought it was just idle complaining, the kind that husbands do at the end of a long day. It had taken him some time to make her understand the gravity of the situation. The houses he had bought for Sudheer and Mohan were going to have to be sold, and the one he had been thinking of buying for Riti, well, that was no longer going to happen. Not for now, anyway. The foreign car would have to go and so would much of the hired help. He could see the alarm in Preeti’s eyes though she did remain calm, at least by her standards. ‘How did things get so bad so fast?’ she asked several times in different ways. He shrugged the question away with an evasive ‘times are bad’. Then he had brought up bringing Sudheer and Mohan back from boarding school. He had thought Preeti would be the happiest about this.
To his surprise, this was where she protested the most. The boys had settled in their boarding schools, she insisted, and bringing them back would disrupt their lives all over again. Arjun wished he could tell Preeti the real reason he wanted the boys back. It wasn’t just the money. He was afraid for their security. If things went south, and RP made his move, he would come after Arjun’s family and if the boys were in Dehra Dun, Arjun would have no control over their movements. It was better for them to stay in their walled house, be schooled for a year or two at home by tutors for they were never going to be geniuses anyway, and he would invest in a good set of security guards, not the kind that walked around with a wooden stick and slept on duty after having opium, but those with licensed firearms and training. Yes, it would cost him but the most important thing he needed right now was peace at home, to know that his family was well guarded, and that if RP truly came after him with the full force of his power, they would stand a chance.
Arjun tried his best but he just could not get through to his wife and she started crying. She offered to sell her jewellery in order to keep the boys in school, but Arjun assured her that that would not be needed. Then she asked him, ‘If business is bad, are you going to be staying home now?’ He said he would not be, as a matter of fact he would be gone for long stretches of time. ‘Why?’ she asked and Arjun wondered when she had last questioned his decision on anything. ‘I have to get our business back on track, that’s why, and I can’t do that sitting at home,’ had been his reply and then he had rolled over, turning his back to her, which, in the house of Bhatias, meant that the conversation was officially over. But not today.
‘Are we in some kind of danger?’ she asked.
He grunted back a ‘no’, desperately trying to fall asleep but there was no mistaking the frosty resolve that seemed to envelop him on his own bed.
‘It’s that woman, isn’t it?’
‘What woman?’ His stomach felt heavy and a dull pain throbbed at the base of his spine, the kind of sensation he had not felt before, at least not in his own bedroom.
‘The woman from Calcutta. The one jisse tum chodne jaate ho. And have been doing for years.’
Arjun had never heard his wife use the Hindi word for ‘fuck’. It was not the kind of word he had ever expected her to use, ‘romantic’ being her euphemism for anything carnal. But that was the least of his surprises for now. Preeti knew about Nayantara and Arjun figured it would be useless to deny or pretend.
‘No, it isn’t her.’
‘Of course it is her. She is blackmailing you now, isn’t she, that randi? I knew this was going to happen. I knew it.’ She patted her forehead theatrically, her bangles clanging together. ‘She found out how much money you have come into, and you are too big a fool to understand how women work, and now she is squeezing the lemon to see how much she can juice out. Tell me…tell me that’s the truth…and I can deal with her. Who does the kutiya think she is going to blackmail you with? Me? Well, tell her that I know.’
‘Trust me,’ he said, and knew immediately that the word trust sounded strange right now. ‘It’s not her. Anyway, that’s over.’ They were right next to each other on the bed but yet the distance between them felt like Delhi and Lahore.
There was sadness in her voice now. And hurt. ‘I have known for a long time. She made you feel good, much more than I could ever hope to.’
‘It’s not like…’ Arjun tried to interject.
‘No, don’t deny that. I could see the difference between when you left the house for her and when you left the house for everything else. You would dress better, you would put on your duty-free perfume, and you would come back happy.’
‘How did you know?’
‘You forget who gives your jackets and your clothes to the washerman, and who cleans out your pockets and arranges the notes in your wallet. Ticket stubs from Calcutta, for a movie you told me you had not seen. Receipts for saris I never got. Once a picture of her too.’ She stopped, choked up and then said, ‘She is very beautiful.’
First RP, now Preeti. Maybe he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was nor was he as careful. Maybe that was the lesson for him in all this. Maybe Nayantara had been right. He had lost his game.
‘It’s not her,’ he said, trying to maintain the impassive demeanour he thought Preeti had always associated him with.
‘Then what is it? What is it that needs you to sell our houses, our cars and bring my boys back from boarding if it’s not for that randi?’
Arjun reached out to the side table for the glass, took a big gulp of water and began. He needed Preeti on his side and she deserve
d the truth. He outlined his operations in Delhi, how he made money, and who RP was. He did not tell her about the buried gold and how he was made to dig it out and how much of his business he had had to cede to RP. But by the time he had finished, Preeti looked frightened. ‘Let’s leave everything and buy back my father’s garage. You are good with cars, and our sons will learn on the job. We can make a lot of money.’
Arjun touched her comfortingly on the nape of her neck and, to his relief, she did not shake him off.
‘We can’t hide. We can’t run. And we shouldn’t.’
‘But why?’ she pleaded. ‘Why can’t you just let go? That’s why you came to Delhi, you told me. Because it was too risky, running guns. Now if this place is even worse, even more dangerous, why would you even want to stay here?’
Arjun had thought about this many times before. Why? Why was he doing this? He knew the answer now and so it rolled off his tongue smoothly.
‘I don’t know what I told you but I didn’t leave the gunrunning business just because it was too dangerous. I quit once I knew I could make more money taking less risks. I didn’t run, Preeti, I climbed. I have climbed all my life. And I am going to be damned if I let some madarchod with nothing but a big name kick me down from that ladder. If I run today, if I climb down a rung, I will run all my life, I will slip down to the bottom and I will break. I will be your husband but I won’t be the Arjun you married. Do you want that?’
She looked up at him and shook her head.
‘Then I want you to help me. I need all of you, the boys, Riti, all of you together here.’
He felt her breath on him, heavy and tense.
