Civil Lines

by Radhika Swarup

  It was Sonia who told us not to lose heart. She had been slow to commit to The Satirist, and full of disclaimers about the calls on her time, but she now refused to give way to Tasha-di’s worries. ‘Siya is right,’ she told us. ‘It’s not like we have much to lose, is it?’

  ‘We have Siya’s money,’ came Tasha-di’s terse reply.

  ‘It’s a wonderful idea for a magazine.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘It is,’ insisted Sonia. ‘I have been asked to join magazines and newspapers for years and have never been tempted. Now I am not only on board, but excited about the future. So what if a silly child can’t see the opportunity?’

  Tasha-di had taken on the mantle of doom-monger once more. She didn’t say anything to Sonia but her face remained downcast.

  ‘Others will,’ said Sonia. She stood up, as if on a podium, and looked at us. We were in the garden room, the scene of so many of Ma and Tasha-di’s soirees, and a weary Tasha-di shook her head. Sonia sat back down, landing weightily on the spent cushion.

  I nodded now, and Maya, who had listened quietly to us all this while, turned to Tasha-di. ‘We’ve come so far,’ she said. ‘And we have Sonia on board. Others will join us too; you wait and see.’

  Sonia’s next suggestion was for a caricaturist she had once worked with. Maya and I worried about our attractiveness to an employable person, but Sonia reassured us he would be unable to resist us. ‘Ajay is a contrarian. He comes from a well-off family, and turned to art, not because he had to or was encouraged to, but rather because he was told it was an unworthy pursuit. His parents would have preferred him to go into the family business, but there has always been a perverse element to him.’

  I wasn’t sure if I much cared for the implied analogy. ‘He’ll work for us, then,’ I asked, ‘because he shouldn’t?’

  ‘Just meet him and see.’

  I hadn’t replied to Benjamin’s last message, but I heard from him again. ‘Have you overtaken the Times of India yet?’

  ‘It’s a magazine we’re setting up, genius, and not a newspaper.’

  He sent a winking emoji, and while I attempted to decipher his purpose, he added, ‘That was my clunky attempt to ask how you are.’

  ‘Still understaffed,’ I wrote.

  ‘If you want,’ he shot back, ‘you can use my published articles in your magazine.’

  Great, I thought. More lifestyle features in my political magazine. ‘I can’t afford to pay you.’

  ‘I don’t want payment,’ he replied.

  He was listed on the phone as typing, but no new message appeared, and I wrote, ‘I’m not sure your work will suit us.’

  No reply appeared for a while, and I assumed he had abandoned the message he had been typing out. Then my phone beeped. ‘My holidays gone wrong series would be perfect for you.’

  ‘Holidays gone wrong?’

  ‘I’ll send you a couple of articles,’ he typed. ‘You decide if they work for you.’

  I didn’t reply, but my phone lit up after a few seconds. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘let me do this for you.’

  Ajay came in smelling of smoke. He made no chit-chat, didn’t ask how we all met or what led to the founding of the magazine, just stood looking down at us all sitting primly, hands folded over our laps in our bamboo armchairs, and smiled. I knew instinctively the kind of man he was. Sexist, elitist, entitled. He’d be ignoring deadlines by the end of the week, and would consider us lucky for having secured his services. He saw me looking at him and winked. I had never felt so inconsequential before, nor so frivolous, and I hated him on sight.

  But Sonia was rising and patting him on the back. ‘Ajay will never win a beauty contest,’ she said, as the man laughed, ‘but just wait till you see his work.’

  A portfolio was produced, and sheets of drawings were passed around. I frowned as I looked at them. Ajay leaned, his back to the wall, his t-shirt rolled up on the sleeves, as if waiting for adulation. He caught me looking at him. His lips curled at the ends, and I glared. He grinned. I shook my head disapprovingly and returned to his work.

  Maya and Tasha-di had been through his other work by this point, and passed this to me. ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘Well,’ and as I opened the first page of his portfolio, I thought of polite ways to turn him down. I scanned the first image, a cartoon of a pot-bellied politician, and sighed. I turned to the next page, a caricature of a famous actor, and frowned. I looked up to see

  Ajay watching me through lidded eyes and sighed again.

  I turned page after page, and though I continued to sigh and make non-committal noises, the truth was clear. Ajay had a rare talent for expression.

  I was determined not to praise him, though, and I knew he would grate on me and my team. There he reclined, against my wall, as if the honour of viewing his art was mine. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing I admired his work. ‘Hmm,’ I said, when Sonia rose.

  ‘Well,’ she said, taking the work out of my hand. ‘I remember your art being good, Ajay,’ she said, ‘but this is much better than I remembered.’

  Maya joined the two ex-colleagues. ‘Yes,’ she said, nodding avidly, and I knew she was enthused by Ajay’s work. ‘These pictures,’ she said, waving at the portfolio Sonia held in her hands, ‘they’re just fantastic.’

  She looked around to the both of us for confirmation. Tasha-di was looking at me, but at Maya’s prompt, she nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I agree with the others. My only worry is whether we can afford you.’

  Ajay had his eyes on me, waiting for my reaction, but at Tasha-di’s words, he stood straight. ‘I know what I’m getting into here,’ he told her. ‘I fully expect the magazine to be loss making for the first year.’ I bristled at his words, and he said slowly, turning his attention back to me, ‘and that is the best case scenario. I’ve seen lots of these things start and fold.’ There was a hint of a smile in his face, and I turned quickly away. ‘Like I was saying, the odds are stacked against you.’ I heard a noise I took to be a laugh, and turned back to see him say, ‘But I’m there. I love the story, and I think this is either an inspired or deluded moment to launch a print magazine.’ He was quiet for a long moment, his eyes fixed on me. ‘I’m not sure as yet which it is, but I’m here for the ride.’

  On his way out, Ajay bumped into Pradeep. He brushed into the driver, and instead of apologising, he laughed, patting the man playfully on his back. Pradeep didn’t say anything, shrinking instead back into the shadows, but later he approached me. ‘Didi,’ he said.

  I presumed he wanted to talk about his fiancée. ‘Yes, Pradeep?’

  ‘It’s about that Ajay Sir.’

  I frowned.

  ‘You know, Didi,’ the driver continued, ‘I’m not sure about him working in the house.’

  I didn’t speak.

  ‘You know,’ he said. He was clearly uncomfortable voicing his opinion, and my silence unnerved him, but he battled on. ‘You are all such nice-nice ladies working. I think this man will make trouble.’

  The precise nature of Pradeep’s concern was not delved into, and when I thanked him for his warning, he took it to mean our conversation was at an end. He nodded, walking back to his quarters, and as he walked, I thought I heard him mutter ‘trouble’.

  Ajay joined our team. Natasha had turned us down, and Tania hadn’t returned Maya’s calls, but the artist’s enthusiasm for The Satirist had filled us with renewed vigour. The two new recruits agreed to work for an honorarium for the first year, limiting our costs to the actual production of the magazine.

  I approached a few local shops, asking them to stock copies of the launch issue of the magazine for free. We knew it was a big ask, but we had always frequented these stores and were known to the proprietors. As we expanded our operations, first through Delhi, and then across India, we would have to face market economics, but for the moment, the shops that knew us told us they would stock our magazine without charge.

  XIII

  The weathe
r turned cooler. We packed away our white cottons and brought out our winter shawls. The first issue of the magazine was taking shape. A launch date was set for the first of December, as was a launch party to mark the occasion. It was mainly Maya and Sonia who called their contacts, but acceptances were flowing in, prompted by curiosity as much as by interest, and we had to change our plans to host the event in the garden room and open out the garden beyond too.

  We worked hard, then, on the event, and on the issue. Our brainstorming sessions officially took place in the morning over cups of tea in the garden room, but Maya and I began our discussions as we took our morning walks. She continued to surprise me with the extent to which she was taking ownership of the magazine. I had spent so long finding solutions—arguing against Maya and Tasha-di’s uncertainty—that I hadn’t thought to think about the tone of the magazine.

  I knew it was to be political, I knew it would focus on Delhi in the early issues, and I knew we weren’t to seek advertising until we had established our readership, but it was Maya who pointed out that our magazine didn’t have anything to differentiate it from the others in circulation.

  I worried she was having renewed doubts, and told her that The Satirist was a great magazine.

  She pounced on my words. ‘Exactly! But where is the satirical content?’

  I paused. ‘Benjamin’s article fits the bill,’ I said defensively, ‘and Ajay’s cartoons do too.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘But that’s it. Sonia’s writing is fantastic, but I had forgotten her style. It’s hard-hitting, it’s raw and honest and empathetic, but it’s not satirical.’

  A woman walked past us in a blaze of pink velour. A young maid hurried behind her, carrying a bottle of water and a perfumed face towel. Maya and I both smiled. ‘That,’ my sister told me, ‘is Raja Singh’s wife.’

  I turned around to look at the retreating pair.

  ‘He,’ Maya was saying, ‘is the most successful investor in India. They say he’s launched entire industries.’

  Mrs Bhatnagar had mentioned Mrs Singh before, eulogising her glamour and hospitality. Her fragrance still lingered in the air, a sharp, citrus smell, but Maya was turning me towards her. ‘He’s iconic, Siya.’

  I nodded, ready to reprise our walk, but Maya was still speaking. ‘He’s the one to copy. And he wouldn’t invest in a magazine without a USP.’

  I thought of Mrs Singh sashaying on her walk. ‘What if,’ I suggested, ‘I write a short column called, “The Adventures of Arrival”?’ I saw Maya studying me, and I added, ‘I’ll make it tongue-in-cheek. Focus on the misconceptions so many have about life in Delhi—from foreigners to our own non-resident Indians.’

  ‘That could be something.’ Maya nodded. She began walking, and as we closed in on the trail of Mrs Singh’s perfume, she nodded again, ‘And I can write a short column called “Today in Politics” about the most ridiculous utterances made by India’s politicians.’

  Back at home, we debated our feature article. India seemed more divided than it had been since Independence. Maya wanted to write an article on the controversial right-wing Prime Minister, but Tasha-di worried about alienating conservative readers.

  We were stuck, arguing with Tasha-di that we wouldn’t be cowed. We were going to write truth to power, but Tasha-di held firm. It was foolish, at this early stage, to set at least half the population against us. It seemed like we were never going to agree, and I had started to think of lifestyle articles we could use for the first issue, when Shanti came up with an alternative.

  ‘Why don’t you write about demonetisation?’

  I remembered hearing about demonetisation in London. Over the course of one evening in November 2016, as the world focussed on Donald Trump—another populist, right-wing leader—get elected in the US, the majority of India’s bank notes were rendered illegal tender. I had read an article on the internet, and as I had tried to explain the enormity of the action to Benjamin, I had told him, ‘India is largely a cash-based economy. Imagine not using your credit cards in London. Imagine not having internet banking. And then, imagine 86 per cent of the currency in circulation—your £5 notes, your £10 notes, your £20 notes, heck, the equivalent of all your pound coins too—being made illegal overnight.’

  I had read briefly about demonetisation in the days after it had occurred, had registered the rationale appeared to be to root out black money and terrorism from across the border, but my attention had been diverted by the events in America. Trump had been elected, and it appeared the world would never be the same again. Back in India, hundreds of millions were queueing up at bank branches to trade in their newly illegal money for new money that was being dispensed in slow, painful drips, and as Shanti now told us, a man in her village had been driven to suicide because of demonetisation.

  ‘His daughter was to be married at the start of December,’ she told us. She spoke phlegmatically, as if it was natural for these big policy rollouts to punish the working man. ‘The girl’s family had been saving for years. You know how it is,’ and we all nodded. The rest of us lived in affluent areas in Delhi, but we’d all been brought up by our mothers penny-pinching, siphoning little sums from the monthly household budget to save. It was never for themselves, rather for an after-school activity, or for a new item of furniture, or for a wedding or for further education. Saving in India began with the birth of a child, and we could easily imagine the villager’s family pilfering money from their monthly expenses to save for their daughter’s wedding.

  ‘He had all this money in cash, and he had all these expenses he had committed to—the henna-wallah, the rented jewellery, the florist for the ceremony, the shehnai musicians, the caterers, the venue, the priest. All of that had been budgeted for, and all of that was to have been paid for with money that was no longer accepted anywhere.’

  There were several echoing anecdotes; labourers who went unpaid as cash ran out, people who could no longer buy their vegetables, middle-class people—the urban, those who paid their restaurant bills with credit cards but left cash tips for the waiters—who found themselves unable to pay their tips when they dined out. ‘Right,’ said Shanti dismissively. ‘Delhi suffered. But the girl in my village was unable to get married. The shame of a cancelled wedding…’ Shanti grimaced. ‘The girl’s life was ruined. The disgrace was such that she was never going to get another offer of marriage and the poor, humiliated father ended up hanging himself one night after his daughter had cried herself to sleep.’

  We were all silent. ‘So yes,’ Shanti went on, ‘Delhi suffered after demonetisation. But it was the working, the labourers, the poor who were paid in cash, and the poor who saved in cash who suffered the most.’

  ‘Shanti,’ I said, feeling ineffectual, ‘were you close?’

  ‘Were we close?’ Shanti huffed. ‘Were we close, baby? Does that even matter?’

  Her testimony decided us. We were to lead with a piece on demonetisation, and Sonia, charged with writing the article, used Shanti’s villager as the basis for her article. She would come in early in the morning, just as Shanti was preparing our breakfast, and set to asking her questions. ‘This girl,’ Shanti complained. ‘She’s there every time I turn around. I can’t breathe, I can’t cook, I can’t clean for fear of her never-ending questions. Hasn’t she heard of newspapers? The story was covered in The Times. She could look there instead of troubling me. And,’ Shanti spat out, ‘she eats paranthas quicker than I can make them. She’s a pest, that woman.’

  ‘Come on, Shanti,’ I reasoned. ‘She’s trying to shine a light on how your poor neighbour suffered.’

  ‘What poor neighbour?’ Shanti scowled. ‘The man was a brute. Kept on trying to build on our land.’

  Shanti continued dissatisfied, then, until I urged Sonia to back off. Ajay took her off to the streets of Delhi to find some builders who had suffered with the dying supply of money, and peace was slowly restored. Together, the pair unearthed the invisible victims of a new government’s macho
foray into economic policymaking—the heartbroken families, the starving labourers, the unpaid workers. The feature, ‘Demonetisation: An Intimate Portrait’, was the lead for our first issue.

  Elsewhere in the house, Shanti prepared for the launch party. She prepared and froze kebabs and samosas, and Pradeep took over the organisation. He hired waiters, he selected barmen, and he oversaw the erection of a tent in the garden.

  While they worked, he and Shanti planned for the upcoming wedding too. Horoscopes were matched, earnest looking pandits consulted, and the date for the wedding was set. Pradeep was due to be married the week after The Satirist launched. I offered to accompany the mother-son duo to the wedding, but Shanti refused. ‘You will be busy here, Baby,’ she told me. It was early in the morning, and she had just brought my tea into my room. The sun was rising later, and though Maya and I had reprised our daily walks, we were beginning to leave later in the mornings. The curtains were pulled open, and as a dim, syrupy sunlight trickled in, I asked again, ‘But it is your only son’s wedding, Shanti. When will you celebrate like this again?’

  She smiled, then carried on opening the windows.

  ‘I should be there too.’

  ‘Really,’ she said. She came to my bed and put a hand on my head. This had been our routine since my childhood, Shanti with her hand on my head. She would use the touch to reassure, to reprove, and to caress, and I leaned into her touch. ‘We’ll be back with the bride in a week. There’s no point in you coming all the way.’

  Later that day, I complained to Maya. ‘I don’t see why she doesn’t want us there.’

  ‘She’s in a very unhappy marriage,’ replied Maya. I stuck out my lip in disapproval, but my sister carried on. ‘Her husband abuses her physically. And this is the woman who has been in charge of us for all our lives. She has loved us; she has cared for us; she has wiped away our tears. Do you think she would want us to see her humiliated in her own home?’