Civil Lines

by Radhika Swarup

  ‘Yes,’ I said. It was difficult to argue against nationalism unencumbered with nuance.

  ‘Do you think it’s nice for foreigners to come and read such stuff about India?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘You’re new here,’ the woman said with no apparent irony. ‘You’ll have been subject to propaganda outside India. But what you have to understand is that this is a new, ambitious government. It is bent on making India better. It is bent on effecting change. You’ve heard about the Swachh Bharat initiative. Write about that. The Prime Minister himself goes around sweeping the streets to illustrate the point. It’s an entire mindset that is being changed, and it will take time. But you have to trust the Prime Minister, and you have to reflect India at its best.’

  We had reached Mr Seth’s shop. Another reader was waiting outside, a comment on her lips, and I quickly turned to Mrs Bhatnagar. ‘Thank you so much for the chat,’ I told her, reaching forward to hug her. She was taken aback by my gesture, but didn’t otherwise react. The other reader—another broad, loquacious lady in late middle-age—stepped forward to talk to me about Puneeta’s review. ‘Is it true?’ she asked, ‘that Delhi has an Armenian restaurant now?’ I confirmed the news, and then she took me by the arm. ‘But what I really wanted to talk to you was about these labour chowks.’ Her eyes grew wide. ‘Are they real? Do they really exist?’ I nodded, and she added, ‘Can you really buy a whole day’s labour for Rs 200?’

  Ben loved Sonia’s article. ‘This is ground-breaking writing,’ he wrote to me in his email. ‘These are the real issues. Not just what new resort is opening in Bali.’ I couldn’t be sure if this was discontent with his life, but I didn’t probe. I corresponded with Ben more frequently than I had for months, and this level of interaction, professional and familiar at the same time, felt doable.

  He was now contributing to every issue of The Satirist, and most weeks began with either a submission or with edits. We didn’t talk much about each other’s lives. I didn’t ask if he had a new girlfriend, or if his work was going well. When the lease on my property ran out, he retrieved the two boxes I had left behind. These were now stored in his parents’ garage, but he hadn’t asked me when I would be back to collect them, and I didn’t offer him any information either. It meant something to me, and perhaps to him too, my possessions in his childhood home, and in the meantime we carried on our professional relationship as if there had never been any claims of love between us. There was no reprising our relationship of old, but the echoes that remained brought with them the most pleasant aspects of our life together; all the joy, all the warmth and none of its bitterness.

  Tasha-di’s health didn’t improve. The seasonal flu she had contracted lingered, lodging itself in her lungs, and the last time we visited, she had a fever and a cough that wouldn’t budge. We drove her straight to the hospital. A battery of tests was performed, and at its end, she was diagnosed with bronchitis.

  ‘With people of an advanced age,’ the doctor, a young man with an earnest manner, was saying, and Tasha-di rolled her eyes. I patted her on the back and nodded at the doctor. ‘Well,’ he was saying, clearing his throat, ‘they have to be monitored much more carefully.’

  Maya and I returned with Tasha-di to her flat. The place smelt musty, as if it hadn’t been aired in ages, and I saw piles of paper on top of the coffee table. This is how it starts, I thought. With a fall, with an illness, with an inability to function as before. The light in the living room had blown a fuse, and when I asked Tasha-di where she kept her spare bulbs, she had pointed to a cupboard by the kitchen.

  It was bare, and as I looked around in other shelves for bulbs, Maya asked me, ‘You’ve changed bulbs before?’

  ‘I’ve lived alone,’ I reminded her. ‘I’ve managed.’

  ‘Exactly,’ crowed Tasha-di. ‘We’ve both managed.’ She rose now with instructions on where she kept her spare bulbs, and Maya had to entreat her to sit back down. I gave up on my quest, and the three of us sat down, side by side in the dark, on Tasha-di’s small sofa.

  ‘Tasha-di,’ Maya was saying in a patient, soft voice, and Tasha-di must have known what was to follow, as she began again to talk about how independent she had always been.

  ‘My marriage ended forty-forty five years ago,’ she recounted. ‘It ended almost as soon as it began. And here I was, this childless, friendless woman, all alone in Delhi.’ We had heard this story countless times, and normally were on the lookout for new titbits to be gleaned from her. One day she would let slip details of the last argument she had had with her ex-husband, and on another occasion, about the paltry divorce settlement he made on her. This once, though, we willed her silent. Her days of complete self-reliance were at an end, for a while at the least, and we needed her to stop battling the change. ‘I had no friends here, and no family, not really, apart from my father’s dead brother’s widow. She was kind, and I always had a warm reception at her home, but everything else, profession, money, company, I had to take care of all alone. There was no community looking out for me, I can tell you this.’ She glared at Maya, who had asked Tasha-di how she was managing on her own.

  ‘Tasha-di,’ I said, ‘just move in with us until you recover.’ She turned to me with a pained frown, as if I had betrayed her, and I grimaced. ‘It’s not for long,’ I promised, ‘and really, I’m mainly thinking of our convenience. We have to drive in daily to check in on you.’

  She bristled. ‘No one told you to…’

  ‘No, no,’ I said swiftly, ‘Of course, but you know we want to make sure you’re ok. Even during our busy periods, neither of us feels easy until we’ve seen you. But you know the magazine’s next issue is out in a week. Maya and Sonia are flat out with assignments.’ Tasha-di hadn’t interrupted, and I carried on talking. ‘Puneeta’s review needs changing. We have too much to do at the moment, and it would be kind if you were to come home.’

  Tasha-di let out a low groan. Her voice was huskier than we were used to, but she remained reluctant to move. ‘Really,’ Maya insisted. ‘All our deadlines have slipped since you’ve been gone. I was hoping you weren’t too ill to come into the office for an hour or two every morning to help set us straight.’

  Silence followed. No one moved, not Tasha-di, nor Maya nor I. Her breathing had felt ragged to me, but there was no hint of a noise now. We sat there in the dark, unable to make eye contact, and I was scared most that Tasha-di had fallen asleep without resolving the matter. My hand went to the fringe of the shawl draped over the sofa, and as I ran my fingers through it, some of my movement’s noise must have carried through to Tasha-di, as she said to me in a drowsy voice, ‘You always loved that shawl, Siya.’

  ‘Come stay with us, Tasha-di. We’ll take your things with us so you can feel at home.’

  ‘Silly child,’ she scolded. ‘My furniture is not going anywhere. I’ll move into Civil Lines for a week or two until I return to normal.’ Her speech was measured, her delivery slow, her words lofty, as if she was conferring a great honour on us, and we were both quick to assent.

  ‘Yes, Tasha-di,’ I said, and the matter was settled. Tasha-di would move in with us while our next issue was being finalised, and would move back to her home straight afterwards. We expressed our gratitude with sufficient enthusiasm, and she finally consented to being driven back to our home with us.

  XX

  Our big break came some days later. Things had been going well for a while; we were a few issues in, and these had been well received by The Satirist’s readership. Often when Maya and I were on our morning walks, we would be stopped by a resident who would praise our magazine. There was criticism too, typically meted out by the retired men who made their morning excursions with a fervour bordering on the religious, but the conclusion was clear; we had become local celebrities, and The Satirist the collective property of the entire neighbourhood.

  One morning we were stopped by someone, a harried-looking man in his early forties. He first speed-walked towards us, distrac
ted, plugged into his earphones, only spotting our approach and swerving at the last moment, and then, pausing as we moved to let him pass. He stopped right where he was, in the middle of the pavement. He removed his earphones, and the assured tones of a motivational speech wafted our way.

  ‘Hey,’ he called out, and though I initially thought he was addressing a stray dog or an interloper, it was soon clear he was talking to us. He moved swiftly in our direction, waving his hands to ensure we didn’t move away. ‘You’re the publishers of the new magazine, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Maya nodded. ‘The Satirist.’

  The man fell in step with us, explaining that he worked for an educational company in Delhi. ‘We own several schools,’ he told us, huffing through his exertion. There was a generous band of sweat on his brow, and his discarded earphones kept blaring out a stream of reinforcements. ‘Remember,’ I heard the disembodied voice pronounce, ‘that you’re the best. You,’ it repeated, slowing down in emphasis, ‘are the best.’

  ‘We,’ our companion was saying, ‘are the best.’

  I coughed, and he continued. ‘We are India’s fastest growing educational establishment. We’ve even entered into the college space now. Our graduates are just beginning to enter the job market.’

  He looked at me, inclined his head, and it appeared a response was expected. ‘Well done,’ I responded. ‘That’s fantastic.’

  ‘And that’s why I wanted to speak to you. You take advertisements for the publication, I see.’

  Maya spoke up. We were a minute away from our house, and I saw her tearing away and preparing to cross the road. ‘Siya here,’ she said, ‘is your man.’ She waved her hand cheerily at us, and peeled off back homewards.

  The man turned to grill me. He asked me about our rates, about the length of the contract we sought, and about our editorial policy. As he spoke, his motivational mantras kept being blared out of his earphones.

  ‘Well,’ the man was saying. He hadn’t introduced himself by name, but he now clutched my arm and retrieved a folded business card from his tracksuit. ‘Here,’ he said as I read his name. ‘I’m Neil Sethi,’ he added, presaging my actions, ‘MD at the “Local Group of Schools”.’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, and as his head tilted in anticipation, I added, ‘That’s fantastic.’ He was waiting for a reply to his questions. I thought hard, naming a price well in excess of what I had discussed with Puneeta. ‘All our sponsors sign up for an entire year,’ I told him. ‘Our sales process is just coming to an end. We’re fortunate,’ I added, as Neil gulped, ‘that we’ve been able to choose the best quality of partners with the best packages to offer to our readers.’

  I began to walk, and Neil followed rapidly. ‘That’s not a problem,’ he promised, talking about free school tours for the magazine’s readers.

  I turned back towards home as he turned with me. ‘Several of our partners have promised product promotions. Free samples, deodorants, shampoos, children’s clips, that sort of stuff.’

  ‘Sure,’ he offered, ‘Sure. We can rustle up something. A goody bag, maybe.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I replied. I pointed to the house. ‘That’s my stop,’ I said to him. I lifted his card and nodded. ‘My office,’ I said, thinking of a still recuperating Tasha-di, ‘will send you a proposal in the next few days.’ He nodded, and I reached out to shake his hand. ‘Goodbye,’ I said to him, as he continued to nod. ‘Nice doing business with you.’

  The house erupted the moment I opened the door. Maya faced me, with Shanti right behind, and I knew my sister had raced the old retainer to the door when she had seen me approach. Tasha-di and Sonia were quick behind, and Ajay, though he tried to look insouciant, leant back against the hallway wall. Even Saloni, relegated now to the kitchen, hovered anxiously in the living room.

  I didn’t speak.

  Maya’s brows ascended to her hairline, and still I didn’t utter a word.

  ‘Well?’ Sonia asked at length. ‘What happened? What did he say?’

  ‘We spoke,’ I replied. Maya stamped an impatient foot, and I knew those at home had conferred. ‘He was keen,’ I added, and as Sonia snorted, I held up my hands. Shanti was shaking her head, Ajay smirking in the background, and I added, ‘He was very keen. I told him we would need to get a commitment for a year, and that other sponsors…’

  There was a laugh from Ajay, and I repeated, ‘Other sponsors are throwing in samples for our readership.’

  ‘Wah wah,’ clapped Shanti.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And,’ I said, ‘he lapped it all up. I told him my office…’

  Another laugh proceeded from Ajay, and we all turned to look in his direction. He piped down. ‘I told him,’ I carried on, ‘that my office would contact him with a marketing proposal.’ I held up the business card Neil had handed me, and they were all over me, my family and co-workers, hugging me, examining the card, slapping me on the back, as if I hadn’t won the interest of a potential sponsor but had conquered the steepest, most treacherous peak. It felt that day like I was the hero of fables, like I was the loin-cloth wearing Gandhi wresting India from colonial rule, like I was the child plugging my finger into a wall and saving Holland from the encroaching sea. Anything felt possible that day, and I the person who had made the glorious future a tangible prospect.

  Work grew more animated. All at once, we were full of plans. We always met in the garden room for short interludes; for a coffee break, or for a chat about a feature or the right theme for an issue, but that day it seemed to become the working nucleus of the operation.

  I had been working on a marketing proposal. Puneeta’s hotel group had been paying for sponsorship for the past few issues, but this engagement had been largely informal in nature. As each issue was sent to the printer, I thanked Puneeta for her article, and she confirmed the hotel would stock the magazine and sponsor the following month. Tasha-di teased that we were bribing the girl to sponsor us, and perhaps we were, but the arrangement hadn’t required any inking. The hotel group always renewed their sponsorship, but we were always at risk of the deal coming to an abrupt end.

  To mitigate the chances of this happening, I had been preparing a formal proposal. Everything in the magazine was decided by committee, and accordingly, I had booked in some time to show my proposal to Maya, Sonia and Tasha-di the following week. All of this was now expedited, and I had spent the hours after my walk going through my files, looking for sponsorship deals I had agreed to in my previous role. I lifted out the best worded sections, and was beginning to patch together key terms for our offering when Sonia tapped me on the shoulder.

  ‘Come,’ she told me. ‘Team meeting,’ and I followed her to the garden room to see Maya and Tasha-di already seated, their hands around warm cups of tea. It was still cold enough for us to drink more tea than in the warmer months, and as I saw the steam rise out of their mugs, I sighed.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ I complained, pointing to the two armchairs they had ensconced themselves in. They pointed to a teapot and empty mugs, but I continued shaking my head in mock outrage. ‘You’ve had the warmest of the tea, and you’ve taken the best chairs.’

  ‘Come on,’ Tasha-di joshed. ‘Stop being a baby,’ and I sat promptly down. ‘Now,’ she added, ‘We must be serious. Where are you with the proposal?’

  ‘We have a week to turn it around,’ I told them, adding that it wouldn’t do to sound too keen, but their excitement was palpable. We were all swaddled in our winter shawls, but as we spoke, mapping out plans and deadlines, these came swiftly off. Maya fanned her face; Sonia flushed red. The sun was bright outside, and streaming in through the glass doors Shanti had painstakingly cleaned, with the result that even winter’s insipid heat was magnified as it fell on us.

  ‘Open the doors,’ called out Tasha-di. She had recovered well in the time she had been staying with us, and though she still spoke of returning home, we found that she mentioned it less with every passing week. Pradeep was regularly sent to her flat to re
turn with items; a throw, a shawl, her favourite spice blend, and inch by slow inch, the first floor of the house began to accommodate elements of her life. The photo of her and Ma now stood next to our family pictures; her throw was flung over our old, ragged sofa. She made the place home, and she grew in confidence around the office too, taking over increasing amounts of the organisation. ‘We’ll have to put a screen door here for the summer months. We’ll let in the air but not the mosquitoes.’ She was asking Maya if she remembered the wire screen she had been in the habit of using in her flat, when I put up my hand to stop her.

  ‘Siya?’

  There was noise from outside, an exclamation followed by a muffled response. I stepped out of the room in my slippers, and as questions came from my colleagues, I gestured to them to be silent. It was a male voice, two, in fact, and though their exchange was rapid, I couldn’t hear any of it.

  I stepped forward. ‘Siya?’ came the call from the room, and the noise outside was stilled. No one spoke, no one moved, not those outside the room, nor those inside. I heard no footsteps either, and I closed my eyes to try and remember the source of the noise. Had it come from the garage to the left? Had it been outdoors, and so perhaps from the neighbouring house? The wind rustled through the branches, still bare after a lingering winter, and I heard a throat being cleared.

  ‘Bas,’ a voice spoke. It was male, definitely male, but muzzled, and I walked on, waving at the occupants of the garden room for silence. No further noise followed, but just as I turned the corner, I saw Pradeep leaning over Ajay. Ajay was pinned to the wall, his mouth covered by Pradeep’s hand, and as Ajay noticed my arrival, he raised his eyebrows, and Pradeep turned towards me.

  His hand fell off Ajay’s mouth and he smiled at me. ‘Didi,’ he said, ‘I was just, I was just,’ and then, as inspiration abandoned him, he asked, ‘was there anything you wanted, Didi?’