Civil Lines

by Radhika Swarup

  By the time I had made it outside, the entire garage was enveloped in flames. I paused briefly to survey the scene, and an irreverent thought struck me, the terrible, cleansing beauty of the fire. Then I heard a shout, and steps rushing out of the servants’ quarter, and I surged ahead towards the fire.

  The fire department was determined, battling the blaze until it was out, but the damage was done. Equipment left on overnight—the printer perhaps, or the camera Ajay had left on charge—had sparked a circuit, and the house’s ancient, exposed wiring had instantly caught fire, like summer forest kindling.

  The fire itself had been contained by the firefighters, but we lost Ajay’s camera and the equipment we used to print our proofs. As the firemen surveyed the damage after putting out the fire, one of them sniffed. ‘This is all minor,’ he said, ‘but the structure of this building isn’t secure. It’s too old and too unloved.’ I looked at Maya; the fireman’s words would apply to most of the main house too. ‘I would seriously recommend tearing it down and rebuilding it.’

  Maya gulped. ‘That was our plan. To rebuild in the next five years or so.’

  The man laughed. ‘It won’t last that long. There’s been too much damage.’ He tapped at the wall and winced as bits of plaster fell off. ‘I would have this seen to as soon as possible.’

  In the morning, as the others filed in, surveying the damage, trying to find a positive in the developments, Sonia offered, ‘At least you’ll get your dark room sooner, Ajay.’

  Ajay stood cradling his ruined camera. All the work he had done for the past month was lost. He stood there, smiling bravely, telling us everything was retrievable, when Tasha-di asked the question we had all been wondering. ‘How did the damn thing start, anyway?’

  The obvious culprit was Ajay. He was forever smoking outside the building, and forgetting to turn the lights off in the garage, or to lock up. But then, as Maya later pointed out to me, the fire had only taken place after Pradeep’s reappearance. We had restored him to his former position gratefully, but what if he had been nursing a grudge against Ajay and had started the fire to frame the other man? I laughed as Maya expounded her theory. It was ridiculous, but then I thought of Mrs Bhatnagar’s threat a couple of months ago.

  ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ she had told me. She had been on the scene early in the morning too, condoling with us, but not displaying any surprise, and later, as she had left our home, I had heard her hum. She would make the most unlikely culprit, old, slight and grey, but she had taken a real dislike to us and to our work, and the political environment of the day didn’t leave much room for disagreement. What if she had bribed a worker to set fire to our garage?

  Then again, it could very well have been one of the house’s occupants; Maya, Tasha-di, me, who had been to the garage and forgotten to switch off a device. I had checked on the latest print run the previous evening, and both Maya and Tasha-di had visited the garage too. The possibilities for blame were endless, but we all knew the obvious culprit was Ajay.

  I hadn’t answered Benjamin’s last text, but I now typed out a message: ‘Fire destroyed all our equipment.’

  The reply was instantaneous. ‘Are you ok?’

  ‘Yes, but we’ve lost our printing equipment and our camera. We can’t afford to carry on.’

  ‘It’s not like you to give up.’

  I stared at the screen. The entire house smelt of the garage’s fire. ‘We’ve lost everything.’

  There was no answer for several minutes, then: ‘My girl never gives up.’

  Matters grew swiftly worse. The house had comprehensive insurance, but when Maya called to claim on it, she was told that the insurance didn’t cover commercial premises. It would take a mountain of money to rebuild the garage, and it would all have to be done under our own steam. Nothing could be claimed for, not the printer, not the computer, not the camera, not even the paper we had lost to the fire.

  We were officially out of money. The magazine, the family, the house, everything seemed to have hit a brick wall. We couldn’t afford to rebuild the garage, nor could we afford to tackle our crumbling house. There were smaller purchases we could make—a new printer, a new camera—and I had enough money for them, but neither Maya nor I could see the point. We’d been working without pay for nearly a year, and as we sat looking out onto our decrepit garage, the magazine seemed a luxury.

  ‘Let’s face it,’ Maya said to me. She had aged visibly over the week since the fire. There was more grey to her hair, and the lines around her mouth seemed more firmly etched. I don’t know if it was because we were spending more time outside in the sun’s glare, but the wear on her face was marked. Several tines I caught myself staring at her, and then, as I saw Shanti looking at me, I wondered if the fire’s ravages told on my features too. ‘The house is a death trap,’ Maya was saying. She walked about our living room on the first floor, switching off lights. ‘At any time, any of these fuses can trip and the entire place can go down in flames.’

  ‘Come on…’

  ‘I mean it,’ she maintained. ‘I’m half toying with the idea of sending Tasha-di back to hers. She’ll be safer there.’

  I told her she was wrong, and that she worried unnecessarily, but Maya was resolute. We weren’t to spend any more of my money on new equipment to be installed in the house.

  XXIII

  It was while we were at our impasse that Saloni asked me about Ma. This was the first unbidden thought she had voiced, and she had spoken it so timorously that I had not heard her at first. We were in the library, meeting out of habit more than out of any necessity. We had stopped work on the magazine’s July issue, telling ourselves we had paused for the summer holidays, but The Satirist’s dwindling viability didn’t escape anyone. Saloni had busied herself in dusting a bookshelf, then had asked me a question before repeating it.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Was ma’am,’ and here she paused, trying to work out how to frame her address. ‘Your mother,’ she said eventually, ‘was she a journalist too?’

  ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Or no. Not for years. She used to be one.’

  ‘But,’ suggested the girl. ‘This was her magazine, no?’

  ‘Yes,’ I conceded. ‘Yes,’ and as she stared, bravely raising her lovely neck in her clear-eyed scrutiny, I offered to show her Ma’s old proof copies.

  We went up to the first floor and into my room. I saw her look around in her quiet manner, as if to absorb every detail, and realised she had never been here before. ‘It’s a little childish,’ I said, as she told me the room was beautiful. ‘I’ve had it for as long as I can remember.’

  I sat her down at my desk and went to get the proof copies from Maya’s room. When I returned, I saw Saloni with a card in her hands. She jumped up as she saw me, dropping the card. Her colour was raised, and she was stammering out her apologies, ‘It was here, right here, Didi,’ she was saying, ‘I didn’t mean to look at it,’ and I turned the card over to see that it was a business card printed on thick, expensive card, its lettering in an italicised gilt cursive. It consisted solely of a name: Raja Singh, and no title or affiliation. Below the name was an email address.

  I studied the card. I had forgotten about him with all the chaos of the fire. I bent the card, feeling the thick luxury of the material. He’d offered his help, had been supportive. I took a deep breath and turned to Saloni.

  ‘I’m sorry, Didi.’

  ‘No, no,’ I replied. I thought quickly. I hadn’t imagined Raja’s enthusiasm for The Satirist. ‘It’s a wonderful project,’ he had told me when I’d last run into him in the market. ‘And much needed in the current political climate.’ Another smile, an encouraging arm on my shoulder, and that offer for help made again. I had dismissed it as an important man’s empty words, but now I wondered.

  ‘But Didi,’ Saloni was smiling, ‘it’s the same Raja Singh, isn’t it?’ and as I looked up, surprised that she knew of him, she nodded, ‘He’s the one who gave TV India the money
they needed to begin, and he’s the one who put money in the GoTo service…’ she struggled for the right words, ‘He’s the one who’s everywhere, isn’t he, like God?’

  I changed the subject. I showed her Ma’s old proofs, letting her read Ma’s editorial and marvel over the subjects she had chosen for her inaugural issue. She asked me questions about the magazine: had Tasha-di really worked with Ma, why it had shut down, and as I parried her queries, my mind remained on Raja Singh’s card.

  I slept with the card next to my bed, and by the morning, I knew my next steps. I didn’t consult Maya, worried that she would try to dissuade me. It sounded fantastic to me too, the idea of asking such a great man to finance our little magazine. But, I figured, there was no harm in reaching out to him. The magazine had shut down while we scrambled around for funding, but it had built up a good local reputation in the months it had been in print.

  Raja Singh himself had praised a few of the articles when he had seen me in the market, singling out Maya’s work on the elections and Sonia’s article on demonetisation. And we had had wider recognition too. A couple of the bigger newspapers had carried reports on our articles, and Sonia’s piece on Chitra Kashyap had been widely referenced. There were even rumours that she would be nominated for a journalism prize, and, as I told myself, our little team represented a promising investment for Raja. It was worth a try.

  I emailed Raja Singh that very day and half forgot about the matter. I was sure that a reply, if it did materialise, would be days in coming.

  There was the matter of the fire to resolve, in any case. Estimates for the rebuilding of the garage had come in for a ruinous amount, and for the moment, construction didn’t seem like an option. Papa’s antique cars, on the other hand, seemed to offer us a way ahead. Much of the fire had been focussed at the entrance of the garage, and the cars, tucked in as they were towards the back under their hoods, hadn’t been affected.

  Maya and I began to discuss getting rid of them to raise money for the magazine. Maya was resistant to the idea, restored as she was to her native aversion to change, but as I pointed out to her, Papa was gone, and neither of us were car enthusiasts. It seemed like a no-brainer.

  I charged Pradeep with contacting garages to find potential purchasers. Ajay was asked to find out how much it would cost to purchase the equipment we had lost, and on one free morning, he asked me to accompany him to look for a new camera. We drove down in his car, stopping via a local shop to pick up his favourite gram flour snack.

  ‘You are always hungry.’

  ‘Always,’ he replied, handing me a handful of the food. I munched on it, savouring the earthy nuttiness of the food, when he asked, ‘How are things with that boyfriend of yours?’

  ‘Who?’ I stuttered, sitting up straight. He arched an eyebrow, and I knew he was talking about Benjamin. I shrugged. Benjamin had remained in touch after the fire. He had been kind, renewing his offer of free articles, telling me he could lend me money, but I had told him we would manage. ‘Benjamin?’ I asked as he stared, and I shrugged again. ‘He’s a good friend.’

  ‘Right,’ Ajay replied, and I grew conscious that my reply had not answered his question. He turned to the rear window, beckoning the guard to pay his parking ticket, and set off.

  ‘I mean,’ I tried to explain. ‘We broke up ages ago.’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied, frowning, focussing on the road ahead. He squinted as he rounded a corner, his brows furrowing, and I wondered if he wore glasses. He never had any with him at work; and I thought that perhaps he was avoiding wearing them out of vanity. Ma had been the same all those years back, shunning glasses as her eyesight grew worse, clipping her grey hairs out at the root instead of acknowledging time’s march, and I smiled as I watched him. Just imagine, Ajay and vain. ‘How old are you?’ I asked, and he swerved.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I never asked.’

  He pursed his lips, as if put out, and indicated towards the road ahead, where a traffic jam had built up. He nodded in its direction, as if he couldn’t be distracted, and drove. We were silent for a while, and I asked, ‘What is it, then? Forty?’

  He didn’t respond. The traffic had come to a standstill, and we weren’t moving. He checked his watch, a broad, metallic number, and stared ahead.

  ‘Fifty?’

  He shot me a look.

  ‘Fifty?’ I asked, incredulous. I had him pinned down as being a few years older than Sonia and Maya, in his early forties perhaps, but his priggishness about his age amused me. ‘Really?’ I laughed, ‘You’re fifty?’

  ‘Really,’ he answered, twisting his mouth with distaste. ‘Really, really,’ and as I continued to laugh, he added, ‘just like you and that Benjamin of yours are just friends.’

  I laughed once more but he continued to look forward. Delhi’s traffic debris wove past us; emaciated cows, street urchins, hawkers peddling books and magazines, and motorcycles making a path through the stationary traffic. The lights changed, the traffic slowly started up again, and Ajay drove unblinkingly on.

  We selected a new camera at the store. ‘Money from the sale of the cars should hopefully come through soon,’ I told him, thinking he brought me with him to pressurise me into prioritising his purchase. ‘And when it does, your camera and a new printer will be the first items on our list.’

  Ajay was looking at me, shaking his head and smiling. He picked up the camera we had selected, telling the salesman the choice had been made. The salesman, who had been listening morosely to my talk about not affording purchases, broke into a delighted smile. ‘Yes, Sir,’ he said, acting with greater vigour than he had displayed throughout the sales process. The camera was placed into its packaging, the case was taken out and examined, and as I worried about how to tell Ajay we didn’t have money for the purchase, he held his credit card out to the beaming salesman.

  ‘No,’ I told him. ‘We’ll get it. Just not now.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he told me. ‘The last camera was mine too. I am simply replacing it.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘No buts,’ he maintained, ‘if you fire me, I will take my camera with me. I may be soft, but I’m not that soft.’

  I returned home to find an email from Raja Singh. Ajay was still with me, perched at the edge of my desk in the library, and as I exclaimed, he leant over to see if all was well. It was just the two of us in the room, and I nodded towards the computer screen.

  He read the email and whistled. ‘I’ve never received an email from the great man in all the years I’ve been in the business.’

  ‘I contacted him first,’ I told Ajay. ‘He told me that I could get in touch with him if I was ever in need, and I thought this was as good a time as any.’

  Ajay whistled again, emitting a smooth, low sound through his lips, and I added defensively, ‘The magazine has been getting good coverage. I figured he might be interested in investing in us.’

  He smiled then, leaning back to look at me. ‘Does Maya know about this?’

  ‘No,’ I said, reading the email again. Raja had invited me to a meeting at his offices. ‘I don’t want to get her hopes up.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ I replied. The email had only mentioned me, and I knew my best chance lay in appealing to the editor’s nostalgia about Ma. Ajay’s presence would alter the dynamic.

  Ajay was studying me carefully, as if mulling his next words. ‘He’s got a reputation, you know.’

  ‘Come on,’ I said, surprised by his chauvinistic attitude. I wasn’t a cossetted little doll to be placed under lock and key. ‘I’m quite able to take care of myself.’

  ‘Let me drive you, at least.’

  ‘Pradeep can take me.’

  Ajay looked over the email again, tutting with disappointment. ‘The garage owner is coming tomorrow, isn’t he?’

  I nodded, frowning.

  ‘Pradeep had better stay put here,’ Ajay said in a matter-of-fact voice. He
checked the calendar on his phone. ‘Your meeting is just after two in the afternoon. I’ll drive you there on my way to the gym.’

  ‘Ajay…’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, nodding rapidly. ‘That’s the best plan. Means no one is wasting any time.’

  XXIV

  Ajay was on time. He arrived before midday, and didn’t complain about being hungry, and as Maya laughed, telling him she wished he had shown such dedication while the magazine was operational, he smiled. ‘I’m starting my New Year’s resolution to go to the gym.’

  ‘New Year’s resolution,’ burst out one, while another laughed at the idea of Ajay, so habitually supine, working out.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he maintained, holding his hands up, ‘I’m a bit late in my execution. But like they say, better late than never.’ He parried Sonia’s laughter, and Maya’s too, and when the time came for me to set off for my meeting, he was waiting.

  We drove in silence. Ajay had tried to talk early on in our drive, asking me if I was sure I wanted to go in alone, and as I insisted on seeing Raja Singh by myself, he turned silent. He switched the radio on and then off, he waved off beggars with an unaccustomed briskness, and he drove so slowly I was certain I would be late.

  Once we reached, he asked again if he could come in with me.

  ‘Come on,’ I complained, ‘we’ve discussed this before.’

  He shrugged then, as if it didn’t much matter to him. ‘I have to be getting off anyway,’ he said, turning to his watch, and I found myself hurrying out of the car.

  ‘Thanks for the lift,’ I said, a bit put off by his manner, but he had already reversed out of his spot and was moving towards the road. I straightened my clothes out and patted my bag, feeling its outlines for the present I carried. It was a Mont Blanc pen, a gift Ma had once received and so treasured that she had never lifted it out of its case. I had thought twice about presenting it to Raja Singh, but was mindful of Ma’s constant reminder; ‘Don’t go anywhere empty handed.’