by Anil Menon
‘Akka, let’s go to the reception room. He said he’d meet us there. Wish Anand had come. I would have liked to introduce him too.’
‘Your brother-in-law is hardly to be seen these days. Either I bore him or he’s found someone else.’
Kannagi told her sister she was being silly. Anand was just busy. He had hazaar balls in the air and instead of complaining maybe she could try to be an extra hand instead of one of those balls. TALK to him, Akka.
Padma gave her a searching look. ‘No need to shout. Why are you defending him?’
‘Well, give the dude a break.’
‘Do you two talk often?’
‘No, not often. Now and then.’ Kannagi was glad she was dark. Her entire body seemed to be on fire. ‘I haven’t seen him in a while.’
‘The driver mentioned he’d taken the two of you to Harry’s. And then you spent the night at the house.’
‘Oh yeah!’ Kannagi pretended to remember. ‘Anand wanted to check out one of my fab-jab clubs while you were at the Vipassana thingy. We had fun!’ Her heart had begun a drum solo. ‘It was really late when we left the bar and it made more sense to return to the mansion. Anand sings really well, did you know that?’
‘Do you think he married the wrong sister?’
‘Course not! What the hell? Why would you ask me something like that? Whatever’s really eating you up inside—’
‘What do you mean? What’s eating me up inside?’
‘Jesus Akka, what’s going on? Are you two having problems? Because if you are, then you need to tell me. I won’t let it happen. I love Anand, I love you, and we three are going to stay connected forever. The truth is—’ But Kannagi felt her throat seize. She had to tell the truth. She had never lied to her sister, never on anything that mattered. She didn’t feel guilty for having slept with Anand; the memory of that night, as tender as a feather’s touch on the skin and just as soothing, only reaffirmed what her body had affirmed: she had nothing wrong. But to lie to the one person, the only person, who had a right to share in the truth, that was horror. Okay, whatever happened. The truth. ‘Akka—’
‘Aiyyo, did I frighten you?’ Padma stroked her cheek. ‘Poor thing. Don’t be silly. We’re not getting divorced or anything like that. Let’s go to the reception. I hope your friend won’t be too tired.’
‘No,’ predicted Kannagi. She took a deep breath. ‘He’ll be full of energy and ready for anything.’
The reception was in a room at the far end of a corridor one floor below. The air was unpleasantly cold. The corridor was filled with idle help, all men, and Kannagi noticed her sister bristling at their sly inspection. They were staring at Akka of course. They always stared at Akka. There was something pubescent about the men, in their lithe coiling, in the way they clung to each other, in their giggly and submissive appraisal.
‘Why do you mind it so much?’ Kannagi remembered asking her. ‘You didn’t, before your marriage.’
‘Did I have a choice? I didn’t have your brains, I was born to be a room decoration. I don’t like to be constantly reminded.’
The reception room was bordered with the glitterati and the skeletal props of theatrical events past, and Mir was at the very centre. As Kannagi had expected, he glowed with gratification. Bright eyes, rosy cheeks, lungs full of semi-warm air.
The organizer of the event, a lady with a pencil-brush moustache, was in charge of rationing Mir Alam Mir. As they approached, the organizer recognized Padma and whispered something in Mir’s ear.
‘Kannagi!’ Mir held out his arms.
They hugged. The whiff of starch and attar reminded her of that weekend at his house. It also blew in a gust of sadness. She should send Sawai an email, see how he was doing.
‘Mir, great talk. Akka, this is Mir. Mir—’ She introduced her sister.
‘Yes, yes. Padma-ji, Kannagi tells me you are a patron of the arts. Thank you for coming.’ He bowed. ‘I hope I didn’t bore you too much.’
‘It was very interesting,’ said Padma. ‘You’re right, we should all be more spiritual.’
‘I thought the talk was long, but awesome,’ said Kannagi. Then she remembered something else she’d wanted to say. ‘Mir, am I the rose-snapper’s tongue or the crustacean parasite? Don’t think I didn’t get your dig.’
Mir raised his hand to his lips, half-covering his smile. ‘You’re the blood itself, dear one.’
Mir didn’t seem in any particular hurry. Small talk seemed to come very naturally to him. He subtly managed to maintain two distinct personas in the same conversation. With Padma he was a slightly naughty uncle; with Kannagi, he was brotherly. He excluded no one and yet the group around him fell away, leaving the three of them together. The organizer had made it amply clear she and Mir were to be counted as a unit.
‘Yes,’ said Mir, fingering the lapels of his suit. ‘Sigma designs all my clothes. I’ll tell her you liked her efforts. As you know Padma-ji, we artists can burp for weeks on a single compliment. Frankly, I’m surprised we haven’t met before. Delhi’s such a small world. When coincidence wilfully connects complete strangers, I find it almost offensive Padma-ji that despite all our mutual friends, you and I remained unconnected.’
‘Mir?’ said Kannagi.
Mir finally got down to the business at hand. He introduced Padma to his friend Sameera Jain, the one who owned the gallery. He was then swept away by the organizer.
Sameera and Padma had never actually met. Kannagi tried to talk about the exhibition, and Sameera was suitably enthusiastic, but she was clearly much more interested in Akka. Very touchy-feely, girly-girly. It was pretty obvious what was going on.
Poor Akka. If her sister didn’t come out of the closet, and soon, she would go mad.
‘Kondai—’ Padma’s pupils were dilated, her cheeks flushed. She looked very beautiful.
‘Yes?’
‘Kondai, Sami and I, we were wondering, we could all go some place and discuss the details. It’s just nine and Anand won’t be back tonight, so there’s no time issue. What do you say?’
‘Akka, I have an early class tomorrow. Could you two manage without me? Most of my pieces are at your place anyway. Let Sameera have a look. We can meet up later. Lunch maybe.’
Sameera and Padma tried hard to look inconvenienced.
‘Lunch it will have to be,’ said Padma. ‘Okay, I’m giving you a ride home. It’s too dangerous to be out and about in Delhi at night.’
‘Akka, the crime rate has fallen, and we can make it even safer by being on the streets.’
‘You can thank the Lokshakti for that,’ put in Sameera.
‘Let other people make it safe for other people.’ Padma got hold of Kannagi’s hand. ‘I’m taking you home.’
Kannagi told her sister she had to say goodbye to Mir. She found the screenwriter encircled by a group of teenagers. Her attempt to break in was quickly blocked by the organizer.
‘Please wait your turn,’ said the woman, with grim relish.
‘Mir,’ shouted Kannagi, and knew she’d secured the woman’s permanent enmity. ‘Mir!’
Mir once again dispelled the students with his magic wand. Kannagi explained she was leaving with her sister and Sameera, thanked him for all his help, gave him a hug. He grasped her hand, eyes twinkling.
‘What did you think of my movie?’
‘I thought it sucked.’ Kannagi tickled his palm with her index finger. ‘Not upset, right? You did ask what I thought of it.’
‘Yes I did!’ He released her, looked maha-pleased. ‘Watch Ajaya again and you may be surprised. Haven’t you watched our movies? In the beginning the would-be lover is met with dislike and hostility. Similarly. Your mind has signalled it is chaste; it does not allow itself to be seduced by strange ideas. Good. Now that your mind’s modesty has been established, it can let itself be seduced. That is the nature of storytelling. That is especially the nature of this particular story, dear one.’
‘Okey-dokey Romeo,’ said Kannagi, smil
ing. She loved this creature of the threshold. Loved his passion for stories, loved his defence of the indefensible. ‘I have to go.’
Mir believed in the epic goodbye. It was another ten minutes of poetic snippets, questions, promises and epigrams before she could extract herself and head downstairs and out with Akka and Sameera. The two ladies, already bosom friends, were in a partying mood, giddy with excitement, drunk on each other.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to party with us?’ asked Padma.
‘God no. You bitches are too crazy for me.’
They shrieked. They howled. They were gayer than the rainbow.
‘Okay, get in,’ said Padma, opening the car door, ‘we’ll give you a ride home.’
‘I can sit in front,’ offered Kannagi, ‘if you two homos want to make out in the back.’
Dead silence. Then more laughter. Har di har har. Oh God, do people still use that word? Oh Kannagi, you’re crazy, just get the hell in. A black van pulled up. There was an arrogance to its sudden deceleration. The Lokshakti logo on its side was one explanation. Uniformed men jumped out, ran clattering up the stairs of the Attic.
‘What the fuck’s going on,’ wondered Sameera aloud. ‘I hope—’
Shouts. Curses. Some people came running out of the narrow doorway. A student shouted: they’re arresting Mir Alam Mir. That was when the screams started. Neither a man nor a woman.
Kannagi turned, her mind devoid of all thought. Padma clutched her arm. Kondai, wait! She shook her sister off. No Akka, we got to stop this. Stay here.
Her sister tried to grab her arm, but Kannagi was possessed of that unusual strength the body finds in crises. Stay, Akka!
She ran up the stairs. The Attic’s curtain lay half-collapsed in a heap on the floor. The props were damaged, their jagged wooden beams angled to the air like the spars of shipwrecks. The Lokshakti officers were trying to haul Mir away but he held on with all his strength to the curtain. The event coordinator was crouched in a corner, her bloody mouth open in a soundless scream. People stood frozen, some shouting at Mir to cooperate, others trying to edge towards the exit without attracting attention. Every time a punch or kick landed on Mir he issued a piercing scream that instead of galvanizing the bystanders to action, seemed to paralyze them. Kannagi ran straight into the mix, shouting, screaming in English. At first the officers paused, thrown by her accent, her fury. They had experience with perpetrators who resisted arrest. They had very little experience with motivated bystanders.
‘Let him go,’ shouted Kannagi. ‘You can’t do this, this is illegal.’
As one officer began to argue with her, the others lost their certainty. Such fearlessness. She had to be connected. Kannagi recognized one of the attackers. Relief flooded her.
‘Mitrajit!’ she shouted. ‘Please tell them. Tell them to stop this immediately.’
Mitrajit slapped her. The sound tore a silence into her being. Then he punched her in the face, shouting something. The officers jumped over her. Hard shoes. Mir’s screams started again. It was more than agony; it was the very frame of perception itself. Something struck her head violently. Twenty-eight milliseconds of unbearable pain, and then all sensation, all knowing, blinked out for a merciful forty milliseconds. Kondai, kondai. Sensation returned, at least partially, for it was without pain. Euphoria even. Grasping at her fading consciousness, Kannagi felt herself being cradled, embraced, wept over, a sense of falling, lights off, rise, she wanted to rise, Akka, I’m fine, Akka, just stand with me.
24
AT ELEVEN, RATNAKAR SLIPPED ANAND A NOTE INFORMING HIM that Eshwar Pillai had reached Delhi. He was running a little late. Could the meeting be moved to one-thirty? Anand nodded—Ratnakar wouldn’t have raised the question unless there was an open slot available—and his factotum stepped away to confirm.
There had been lots of items that had needed his attention and he had cleared most of them in order of priority, but the morning still felt wasted. That didn’t matter; the mind could feel whatever it wanted, as long as it did the job he wanted done. If his mind had a problem with that, it could take up the matter with the Bhagvad Gita. Ratnakar didn’t make it any easier. He was distracted, mopey. Anand wanted to speak with the deputy CM of Karnataka and ended up having to spend fifteen minutes chatting with the deputy prime minister of Mauritius.
‘Did you leave your brain at home today?’ he asked, goaded into exasperation. He raised his hand to stave off useless apologies. ‘Do we have any update on the arrest status of our employees?’
‘Sorry sir. The Lokshakti is refusing to give any details.’
‘There is no such thing as the Lokshakti. There are only particular people standing in our way. Get me someone who can provide details.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It’s important, Ratnakar. I don’t care if they are innocent or guilty; I want them released.’
Innocence. Guilt. Ratnakar’s silence underscored the futility of those words. Kannagi’s dead body at the hospital.
The scene could have been a painting, Anand had thought. He might have even seen it at the Jehangir Art Gallery, hanging on a salmon-red wall with an ornate gold frame and a silver plaque with fancy penmanship, hard to read from viewing distance: Still Life With Maiden.
He remembered clearing his throat, but he had taken care not to reveal his emotions. It wouldn’t do to be womanly in front of these men. Especially this man. Kal Kishore Shastri’s men had wrecked Kannagi, and now here he stood, their leader, his face stiff with sincere regret.
Not that the dead body, lambent in the hospital room’s full-spectrum lights, didn’t merit a woman’s sympathy. The cotton sheet wrapped around the body revealed brownish-red stains. Kannagi’s slightly bent pose suggested that in her final moments, the effort had been to endure punishment rather than escape it. The right hand had curled into a fist, with the thumb tucked between the index and forefinger. ‘It all happened very fast Dixit-ji,’ the Colonel had said. ‘The officer concerned has been adequately terminated. You have our deepest sympathies. If only she had not interfered. It all happened so fast, it was simply a horrible accident. The General is recovering from a fever; otherwise he would have been standing here in my place.’
He realized Ratnakar was saying something but it sounded far away and distorted. Then everything fell into place. Back in the office, back in the normal world.
‘Keep up the pressure,’ he told Ratnakar. ‘Our people are counting on us.’
The Lokshakti would come to negotiate—greed always did, and when it did, the Lokshakti would bring its pawns. His reminder remotivated Ratnakar and the rest of the morning flowed with something resembling its old efficiency.
At one-thirty, he got a call from one of Kannagi’s friends, Josh somebody, a doctoral student from New Mexico. The fellow’s American accent, reminiscent of Kannagi’s, was strangely more consoling than his sincere words. The circumstances of their friendship were also strange, but this being Kannagi, within standard deviation. The fellow said he’d analyzed Kannagi’s pee. Plasmonics. Photonics. Some such thing. She had been pregnant. Josh had been planning to call his friend and inform her. But.
Anand was in a meeting when Eshwar Pillai arrived at two, but there was no need for Ratnakar to inform him of the arrival. The shout (‘Anand, you rat bastard, where are you?’), the rockstar entrance, the general shor-machor, the smiles on everyone’s faces as they lifted their heads to listen, the lifting of the gloomy atmosphere in the office—it was obvious. Eshwar Pillai was in the house.
Anand held out a hand, but of course Eshwar would insist on hugging. He smelled of travel, alcohol and perfume. Eshwar grasped his hand for a few seconds. Anand was surprised to see tears sparkling in the other man’s eyes.
‘Anand, man, so bloody sorry about your loss. How is bhabhi doing? And you? Are you coping? Can I do anything?’
Anand patted his arm. He turned, hiding his face. Eshwar felt things too strongly. ‘Sit, sit. What will you have?’
‘Just water. I had a couple of tequila shots at the airport. The place depresses me every time I have the fucking misfortune to visit Delhi. What a half-assed concept of an airport. It makes me sick. I had to drink myself senseless just to walk through it. We’re in the shit hole, aren’t we? What the fuck happened?’
Anand waited till Eshwar had poured himself a glass of water.
‘We’re accused of distributing seditious and blasphemous material. Specifically, Durga Dhasal’s banned works plus some sort of art film he made with the actress Saya—don’t ask, it makes no sense. The Lokshakti’s position is that they have the evidence to arrest those responsible under Section 124A and Section 505(1) of the IPC. There are other charges including that of promoting hate speech, but these two are the main ones. The trouble began with the distribution in Hapur. About fifteen hundred Jadoos were loaded with copies of this material. And the web, I’m guessing.’ Then Anand added cautiously. ‘The Cloud too.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes. You’d like a larger problem?’
‘Anand, why couldn’t this be resolved with a few phone calls?’
‘I made those few phone calls. Trouble is, my sister-in-law’s death plays very nicely into the mix. You see, earlier, they had a tough problem. Even the Lokshakti can’t simply beat a University of Delhi professor to death and expect no grief. They want me to go along with their fable of a tragic accident in return for the people they’ve arrested.’
‘Who released the material?’
‘A couple of Social Weather staffers. One is experienced, she’s the area assistant manager. Name’s Tanaz Chikliwala. She’s innocent, I think. Supriya, who managed her, strongly feels the same way. Supriya is willing to testify, do whatever it takes. We never had a problem with Chikliwala before. A conscientious worker—’
‘And the other?’
‘Durga Dhasal’s former PA. Shabari. She worked at my home for a few months.’ He explained he’d placed Shabari at the Hapur office as a favour to Kannagi. ‘She’s the villain behind the whole thing. Shabari had all sorts of grudges. She committed suicide after releasing the material. They’ve picked up some other people but I’m very confident they’ll be released soon. A day or two at the most. But Chikliwala’s situation is complicated. She’s the wife of a high-level Lokshakti officer, the Deputy Director of Cultural Affairs. Vyas something. I should say, former Deputy Director. He’s been arrested too. Ironically, it’s his department that’s bringing all these charges. He was a protégé of Dorabjee. Not much is known about him but I think they suspect a larger plot. They’re still sorting things out. I’ve tried hard, very hard, to get hold of Victor, but he’s not taking my calls.’
