He was wrong.
Aarti swung herself into a seat right at the front, shouldering up against a little boy who barely reached her shoulder. Then she promptly fell asleep.
On the bus, Aarti slept uncontrollably. She slept through everything—the imprecations of the conductor sitting ahead, the sputter of the bus’s exhaust, the unbridled nose blowing of the little boy beside her, even the snap of her head on the axis of its neck as her body succumbed to centrifugality. If only Arjun could hold her head, stroke her hair, be—in other words—a master to her puppet. But the possibility of such manly rescue grew increasingly remote; Arjun’s bus-stop sparkled in the distance, a slab of white-hot pavement. He tensed in his seat, and trapezed his butt over the worn plastic, instinctively readying himself to get off at Khan Market. But then his butt slammed back in place. He couldn’t leave her like this, not after making the arduous journey just to speak to her. And, more importantly, what if no one woke her? What if she slept all the way to the bus depot, and the lecherous bus driver who chewed too much paan roused her, his hand conveniently on her left breast as he said, Hello, baby, you are ishleeping?
He couldn’t let it happen. The bus trembled to a stop, unloaded its passengers, and then Arjun sighed as his stop was left behind, hopscotching toward the horizon. Arjun moved forward a few seats; a few minutes later, the boy sitting next to Aarti climbed over her cautiously, as if she was a rusty jungle gym, and then he, too, was gone.
Now there was only one problem: Arjun had no idea which stop was Aarti’s. He had never ridden so far in the bus, wasn’t it strange how you could travel in a bus for years and years and only know a small sliver of its route, the origins of your co-passengers a perpetual mystery only seconds away from being unmasked, and yet you did nothing about it—you simply stepped into a cloud of dust at the appointed place at the appointed time and never asked questions. Arjun wished he had asked questions, he wished he didn’t have to use vague parameters like Aarti’s command of English (which was rather good) and the stylishness of her backpack (which was rather big and bulky and ugly, signaling unhealthy ambition) to know when to wake her, and so he was acting purely on intuition when he came up behind her, tapped her on the shoulder with the romantic poise of a judge bringing down the gavel, said “Aarti, your stop is here,” so causing her to startle out of sleep, notice immediately that the bus was stationary and snorting impatiently for her to depart, and bolt right down the stairs with the bag swinging behind her in a neat Olympian arc.
Arjun followed, hands thrust deep in his pockets, the metal boards thudding under his feet.
They faced each other on the dusty bus stop at Nizamuddin. Across from them, a two-storied tomb in the middle of a roundabout. Everything had a heightened vitality. A microcosm for the heat and temper of Delhi. The sky hurtling earthward, steamrolling the soft curve of the Golf Club Flyover in shimmer. The light gentle—not acidic, eye-shutting, traumatizing—a neutral pH of vision, the sun and the clouds deadening each other in pastel shades. Nothing loud. Nothing hurt. Nothing blinked. The sky had suffered a power cut; the branches tangling out from the plant shop behind them were burned wires; the giant tap-head of the blue tomb had been turned off by an arid hand.
He needed to piss badly. Aarti did not know this. Or did she?
Why else was she standing beside him with her head bowed slightly (as if to tame the gloriously upturned nose), arms crossed, sleeves pulled over her hands, the satchel-strap slashing between her breasts so that they bubbled up in her shirt?
Her hand finally windmilled on the axis of her wrist.
He needed to piss very badly.
“This isn’t my bus stop,” she said, smoothing her skirt.
Arjun panicked. “Oh shit! Fucking crap. I’m sorry. No one else got off so I thought—”
Then he ran after the bus.
“Wait!” she shouted behind him, rubbing the craters of sleeplessness under her eyes.
But there was no time to lose. Arjun had rocketed off, his backpack bouncing on the small mound of his butt. As the bus slowed down at the next red light, he leaped over the jamun-wallah on the sidewalk, felt an ice-cream wrapper snag around his foot, and suddenly found himself being jerked into the shell of his backpack with the violent pullback action of a slingshot. It was Aarti. Aarti holding him by his shoulder straps. Gentle, patient Aarti. He could feel her breathing on his shoulder. He wanted to knot the floppy sleeves of her shirt, keep her close like this. She let go of him like a bully who has suddenly seen the face of reason or a schoolteacher.
“Sorry,” she whispered, as he turned to face her, “I didn’t want to make—to make a scene.” This was new to Arjun. To not want to make a scene. To go to such lengths to not make a scene. Unheard of. Undiscovered. Like a cure for cancer or a salve for the Indian cricket team’s bad performance. Like a private piddle that bothered no one.
“I got you into this, I feel bad,” he said, thighs now squeezed together in agony. “I’ll call my car. My driver can drop you.”
“This isn’t your bus stop?” she asked, yawning.
“No,” he said.
“Oh right—” she said, shelving neat strands of hair behind her ears. Her face was beautiful in a way that confounded photographs, a canvas where expressions achieved a profound fixity, a smile or a nervous crimping of the forehead like a thing that could last forever. You could tell she knew this about her face; her hands were always snaky and articulate near her mouth; the arch of her fingers seemed to lead to the prized lips.
“I have some work around here,” he said.
“I’ll get a taxi,” she said. “I’ll feel bad if you feel bad, so don’t worry about it, okay?”
“But why?” he asked. Then he had an idea. “My car can come any time. I have just one minute work in the plant shop, will you hold my bag?”
She did as she was told mostly because she was in shock, and before she could respond, he had dropped his backpack at her feet with a resounding thump and legged it through the green gates.
He entered the RC Kataria Plant Shop.
He returned minutes later with a potted tulsi plant and a still-full bladder.
This, however, had not been the plan.
The plan had been to skirt across the broken concrete floor crisscrossed by leafy shadows, observe the glorious mess of foliage, and find a bubble bath of rhododendrons to piss into. But the gardener, dressed in a spare dhoti and writing in a notebook, had viewed the schoolboy suspiciously and chased him all the way out of the plant shop with his eyes—preventing him from pissing and guilting Arjun into buying a plant that he now held out to Aarti by means of apology, the red pot feeling cold in his hands, the mud in the pot dark and gloomy like the inside of Aarti’s pupils.
“What’s this, Arjun?” she asked, standing on her toes. “Are you on your school’s green brigade?” She let on nothing about last night’s e-mail.
“Oh, that’s the work I had,” he said with great effort, as if the words were a dam across a lake of piss. “To buy a plant. For a science project. On photosynthesis. And fluorescence—”
“Arjun, actually I think I’ll take a cab,” she said. “I have FIITJEE soon, and I just called my parents on my mobile to tell them I’ll go straight there. Thanks so much for offering, though.”
“Can I offer you this plant?” he said with a goofy grin.
“Taxi!” she shouted.
Arjun couldn’t believe it: Was she really going to leave? If yes, why lead him on and touch him and hold him by the backpack straps for this? He was irritated and upset, particularly because he still needed to piss and because the entire problem of pissing could have been solved easily by…an erection. Courtesy of Aarti. An erection always stalled piss. He wished now that Aarti was more forthright and sexual, that her body offered up more of itself than it did—she was cute and affectionate and was sticking out her hip to hail a taxi, but that was all, the convent girls’ uniform made her seem formless, it wasn’t good enough to eras
e the memory of his parents making love two nights ago. Standing in the plant shop, he had felt the same way, imagining his parents in the bamboo grove, their bodies like two lush, large leaves, skin that shriveled to the touch, only tiny spots of perspiration reflecting off the foliage.
He wanted to see Aarti naked, was the thing. He wanted to grab hold of her hand, feel the veins piping the underside of her arm, fling the potted plant in the middle of the Nizamuddin roundabout so that the exploding shards forced the spirals of cars to widen and let them pass, both of them clambering into the blue tomb that sat at the base of the Golf Club Flyover, where he would finally kiss her, feel his way toward the dead bed of the gravestone, and say, “Do you want to start a riot?” referring of course to the fact that his penis was circumcised and outwardly Muslim and she was a Hindu, and if they had been having sex in a tense Hindu-Muslim area, their union might have triggered off communal riots, in fact the sex would be so amazing that there would certainly be riots, all sorts of people would die, new tombs would sprout up across the city, more places to dally in—
“You really should be careful about the taxis these days,” he whispered to her. “Most of the drivers are Ms.”
“Ms?” she asked.
“Muslims!” he said, and then looked around to see if the throng of passing Muslim boys—all dressed in tight white caps and gray kurtas—had heard. They had just crossed the road from the Nizamuddin Dargah, the Muslim shrine.
Aarti looked irritated. “Look, Arjun, that’s silly. This is the middle of Delhi. It’s the most boring place in the world. Nothing like that could happen. Nothing ever happens in Delhi. And if you ask me, our Hindu driver-types are the worst. These Muslims at least respect their women—”
“That’s true,” said Arjun. He felt chastised. “I’m only saying because—okay. I don’t want you to go.”
She thought for a moment. She bit her lower lip.
“Stay,” he said, “I like you.”
It appeared, for once, that he had said the right thing. She said quickly, “I like you too.” Then: “But have you seen this part of Delhi? It’s my favorite part of Delhi. Everything else is so boring. Here at least there is culture.”
He looked enviously at two men unzipping side-by-side under a giant keekar tree. He admired the gall of the peanut seller who was scratching his pelvis. The city at crotch level was where he belonged. He put the tulsi plant on the ground to commemorate the beginning of his relationship with Aarti.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said.
Walking was good. Walking fast was better. It kept his bladder dancing. He used Aarti’s cell phone to call home and asked that Balwant Singh bring the car to Nizamuddin, and yes he was fine, he was just buying a plant, he’d be right back, okay bye.
Then he clicked the phone off and turned to Aarti and started talking about the band. He told her how they’d forged a signature rock style on the flyover. How they’d one-upped their competition by choosing as their summit a place still swirling with searchlights of dust and dampness; how the passing cars had all plunked gravel into the dicey-looking pits below. She was duly impressed, and said, “Where do you practice regularly?”
“On a flyover, yaar,” said Arjun.
Suddenly the band name was clear to him: The Flyover Yaars. The next day in school he presented it to his band-mates amid much fanfare; the four boys threw themselves into the project of mythmaking. They broadcast freely to their classmates about their bold shenanigans on the Godse Nagar Flyover. Drew diagrams of musical levitation on the blackboard that shimmered at noon, chalky pulsars radioactive with rumors. Preached the legend of the band to the white-uniformed masses. Were even felicitated with free offerings of slimy chow mein in the canteen, which they set on fire to see if they truly contained petrol, as the popular legend went. But there was no soy-blaze, no biohazard, only extra-charred noodles.
Aarti said, “Here we are.”
They entered the shanty through a narrow alley smeared with slush. On either side were tiny shacks serving tea and huge fluffy naans and rotis. Men glanced at them as they reached with giant spears into the glowing cylinders of their tandoors. Goats strained at their tethers; Aarti reached out to pet one. All around Arjun were alien-looking signs in Urdu: Muslim bookstores, Waqf boards, tube-light shops. The men and women in the area appeared to be staring at Aarti, her bare knees poking forward into the dusty afternoon light. Yet she was utterly un-self-conscious. Arjun walked a little behind her, both hands dug into his back pant-pockets.
He was squeezing his butt to hold in the piss. It appeared, strangely, to work.
“Don’t you love that this is the middle of Delhi?” she said. “All these women in burkhas and all these beautiful dilapidated buildings. But wait till you go into the dargah. Sometimes they have qawallis here. It’s really amazing. Do you know how old this is?”
To Arjun it all just seemed poor. They entered a quadrangular space between buildings and stood at the edge of a tank filled with water. Children were climbing up to the precarious ledges of the buildings, hanging their shirts on the spikes of TV antennae and then diving down into the tank as if this were the most natural thing in the world. They screamed and cursed. In the dappled light Arjun studied Aarti’s reflection in the water, only to have it shattered with a splash. They both stepped back.
“The culture is so rich,” Aarti continued. “What do we Hindus have in Delhi? It’s really boring being a Hindu. All the temples—well, except Hanuman Mandir—were built like two days ago. And then we don’t have any strict traditions. You can do what you want and you don’t have to do what you don’t want. That’s why I get bored when my Dadi goes to the temple. I know nothing bad will happen if I don’t pray.” She sighed. “Do you know—sometimes I wish I was a Muslim.”
“Well—”
“What? You think I’m weird?” she said, bobbing her satchel up in defiance.
“No—you’re damn boring.”
“Shut up.” She giggled.
“But can I tell you a secret?” said Arjun.
They passed through an arch into the main courtyard of the dargah. It was unremarkable to Arjun. It looked like the inside of one of those long filthy tiled old Delhi kothis that his father sometimes visited to massage constituents and local chieftains. In the middle of the courtyard was a tiny tomb.
“What?” said Aarti.
“Promise you won’t tell anyone?”
“Yes—”
“I was born a Muslim,” Arjun blurted.
She didn’t know what to make of this. In the shadows of the buildings her face was softened; he felt he could reach out and touch it and it might fall through his fingers like a curl of smoke.
“I mean. I’m like them”—he nodded toward the boys diving from ledges—“down there. I’m circumscribed. I mean, circumcised. Sorry, am I disturbing you? No? Good. We are adults; we can say these things. But I was adopted by a Hindu family. That’s why I never tell you about my family. I’m actually adopted. My real mother died when I was three.”
He had said it and yet the statement seemed curiously lacking in weightiness. He himself could feel nothing for Rashmi; he had lost only an abstraction.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay. I’m a stepson—I’ve always been treated like one. I have twelve brothers and sisters, and I’m forced to do all the work and take care of them. That’s why I needed to start this band. So I could escape.”
“You have twelve brothers and sisters?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes. I’ve never told anyone. I don’t know why I’m telling you.”
Here is where the plan went awry for Arjun. His eyes began to redden with tears.
Aarti said, “Are you okay, Arjun?”
They were standing side by side at the threshold of the shrine with the outer edges of her satchel and his backpack pressing against each other. She was close enough that he could smell sharpened pencils and shampoo and face cream. But she hadn’t turned to
face him. Her shoulders had gone stiff. She was teasing and coiling her hair nervously with both hands. She was at a loss. She was looking left and right.
“Are you okay, Arjun?” she said.
“Yes, I’m fine,” he growled. “Sorry. Let’s go. My car will be almost here.”
They started walking back out in rapid steps. Why was he crying? Was it scientifically possible that piss held in on one end could become tears on the other? His throat and nose and sinuses felt coated with crushed glass. Then they were back on the main road, back in the hubbub. He’d stopped crying but was still sniffling, and she turned to him again and said, “Arjun, how long have you known? That you were adopted?” She was looking at her feet.
Arjun said, “I don’t want to talk about it. Sorry.”
“Okay, sorry.”
“No, no, no, it’s okay.”
Now they waited at the bus stop in silence. He stepped into her shadow on the peanut-strewn pavement. Inside, he fumed and fumed and fumed. Why had he chosen to tell her such a huge, stupid lie? I was born a Muslim, I’ve been treated like a stepson. Great! Now he could never have the band and the family and Aarti in the same place. He could never organize a concert. His life was compartmentalized beyond repair. No one—not even Aarti, the girl to whom he’d wished to confess everything—would know who he truly was.
No one would know, Arjun thought, that there wasn’t much to know.
There it was, that hideous self-pity, and his eyes began to redden again in defense, and so it was a great relief when he saw the car thundering through the traffic toward them, the way he loved it—siren ablaze, the government-spoke on the hood fluttering in slipstreams, windows tinted as if to protect a supermodel from the paparazzi. He enjoyed the pomp and ceremony of a government car, the way an Ambassador—an ungainly, diesel beast—changed into the ultimate symbol of plush power as soon as it was fitted with a siren. He liked the way the drawl of the car’s approach took people by surprise; how they tried hard to not ask, Is your Papa in the government? And how they always failed as soon as the powerful AC blast knocked them flat against the cool leather upholstery.
Family Planning Page 18
