An Extraordinary Destiny

by Shekhar Paleja

  “I’m sick of the news networks covering the Lewinsky affair 24/7,” Taran said, opening a beer. “It was just a fucking blowjob!”

  Anush felt a little out of place when they got into these sorts of discussions about politics, and the inevitable historical or philosophical references. He usually agreed with Taran, who was as friendly as he was smart. Taran came from money but was unemployed and said he’d probably never be able to get a job with his MA in English Lit. At first, Anush had liked Taran mostly because Taran was a skinny Sikh whose turban made his head look larger than it already did on his scrawny torso, making Anush the more handsome of the two. Recently, though, Anush had begun to appreciate Taran’s sarcasm and quick wit. In college, Anush made fun of guys like Taran, but now Anush enjoyed Taran’s perspective, his insights, and was even a bit jealous of Taran’s ability to communicate complex ideas with ease.

  Far up along the north side of Juhu Beach, Anush parked the Benz at the end of a deserted road with a view of the ocean. In the back seat, Ameena opened another bottle of Kingfisher and filled everyone’s plastic cups.

  Taran handed Anush a CD, saying, “Dude, play this advance bootleg of the new Lauryn Hill I got from a friend in London. His uncle’s a record producer.”

  The waves were less than a hundred feet away, lapping at the shore.

  As the music started, Anush examined the CD cover in his hand. Taran and Ameena talked politics in the back seat while Anush and Nasreen listened to the music. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was reminiscent of the Fugees, the band Hill had fronted, but this new album had much more soul, without losing any of the swagger that the Fugees were known for. It sounded amazing in the stereo system. The bass was deep, the highs crisp and clear.

  Taran said, “I don’t buy this bullshit about India being on the cusp of change.”

  “What do you mean? Everything is changing,” Ameena said.

  “Yeah, OK, lots is changing,” Taran said, “but I hate the fucking CN sound bites of India or China being compared to sleeping giants, or oversized elephants or dragons or whatever the fuck. The real story is the money—how it will change us, but not necessarily for the better.”

  Ameena said, “But if more Indians are lifted out of poverty, isn’t that good?”

  “On the surface, yes. But on a deeper level, no fucking way. As soon as the average Indian has the ability to buy more shit, avarice will eventually become the new religion.”

  Anush reminded himself to look up what avarice meant.

  Taran continued, “Humans are too fucking gluttonous, selfish. Look at America. That is our destiny.”

  “You’re so bleak,” Ameena said. “Thank god there are people more optimistic.”

  “Optimistic or blind?” Taran said.

  The two of them bickered often, serving as each other’s devil’s advocate. It was their way of flirting.

  In the front seat, Anush and Nasreen sipped their beers while listening to the music. The lyrics on this album weren’t just political but also private confessions. Hill’s voice encompassed pain and longing and strength and joy all at once. You’re just too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off of you . . .

  Nasreen said, “Lauryn makes Frankie Valli’s original sound so delicate, so impotent.”

  Taran said, “I think our apathy and greed will turn everyone bourgeois and only pollute the planet more. We’re already overpopulating the fuck out of it.”

  “So we should just let all the poor suffer? Or better yet, nuke them?” Ameena said.

  “That’s exactly what the Western world wants,” Taran said, and then in an American accent, “Nuke them Middle East sand niggers! Yee haw!” After opening another beer, he continued, “And don’t get me started on Pakistan developing nukes.”

  Ameena said, “If we’re trying to develop nukes, why shouldn’t they be allowed? It’s hypocritical for the West to ban us from making our own nuclear weapons when they have enough to blow the whole world up a hundred times over.”

  “Of course, it’s totally hypocritical. I said, specifically, Pakistan should not be allowed. Secular democracy is in jeopardy there—actually, it’s up for debate if it ever even existed there.”

  “We have a right to develop nukes, but the responsibility not to,” Ameena said.

  Anush and Nasreen were holding hands in the front seat. Lauryn Hill’s vocals were like honey, Anush thought.

  You’re just too good to be true,

  Can’t take my eyes off of you,

  You’d be like heaven to touch,

  I wanna hold you so much,

  At long last love has arrived,

  And I thank God I’m alive . . .

  Nasreen’s parents were still on vacation in Alibag, and so Anush was at Nasreen’s most evenings. He was wondering how he’d bring her home to Sea Face Terraces and introduce her to his father. Would the old man go ballistic because Nasreen was Muslim? It wasn’t an issue for Anush or Nasreen, so why should the old man care? But of course, it wasn’t that simple for people from the old man’s generation. Like all young Indians, Nasreen and Ameena didn’t align themselves with Pakistan just because they were Muslim. They were proud Indians. India was their home as much as anyone’s. Anush reasoned that as the old man got to know Nasreen, her charm, her beauty, her intelligence would eventually win him over.

  Pardon the way that I stare,

  There’s nothing else to compare,

  The sight of you leaves me weak,

  There are no words left to speak,

  But if you feel like I feel,

  Please let me know that it’s real,

  You’re just too good to be true,

  Can’t take my eyes off of you . . .

  Despite the old man’s contempt towards Muslims he would eventually come around and see Nasreen for who she was. He’d have to. The world was changing.

  Anush and Nasreen hadn’t yet mentioned meeting each other’s parents. After all, they’d only known each other a month. But Anush couldn’t stop daydreaming about spending the rest of his life with her.

  I need you baby, if it’s quite alright,

  I need you baby to warm the lonely nights.

  The tide went out slowly as the night passed and they emptied a few bottles of Kingfisher, arguing over the world’s problems. No one complained about the CD repeating. At some point, when the beer was all drunk, and Taran and Ameena ceased their faux hostilities, Taran asked Ameena, “In a perfect world, where do you see yourself in five years?”

  Ameena said, “Working at an NGO that helps women in the Third World.”

  Taran said, “I’d love to write poetry, drink good booze, have a flat in Paris and one in Bombay, never get married, but have many mistresses and concubines in both cities.”

  Anush wasn’t sure what to say. Whenever he got drunk with his friends in college they mostly talked about fast cars, argued over which actresses were sexier, and called each other fags. He’d never earnestly confessed anything personal. But he felt different tonight and admitted, “I’ve been so busy supplying the hotels lately I haven’t had time to work on my own designs. But maybe one day, I’d love to make all my grandfather’s miniatures come to life—chairs and tables made of heirloom wood only with my own modern take. Maybe even show my stuff in a gallery one day.”

  “Wow, that’s cool.” “Brilliant.”

  They’d been to the shop and seen some of his work. Anush had given Nasreen one of his grandfather’s miniatures—a mahogany and teak chair with a high ebony back fashioned in a type of Queen Anne style.

  “You’re so talented. You should do it,” Nasreen said.

  “I don’t know. I’m not gifted like my grandfather was,” Anush said.

  “No way.” “That’s crazy.” “You must do it.”

  Anush wasn’t sure what to make of the encouragement and praise. Opening his door, he said, “Excuse me, I’ve got to go to the loo.”

  Taran followed. They walked to a wall thirty yards away and ur
inated on the side of it.

  Taran said, “Remorse is the poison of life.”

  “What?”

  “I think that’s Charlotte Brontë. Or maybe Emily Brontë. I can never remember. They’re kinda the same. Don’t tell Ameena I said that. Basically it means, if you don’t go for what you really want, you’ll only regret it.”

  The February night air was cool. When Anush and Taran returned to the car, Anush noticed Nasreen shivering and gave her his sweater. Taran and Ameena teased them for the clichéd gesture, but Anush saw the way Nasreen’s eyes lit up.

  They sat for another hour in the Benz, sipping a quarter bottle of whisky Anush had in the glove box, talking about religion, the Lewinsky scandal, nuclear proliferation between India and Pakistan—things that Anush cared little about, but he couldn’t remember a time he’d felt so content. In the front seat, Nasreen privately squeezed his hand every now and then.

  At around four in the morning, after they’d finished all the liquor and couldn’t stop yawning, Anush drove them home.

  In the empty Benz, he drove past Sea Face Terraces on Warden Road, to the Mahalakshmi temple. He hadn’t been there in years but ever since he met Nasreen, the temple had been at the back of his mind and yet he’d not gone.

  The roads were deserted and dawn was hinting at materializing, marking one edge of the night sky with an imperceptible light. The roads were empty apart from a milk delivery boy who raced past on his bicycle with his milk canisters rattling on his rear carrier, getting ready to start his day of deliveries. Anush heard a lone bird twitter and warble as he pulled up to the temple, where two priests were pulling open the gates.

  “Namaste,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if the temple would be open.”

  “We’re opening early today for the Maha Shivratri preparations,” one of the priests explained.

  Slipping off his shoes, Anush went up the cool marble steps and into the dark temple. The smell of yesterday’s incense clung in the air. It instantly reminded him of the incense sticks he’d laid on his mother’s funeral pyre, but instead of feeling anxious or melancholy, he felt calm now. At the back of the temple he could just barely make out the sea that was lapping the black rocks nearby. On the veranda, the air was salty and moist. He scanned the sky for a morning star but couldn’t spot one. Tiny beads of condensation formed on his face while Lauryn Hill echoed in his head.

  You’re just too good to be true.

  Can’t take my eyes off of you.

  You’d be like heaven to touch.

  I wanna hold you so much.

  At long last love has arrived.

  And I thank God I’m alive.

  You’re just too good to be true.

  Can’t take my eyes off of you . . .

  EARLY IN THE morning, when he arrived home, Anush was barely through the door before his father charged at him and threw him to the ground. With the Bombay Times in his hand, he stood over top of Anush and yelled, “What is the meaning of this!?” It was a photo of Nasreen, him, and the BJP man at the party, with their names in the caption. “Your arm around the waist of a Muslim girl, standing right next to Premtesh Malwalkar? Have you no shame? Do you have any idea how hard I’ve worked? The sacrifices I’ve had to make in order for you to enjoy your comfy, easy life?”

  “But she’s not—”

  “She’s not Muslim? She has a Muslim name!”

  “Yes, she’s Muslim, but—”

  With Anush still on the floor, the old man put his foot down on Anush’s chest and said, “Listen to me. You will stop all this furniture nonsense, and you will stop seeing that girl. I’ve let you run around too long. It’s my own fault. I’m selling that damn furniture shop like I should have years ago. Developers are desperate to buy that land and build a tall tower. I’ve arranged for you to meet with a nice Gujarati girl and her family. Her name is Jyoti Patik. It’s time for you to get married.”

  “But, you don’t understand—”

  Applying pressure with his foot to Anush’s chest, the old man spoke quietly. “No, it’s you who doesn’t understand. If you don’t agree, you will never get another rupee from me. Ever. Choose wisely.”

  - 18 -

  1997

  WALKING UP KING’S ROAD TOWARDS Sloane Square, Jyoti picked up her pace, tightening the Kashmiri pashmina scarf around her neck. It was one of the items in a care package her mother had expedited after Jyoti had complained in a letter about the bitter wind that slapped and stung her face and felt as if it cut right through her bones. It was true what people said about the winters in England. She wondered if she’d be able to endure the remainder of her time alone in London, where most of the people were about as warm as the climate.

  Jyoti was staying in a posh, but small, furnished flat in Chelsea, the walls of which were peppered with photos of sunny Spanish beaches. However, the photos failed to provide any comfort because even indoors, despite central heating, it was frigid and no match for Bombay heat.

  It would have been more affordable to stay elsewhere in London, but it was her first time away from home and so her mother—the one who ultimately made these decisions—wanted to make sure her precious Jyoti baby was in a safe neighbourhood. It slightly irritated Jyoti that her parents still called her their Jyoti baby even though she was twenty-three.

  Jyoti’s mother was never keen on letting Jyoti go to London. It was something her parents regularly argued about. When they learned that the dormitory was co-ed, that was the final straw. Luckily, Jyoti’s father had reminded her mother how prestigious the London School of Economics was. Jyoti and her younger brother had snickered at their mother’s antiquated sense of propriety, but now Jyoti regretted it, realizing she’d been an ungrateful child. Her mother had only wanted to protect her. Now, Jyoti sorely missed home. She’d always taken it for granted. Everything had always been at her disposal in Bombay: the servants, the driver, the food, the hospitable climate.

  Once they’d decided to send her, they searched through a letting agent in London for a modest flat, but the acceptable choices were all exorbitant. It was through a friend of a friend at her father’s hospital where he worked as a physician that they heard of a retired Indian doctor who’d lived in London most of his life and was looking to sublet his flat in Chelsea while he retired to Spain.

  “It’s still much too expensive,” her mother had argued.

  “But it’s an investment,” her father said more than once, convincing her mother it would be a feather in her cap for finding a suitable boy when it came time for marriage. Her mother softened at that somewhat, but was still unconvinced until they learned that the doctor’s flat was across the street from where Margaret Thatcher once lived. Jyoti and her father shared a private smile over the fact that her mother knew nothing of British politics, and yet approved of Jyoti going since living across the street from a famous, or infamous, ex-prime minister might be another feather in her cap. Regardless, Jyoti was excited at the chance to live abroad for the first time in her life.

  Now, spring in London was around the corner. Or so everyone said. The air was brisk but the sun was out in full force, making a rare appearance. As Jyoti made her way to Sloane Square tube station, she thought back to the early days of fall, when she’d first arrived, how instead of taking the tube to school, she’d sometimes walk through St. James’s Park, dazzled by the autumn colours. She couldn’t walk past the ponds without stopping to feed the ducks, or the odd pelican or swan. But she hadn’t been through the park in months now. Winter had made her somewhat of a hermit. Jyoti had begun to despise the outdoors. The city she’d begun to fall in love with in the autumn had now become anathema to her. In the fall, after classes in the afternoon, she’d go down every street in Covent Garden, work her way up to the Seven Dials, back down through Chinatown to Leicester Square, then nip into the fringes of Soho, working up enough courage to go a little farther into its heart every time, ignoring the panhandlers, the homeless, the mentally ill, and finally be rewarded when s
he reached the centre of Soho—the beautiful Soho Square garden, where she’d sit on a bench and take in the buildings surrounding the square, eating a piece of carrot cake she’d saved from lunch. How she longed for those warm afternoons. Nowadays you couldn’t sit on a park bench for longer than a minute without shivering.

  Jyoti pulled out her travel card from her purse at just the right distance from the entrance to Sloane Square tube station and fed it into one of the ticket machines without breaking her stride, without holding up anybody behind her in the queue—it was what separated a tourist from a Londoner. There were so many damn tourists in the city lollygagging at entranceways and blocking the flow of pedestrians. She especially hated it when they were inconsiderate at the turnstiles, fishing in their pockets or jackets or bags for their travel cards, making people behind them wait. As she walked down the stairs it occurred to her that she was no longer the wide-eyed, ingenuous girl who’d first arrived six months ago, standing on the wrong side of the escalator and doing all the touristy things that annoyed her now. The timid and studious little Jyoti Patik, who always got the best grades and never dared to even look at a boy, let alone speak to one, was now an independent young woman, navigating her way through a foreign city. For the first couple of months she’d barely even spoken to her female classmates, let alone to the boys, but now she was finding the confidence to say hello and make small talk with a few of her peers, boys included. Her parents and friends in Bombay would’ve been shocked to see her wandering around the British Museum on a Saturday afternoon, talking to an elderly gentleman about the Rosetta Stone, or sharing her table with a Polish girl at the Natural History Museum café, having coffee and scones with clotted cream as they chatted about which Spice Girl was the least annoying.

  As she made her way to the platform, Jyoti’s heart began to race. Over the past few weeks, there had been a young man who’d often been catching the same train from Sloane Square with her in the mornings. He had dirty-blond hair and striking green eyes. There was something unpolished about his appearance and yet he seemed kind. More and more often, she found herself getting on the same compartment as him. Despite being taller than her by nearly a foot he didn’t seem intimidating. Yesterday he sat facing her, a couple of seats away. Every now and then she sensed him glancing up at her from his book, or looking in her general direction, but she kept her face buried in her textbook, not able to summon the strength to look at him directly. She only had enough courage to steal a glimpse of him whenever he had his back to her. Even from that angle he aroused something sensual in her. On days when the train was full and they’d have to stand, even the way he gripped the overhead railing was seductive. The sinewy veins that spread across his knuckles were just one of the few details she found herself unable to forget, and these bits of him would linger with her, sometimes into bed. The other day on the tube, the thought of his hands running through her hair nearly caused her knees to buckle and made her blush, and she castigated herself all morning through class for such lewd thoughts.