In their courtship days, he had been the meek one and she had been the partner who had taken the lead. He had been a quiet boy, new to the capital city, unable to talk to women or even make friends. His clothes were old and strange, his shoes were too new. The feminist’s interest in him had come as a surprise, suddenly making him socially mobile, accepted even, in the closely knit circles of the rich and the intellectual. ‘He’s a bright boy,’ the feminist had told her friends, holding his hand and asking him to sit on the mat that covered three-quarters of the furniture-less room, and giving him a glass of vodka, his first taste of alcohol.
The feminist and her friends called themselves a reading group. That is, they got together to read texts and books that were banned by the government. Then they discussed them, arguing heatedly over this point and that. The president watched them, enthralled, too shy to say what he was really thinking: that he needed to get back to his guidebooks to prepare for his examination and that he’d rather have a job that would pay his bills than infinite freedom for which he would have little use.
The president knew they would consider his wish to enter the government services or do anything so mainstream a betrayal, and so he kept the information from the feminist, pretending to be as enraged as she was with what they all referred to as the ‘system’.
This role play, of the leader and the follower, had excited him back then, but she was a fool if she expected him to keep at it after their wedding. Her friends had come for the wedding, laughing at the ceremonies he considered sacred, disrespecting his parents who stood scowling, watching their only son make a mistake they knew he would regret.
‘I am your husband,’ the president told the feminist repeatedly while consummating their marriage. He’d refused to touch her before they got married, much to her amusement. ‘Quaint’ was what she’d called him fondly.
He’d fallen asleep soon after that, only to be awakened by the pungent smell of petrol. She was pouring it over the bed! She looked like a madwoman, her eyes darting this way and that. In her hand, she held a matchbox. ‘I will burn you,’ she screamed. Where were his parents? Couldn’t they hear her? As if she had read his mind, his bride replied, ‘I’ve locked them up.’
She lit a match and held it, her chest heaving. ‘You are crazy,’ the groom said, trying to rub the petrol away with his clothes. But all he achieved by doing that was soaking his clothes with the fuel. In seconds, he could turn into charred meat.
‘I am crazy?’ His bride laughed. ‘You asshole! How dare you rape me?’
‘Rape?’ said the groom, bewildered. This was his conjugal right, didn’t she understand that? ‘But we are married!’ he said.
This only seemed to amuse his bride more. ‘I’m such a fool,’ she said, her hand wavering dangerously.
‘Look, why don’t you put that out? Let’s talk. We can resolve everything by dialogue,’ he said, slowly moving towards the edge of the bed. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a heavy silver bowl with fruits on the low stool next to the bed. It was not a great weapon but something was better than nothing.
The match in her hand went out. She took out another one and began to light it feverishly. The groom’s hand moved towards the bowl. With a screech, she let the match drop. In horror, he watched as the flames darted across the bedspread and leapt to his leg. He remembered screaming. The next thing he knew, he had slammed the bowl on her head and had pushed her on the burning bed. He snuffed the flames on his leg with a cushion.
Then, he limped out of the room, locking it behind him. He could hear the frantic knocking and screams from his parents’ bedroom. He opened the door and collapsed in their arms.
When he woke up in hospital a few hours later, the air was filled with the stench of his burnt leg.
‘She is dead,’ his mother told him as soon as he opened his eyes.
The president touched the leathery patch of skin on his leg in memory. He had married another woman after a few months. Someone more suited to his temperament. Who understood the importance of adjusting. His parents had found her for him. She was auspicious for the family. Just after their wedding, the results of his entrance test had come – he’d topped the exam, not just in the capital city but across the country. This October, they would have been married for thirty years.
Seventeen
The second daughter read Tuesday’s newspaper with disbelief. Not because of what she was reading but because it was Tuesday and she was still here with her parents. She had been so sure that come Monday, the tentacles of the government would descend upon her like some monstrous sea creature dragging away its prize to its lair. She had nightmares about the rapist. She had never seen him before, but she pictured a nondescript face with a mild moustache. The features kept altering with every dream, but the smell of him remained the same. A putrid smell that made her gag.
Her mother was delighted when the second daughter told her the supposed good news. ‘At last!’ she said, kissing her lightly on her forehead. ‘Now everything will be all right.’ Her eyes were drawn to the missing tooth.
The second daughter only smiled more. ‘I hope so,’ she said. Her sister had come with her husband on Sunday to see her in her present condition.
After a quick appraisal, the first daughter had said, ‘It’s going to be a boy. See, your skin is starting to break out. When I was pregnant with my first, I resembled a leopard.’
The second daughter softly replied, ‘But your first was never born.’
Her sister frowned. ‘You know what I mean,’ she said.
Her brother-in-law, the dupatta regulator, was sick. He had vomited as soon as he had got out of the car, much to his wife’s embarrassment. He tried to make up for it by slapping her father’s back and acting very pally. ‘Isn’t your husband here?’ he asked her and seemed to be relieved when she said she had come alone. The dupatta regulator’s mood improved soon.
‘This is specially for you,’ her mother said, winking at her happily.
The second daughter tasted the freshly made mango pickle, the asafoetida bursting on her tongue as the red oil slid down her throat. ‘It’s yum,’ she said obligingly.
‘When I was pregnant with you, all I ate was curd rice and pickle,’ her mother said, serving another mountain of rice to the protesting dupatta regulator. ‘I was so nauseous, your father used to joke that I would puke the baby out!’ She laughed.
Her father looked up at her, their eyes meeting for a brief second. ‘Those were fun times,’ her father said, looking down at his food again.
The first daughter picked at her food, eating in delicate morsels. ‘I think pregnancy-related nausea is overrated,’ she said. ‘When I was pregnant, all I had to do was promise myself that I wouldn’t give in to my body’s weaknesses.’
The dupatta regulator beamed at his wife. ‘She is very strong,’ he said, biting into a piece of mutton with gusto. Everybody was wearing their clothes in this room. There wasn’t a single person who wasn’t dressed appropriately. Even the second daughter, the dupatta regulator noted with approval, was wearing her dupatta correctly. It had been a dream, just a dream.
Their three children sat around the table, eating silently. The youngest son ate messily with rice particles and gravy drops outlining his plate like an archipelago. The eldest set aside the mutton bones outside his plate neatly. Like a butcher shop, thought the second daughter. The sharp stench of old carcasses and chicken shit hit her nose out of nowhere. And clawing out of the intestines of a dead goat was the rapist, his teeth chewing the clotted meat as he tore his way out. The second daughter’s stomach heaved. She rose from the table, muttering excuses and ran to the washbasin, her head throbbing violently.
‘Poor thing,’ her mother said, holding a ladle full of mutton curry midair. The youngest son looked at her with impatience, his hands poised to mix the rice with the gravy. He was bored of all this talk and couldn’t wait to get back home. His grandparents disapproved of watching TV, insisting instead that
they spend ‘quality time’ together. Or, in other words, discuss his life in intricate detail. The youngest son could never understand why they needed to know what he ate for lunch in his school canteen or who his current best friend was. They were hell-bent on memorizing the signposts of his life as if they were tourists navigating an alien city. Almost all their sentences would end with a question mark and the youngest son’s replies would get more and more curt as time went by. To make matters worse, his grandfather would read up riddles from children’s magazines and quiz him. His unenthusiastic responses never got the point home though. There were always more riddles prepared for him on every visit.
The first daughter smirked when her sister came back to the table, apologizing. ‘Sorry about that,’ the second daughter said, starting to clear her plate.
‘I will do all that,’ said her mother. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down? Take some rest. I really don’t think you should go for a movie now.’ Her mother glared at her father who pretended not to have heard her.
‘When I was pregnant, I used to walk three kilometres to buy groceries every day,’ said the first daughter, with the air of a saint.
‘Only because you insisted,’ said the dupatta regulator defensively.
The first daughter patted his hand and said, ‘Of course! Pregnancy is not a disease. It’s a condition, that’s all it is.’ The second daughter ignored her and drank a glass of water.
‘Which doctor are you going to?’ said the dupatta regulator, feeling that he hadn’t said anything substantial in a long while. The heavily spiced mutton curry was succeeding in vanquishing his headache and he had been enjoying it so much that he wondered if he’d been impolite.
‘We haven’t decided yet,’ said his father-in-law quickly.
‘If I may make a suggestion, you can go to the same doctor she went to,’ the dupatta regulator said. ‘He’s … you know, quite understanding,’ he said, pointedly looking at his three sons to make his hint as obvious as possible.
‘Yes. He accepts such cases only on recommendation though,’ said his wife. ‘Because of all this legal-begal thing going on.’
Her three sons were deaf to the conversation around them.
‘Thank you,’ said the second daughter. ‘But I don’t think we’ll trouble you.’
The dupatta regulator laughed, spraying morsels of food around him. ‘It’s no trouble. The whole point is to get rid of trouble before it actually begins to trouble you!’ he said, proud of himself for thinking of something so witty. ‘Girls these days are really difficult,’ he said, chewing on a bone. ‘I should know! At the university these days, it’s impossible to find a decent, well-mannered girl. I have to file nearly fifteen reports every morning, imagine that! And then they complain of getting molested—’ He stopped, suddenly remembering that his children were at the table too. His voice dropped and he said, ‘Well, you know how things are. It’s difficult to bring up girls with good morals.’
His father-in-law nodded, his eyes on the second daughter. He gave her an almost imperceptible shake of the head, as if begging her not to say anything. The second daughter shrugged and went to bed. She slept through most of Monday and when Tuesday came, she sat up in bed, hugging her knees and daring to hope that the monster had lost its way.
Eighteen
The media mogul looked at the note on her desk with apprehension. The president wanted to visit her. It had been a long time since that had happened. The media mogul had a feeling that this was about the falling TRPs. Her staff came up with all sorts of ideas for new shows but nothing worked. Straight Shooting’s Medical Miracles continued to stay at the top of the charts like a stubborn stain. The priest was getting bolder with the show. Just yesterday, he had cured a gay man by whipping him till he had to be carried away by an ambulance. The show had received a record number of phone calls from viewers with messages for the priest and the gay man. Some were abusive, some were laudatory, but the point was that every phone call meant more coins into the priest’s pocket.
Advertisements for the Moral Police frequently featured during the show and the media mogul was beginning to wonder if the president would take his business to the priest as well. She had done her best to promote his agenda on the channel but she understood money and knew the president was not a man to confuse friendship with good business sense. In this day and age of rapidly deteriorating morals, government offices had to be on their feet to keep the citizens in control.
The media mogul’s office was on the top floor of the building and she had a panoramic view of the city below. When she was still new to the job, it had given her such a thrill to stand by her glass windows, gazing down at the tiny ant-people and toy cars that scurried across the lanes. But now, the media mogul barely left her desk during office hours.
Her breakfast arrived on the plain tin plate out of which she was fond of eating (the media mogul often said in her interviews that this was to remind her of her humble beginnings). The omelette was perfect as usual. The egg laid by the female of the Golden Geese was always of the same size and the yolk-to-white proportion was the same too. She ate the omelette slowly, savouring every bit of it. Out of their silver cage, the geese watched her with steady, unmoving eyes.
She had just finished eating when her secretary announced that the president had arrived. ‘Show him in,’ she said, wiping her hands on a napkin and drinking a glass of water. I must not look flustered, she told herself, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Nevertheless, in the few minutes that the president took to walk from the reception to her office, the media mogul was beginning to feel uncomfortably sweaty despite the chilly blast that the air conditioner sent into the room. She had set the temperature at minimum, knowing the president’s preference for the cold.
‘Good morning,’ said the president, sitting down without being asked to. The media mogul had been in the process of dusting down her dress to ensure that there were no bread crumbs from her breakfast when the president had walked in. She tried to sit down smartly but only succeeded in squashing her large belly up against the edge of the table painfully as her chair swivelled away from her.
The president pretended not to have noticed. ‘It’s Tuesday today,’ he said, tearing a page from the calendar.
‘It is,’ said the media mogul, regaining her composure. She could hear the scratch of feet as the Golden Geese paced their cage.
‘Nice birds,’ said the president, not even looking at them.
The media mogul only smiled. She knew the president hated people who talked unnecessarily and she wasn’t going to lose her nerve and blather. ‘It’s good to see you,’ she said noncommittally.
The president inclined his head and said, ‘You know why I have come.’ The media mogul could not say no. She nodded. ‘Good. We can get down to business then,’ said the president, a hint of approval in his eyes. He had always liked this quality about the media mogul. She did not waste his time like so many others who fell over themselves to please him. For a woman, she was uncharacteristically non-talkative and sensible. She was so efficient that the president did not think of her as female any more.
She was looking at him expectantly now, her three chins pressed against her neck like the jowls of an ageing dog. A loyal dog.
‘Let me tell you straightaway that I’m not going to the priest,’ he said. The media mogul visibly relaxed and let out a small laugh.
‘That’s a relief!’ she said, easing up in her chair. She could hear the aggressive male goose pecking at the female in their cage. He did this these days even if it was daytime and the female hadn’t gone into heat yet. The female shielded herself against his attack with her wings, throwing a peck when she could reach him.
‘I have an idea for a show,’ he said, looking down at his hands. The media mogul leant forward. The whole of the past week, she had listened to idea after idea, approving of ones that had potential. But she knew that they were yet to hit upon that show – the one that would displace Medic
al Miracles and keep her geese in her office. She had shouted at her employees, announced bonus schemes for performers, given them motivational speeches and sat through innumerable presentations. But so far, she hadn’t heard what she wanted to hear.
The president, though, was a creative man. He had transformed the Adjustment Bureau in his twenty-year reign. He funded research groups, encouraged the use of technology and fired the saggy old marriage counsellors who had grown a tad too comfortable in their couches.
‘Tell me,’ she said, trying to keep the excitement in her voice down.
‘There is a woman who is proving to be extraordinarily difficult to deal with,’ began the president. He recounted the incident at his office and told her about the rapist’s report.
‘So she’s pregnant?’ asked the media mogul, wondering if he was going to ask her to feature the woman on Knocked Up. So far, they had interviewed only popular celebrities. She supposed it would be new to feature someone villainous but she felt a little letdown by the idea. She had expected something brilliant, something game-changing.
‘No, she isn’t,’ said the president, looking at the geese. ‘She lied to escape from the rapist.’ The media mogul raised her eyebrow. ‘What I want is for her to be raped on television,’ said the president, his tone unchanged. ‘A live show. A lesson that liars who mock the Institution will never forget.’
The media mogul’s eyes lit up. This was it. A heady mix of sex, violence and a good message delivered to the audience. It would be a show like no other. A show that would not, could not, fail. ‘Let’s do it,’ she said, business-like, not wanting to let her excitement show.
The president was still watching the birds. ‘They are cute,’ he said, a rare smile on his iron face.
Nineteen
The dentist had just finished work and was about to close down the shutters of his clinic when the phone rang. It was nine p.m. The dentist paused, the shutters halfway down. He hated working beyond clinic hours and it had been an especially taxing day. He’d had to fit braces on to the teeth of a really bratty eleven-year-old who kept screaming and trying to get off the chair. The dentist was sorely tempted to set him right with a tight slap but his mother sat in the room like a watchdog guarding a vital piece of court evidence. The screaming had exhausted him and he was looking forward to a warm bath and coffee.
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