After a moment’s indecision, he picked up the phone. The number of patients this month was somewhat low and his monthly earnings were nowhere close to the usual target. ‘Hello,’ said a deep female voice. The dentist listened in disbelief to all that the woman said.
In the end, he only said ‘Yes’ when she asked him a question. The woman thanked him and hung up.
In a daze, the dentist locked up the clinic and went home. His mother rubbed his shoulders as he sipped the steaming cup of coffee. ‘What a bitch,’ he muttered to himself. He still hadn’t told his mother about the phone call. She was sure to go into a paroxysm of rage and the dentist had had enough screaming for one day.
‘Everything all right?’ his mother asked him, running her hand through his hair.
‘Yes,’ he replied, hoping she wouldn’t ask more questions. As a child, he never could succeed in hiding anything from his mother. She was like a tireless woodpecker, pecking away at his lies and foibles till she succeeded in stripping away his defences to arrive at the truth.
‘You can tell me, you know,’ she said gently.
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ he snapped.
‘Is it your work?’ she asked, as if she hadn’t heard. The dentist did not reply. ‘Why don’t you get an assistant? Less stressful,’ she said.
‘It’s not that,’ he said, in spite of himself.
‘Then?’ she prodded, her hands still in his hair.
‘It’s her,’ he said reluctantly, feeling the bark loosen and fall to the ground.
‘What about her?’
‘She is not pregnant. Ouch!’ he said, as she tugged at his hair hard without meaning to.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, sitting down on the couch next to him. ‘Did she lose the baby?’
‘She was never pregnant,’ he said. It was comforting to watch his mother’s face work up into wrath as he narrated the tale.
‘What a lying whore!’ she spat out in the end, her fair skin inflamed. ‘Don’t you worry about this,’ she said, taking his hands into hers. Somehow, the dentist felt lighter. The burden of dealing with the problem was now hers. She would think through things and make the decisions. ‘What did you tell her?’ his mother was asking him.
‘I said yes,’ he said anxiously, hoping his mother wouldn’t disagree.
She sat back, a satisfied smile on her face. Relief flooded him. It was going to be all right. ‘Can I come, too?’ she asked, squeezing his hand. ‘Only then will I feel avenged for what she has done to my son.’
‘I can ask,’ he said, promising to call the woman from the channel tomorrow.
‘When is the show?’ asked his mother.
‘They haven’t told me yet,’ said the dentist. ‘They were just calling to get my consent and confirming participation.’
‘I don’t have a good enough sari to wear on TV,’ his mother said, her brow clouding for a moment. ‘All my silks smell of mothballs and the others are tattered to threads.’
‘I’ll get you a new one,’ said the dentist indulgently. ‘We can go shopping tomorrow. I will close the clinic after lunch.’
‘Oh, you don’t have to do that,’ said his mother, delighted. ‘I don’t want to disturb your work.’
‘No, no,’ he insisted, enjoying this meaningless parley. ‘I want to be disturbed. It has been so long since we did anything fun together.’
His mother blushed and smiled. ‘Okay,’ she said, excited as a child.
‘Tell you what, why don’t we go out for lunch and then go shopping?’ said the dentist. ‘I want you to take the day off tomorrow. No sweating over the stove making a hundred dishes.’
‘You know I love cooking,’ said his mother. ‘Especially if it’s for you. After she came to our home, you have lost weight.’
The dentist grinned and said, ‘My pants would beg to differ.’
‘You have,’ his mother insisted. ‘I know you eat lesser these days. Her cooking is awful.’
‘It’s not that bad,’ said the dentist. And then, seeing his mother’s expression, he added, ‘But it’s nowhere close to yours.’
His mother beamed at him, adequately consoled.
‘Come, let’s eat dinner,’ she said. ‘I’ve made your favourite paneer dish.’
As the dentist sat on the table, eating the delicious food, he felt all right. His mother watched over him conscientiously, reading his mind and depositing more on his plate just as he was about to ask her. ‘Life is good,’ he thought. The simple and repetitive activity of raising his hand to his mouth to fill it with food calmed him. When he went to bed that night, his stomach felt a little uncomfortably full, but the dentist couldn’t have been happier.
He slept like a baby and woke up late in the morning, his hair tousled and a fresh stubble on his cheeks.
‘Breakfast!’ his mother said breezily, as soon as he came down in his pyjamas.
‘Mmmmm,’ he said, digging in appreciatively. He loved upma.
‘I’ve told the servant to write on the noticeboard that you won’t be available after lunch,’ his mother said, fussing around him. ‘We are going, right? You are sure?’
‘Of course I am.’ He smiled. ‘We’ll leave home at twelve sharp. Be ready, lady!’
His mother laughed and went to the kitchen to get him some coffee.
A morsel of food, a piece of carrot in the upma, was stuck at the back of his mouth and the dentist worked his tongue over it till it came loose. He spat it out on his palm and put it in a corner of his plate. Then, he drank his coffee and went to his clinic, promising his mother that he would be back soon.
Twenty
The moral policeman knew it the moment he walked into office. A hush fell as he made his way to his desk. ‘The chief wants to see you,’ his colleague told him, barely five minutes after he had sat down.
‘I’ll go once I finish the paperwork for this case,’ said the moral policeman casually. His heart thumped but he knew he ought to stay calm.
His colleague flashed him a sympathetic smile and went his way. When the moral policeman had finished filing the papers, he got up and said a quiet prayer. He had not prayed in a long time and he was surprised by the ease with which the words came back to him. The walk to the chief’s office seemed to take forever. He passed by the desks of his colleagues, each pretending to be deeply immersed in their files. He knew they pitied him and he was grateful for it.
At the first knock, the surprisingly effeminate voice of the chief summoned him inside. The chief was a large hairless man in his late fifties. When he had joined the force, he had been heavily bearded and had required a haircut every week to keep his head closely cropped as was the rule. But seven years ago, exactly the day after he was appointed the chief of the Moral Police Force, he was struck down by a rare disease: one that drastically reduced his testosterone levels and left him hairless and with a woman’s voice overnight. The chief’s previously taut body began to acquire the soft curves of a woman’s form and rumour had it that he had even sprouted breasts. The chief countered this by dressing in dark, oversized clothes to hide his embarrassing body.
His voice might have turned soft but the moral policeman knew that he was still the hardwired, deadly cop who had once shot dead a group of teenagers at point-blank range for drawing genitals with his face on the walls of the building. The chief had been a much feared and much hated moral policeman in his heyday and this one act of punishment had silenced the rebellious young people who bayed for his blood every time he made an arrest for perfectly legal reasons.
Now, looking at this absurdly Humpty-Dumpty-like person seated on an iron chair (the chief disliked comfort, postulating that it made people soft), the moral policeman felt a shiver run down his spine. Suddenly, all his bravado and mental preparation deserted him. There was no air conditioning in the room and its Spartan design did not even accommodate a ceiling fan. Despite the heat that lashed across the room, the moral policeman felt as if there was ice creeping up his toes.
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br /> Unexpectedly, the chief smiled at him. ‘Sit down,’ he said, not unkindly. The moral policeman obeyed.
‘Yesterday, a new case was filed in this office,’ said the chief, fondling the granite paperweight on his table. The moral policeman did not dare to speak.
‘It’s the usual. Boy and girl fall in love. Indulge in illicit relations. Girl becomes pregnant. The case was filed by her father,’ said the chief, still looking at the paperweight. ‘He tried to protect his daughter, of course. But we can’t let people bend the law to their convenience. She refused to tell him who the boy was.’
‘And?’ said the moral policeman, unable to take the silence.
‘She told us though,’ said the chief steadily. ‘When we asked her the right way. We took her in this morning.’
The moral policeman looked around, as if expecting to see the girl walking about in the chief’s office.
‘She’s in the hospital,’ said the chief. ‘The demon in her womb had to be taken care of before it became too strong to die without a fight.’
Many years ago, when the moral policeman was still a child, his parents had taken him to a fair that had many tents with exhibits. There was one with old automobile parts and another with robots. But the one that caught his eye was a snow-white tent with a Red Cross outside it. He had walked in and had been confronted with the sight of innumerable jars with pickled dead things. With addictive horror, he had gone from one exhibit to another till he reached a jar that had an eight-week-old human foetus. It barely looked human but he could read and that was what the label said. He had screamed then, picking up the jar and hurling it to the floor. The thing inside it lay on the sand, its eye staring at him ghoulishly. His parents had come running, scolding him for wandering away and making him apologize to the flustered doctor on duty who had managed to doze off in his chair.
The moral policeman coughed. The chief pushed a glass of water towards him.
‘How’s your son doing?’ he asked, as the moral policeman drank from his glass.
‘Fine, fine,’ he said, gulping down the water.
‘Why don’t you bring him to office tomorrow?’ suggested the chief. He had gone back to playing with his paperweight. ‘Show him where Daddy works?’
‘He’s not here,’ replied the moral policeman confidently. He had practised this line with his wife many times.
‘Oh,’ said the chief. ‘Where is he?’
‘Gone abroad,’ said the moral policeman, looking at the chief in the eye. ‘His grandparents live in the US.’
‘The decadent West. That’s interesting,’ said the chief. A shaft of sunlight fell on his bald head and lit it. It looked like a halo.
‘They are my wife’s parents,’ said the moral policeman defensively. In truth, it had occurred to him to send his son abroad, but he’d been unable to arrange for sufficient funds at such short notice.
‘And when will he return?’ asked the chief, ignoring this.
‘I–I don’t know,’ said the moral policeman. ‘We’re renovating our house and that’s disturbing his studies.’
‘So you sent him away to another country. Pulled him out of school so he can study better. Interesting,’ said the chief, his soft voice caressing the adjective.
The moral policeman said nothing. He had locked his son up and whipped him till he had broken down and told him the whole thing. They had had sex just once and he’d got her pregnant. The moral policeman had wanted to kill the boy right there. He knew it would have been kinder, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he’d put him on the next plane to the city where a distant cousin lived with his wife and two children. He knew it wasn’t foolproof but it was better than doing nothing.
‘I have a proposition for you,’ said the chief, setting down the paperweight at last. ‘Bring your son to work sometime next week and we’ll forget about this conversation. Otherwise…’
‘Otherwise?’
The chief smiled. He picked up the paperweight again and held it in his fist. ‘Let’s not find out, shall we?’ he said disarmingly.
Twenty-one
The rapist could hardly believe his ears when the president told him about the plan.
‘On TV?’ he asked, as if he couldn’t have heard it right the first time.
‘That’s right,’ said the president. ‘I thought you’d like the exposure.’
He laughed at his own little joke. The rapist forced himself to laugh too, trying to hide the nervousness that had suddenly seized him. ‘I’m not sure though…’ he began. The president frowned. ‘No, don’t get me wrong,’ said the rapist immediately. He did not wish to cause offence to the president. ‘All I meant was that I’m not sure if I’ll be able to … able to…’
‘Perform?’
The rapist gulped and nodded. ‘It will be weird with all those lights and people watching,’ he said like a meek schoolboy.
The president cast an avuncular look at him and said, ‘I’m sure you’ll be great. There’s always a first time. Besides, a show so unique will garner great response, however bad it is. Not that I think it will be bad.’
The rapist pulled himself up on his chair and said sincerely, ‘I’ll certainly try my best, sir.’ He imagined the face of his science teacher glowing with pride.
‘There will be rehearsals for the show,’ said the president. ‘I’ll ask her to send you the schedule and coordinate things with you directly. I don’t want to involve myself too closely with this.’
The rapist nodded gratefully. He was not a great-looking man. Just this morning, he had noticed that his hairline was starting to recede. Drawing back aggressively like a soon-to-strike tsunami. There were a couple of warts on his neck too. His father had them and the rapist did not know when exactly they had sprouted on his neck. But there they were now, already a part of his body.
‘What about the woman?’ he asked. ‘Will she be told?’
‘Of course,’ said the president. ‘This isn’t a sensationalist kind of reality show. All we want to do is send out a message for public good. We wanted to assemble the team first, make sure everyone knows what the show is about. We don’t want any last-minute surprises.’
‘And … what about payment?’ asked the rapist hesitantly. He hated bringing up the subject of money.
‘You will have to ask the channel that,’ said the president kindly. ‘I’ve recommended a good sum for your services.’
The rapist grinned with delight.
‘Any more questions?’ asked the president, his hand already on the buzzer. He had an important meeting with a panel of scientists after this. The research group claimed that they had come up with a cheap alternative for producing baby boxes. If it worked, it would revolutionize the functioning of the bureau. They would no longer have to use the most powerful weapon in their armoury as a last resort.
‘Just one,’ said the rapist. ‘After this episode … will there be more?’
‘Of course,’ said the president dismissively. ‘This can’t be a one-time wonder. The channel wants to sign you for twenty-two episodes. For the first season. And they will renew the contract depending on how everything goes.’
‘Twenty-two!’ exclaimed the rapist, delighted beyond words. He might be able to get rid of his scooter and buy himself a new car. And maybe, even buy a fairly big apartment, he dared to hope. His parents, his wife and daughter could move in with him.
‘If that will be all…’ said the president. The rapist shook himself awake from his daydreaming, thanked the president and left the office elated.
He watched the phone anxiously all day and was barely able to concentrate on the files that he was reading. He had scheduled an appointment with a grandmother post-lunch but he called her and cancelled it right after his visit to the president’s office. She dawdled on, trying to persuade him to come after all. She was alone at home, she repeated. She was bedridden, so she wouldn’t trouble him in the least. That was her only pathetic reason and the rapist tried his bes
t not to lose his cool. He was terrified of keeping the line engaged and finding out later that he’d missed the call from the channel.
He finally got rid of the grandmother by promising her that he’d pay her a visit the very next day.
At four thirty p.m., just as the rapist was drinking his eighth cup of tea for the day, the phone rang.
‘Hello,’ said the media mogul in a self-assured voice. The rapist tried to sound cool and sophisticated but in his excitement, he tripped over his words and managed to drop the receiver. He scrambled for it, cursing softly.
‘Hello,’ he said, sure that the media mogul would have hung up on him and torn his contract papers. To his immense relief, he found that she was still on the call.
‘The president must have briefed you,’ she said without much ado. The rapist felt better as the conversation went on. She had worked out all the details, including costumes and even dialogues.
‘We want you to have a dark and brooding personality for the show,’ she said. ‘You know, someone mysterious. The audience loves romance. That’s why you’ll be in black. And we don’t want you to talk much. You should be more of a doer.’
The rapist was happy about that. He wasn’t too confident about talking in front of the cameras; it would only distract him from his job.
‘We’ll dress her up in scarlet, of course. Bit of a stereotype, I know.’ The media mogul laughed. ‘But nothing like a popular stereotype to make an impression! She’ll be the scarlet woman who deserves her punishment and you’ll be the dark dispenser of justice. We’ve got some really exciting music composed for the show.’
The Lesson Page 8
