by Akhil Sharma
Mr. Gupta was busy, I learned. He had spoken at a cow-retirement farm in the morning and was meeting the student-body president of Delhi University in the afternoon.
I held out the money as Mr. Gupta changed into a fresh kurta pajama in a room on the second floor. When they are introduced, vast amounts of money always arrest whatever is going on. Mr. Gupta stopped buttoning his kurta. He put the briefcase on his dresser, opened it, took out several bundles and put them on the dresser, thought better of it, and returned them to the briefcase. He then hugged me tightly, emotionally. In the middle of the hug he asked, “Is this all we have?”
“No.”
Mr. Gupta looked at me, as if waiting for me to reveal how much we had, but when I did not, he did not ask. This made me think the situation was even more dire than I had thought. Many of the rooms in his home were used at times as office space, and the room we were in, which had been a bedroom, had several folding tables with pamphlets and papers scattered on them. The interim nature of the room made me sense Mr. Gupta’s vulnerability. I had to find a way to buy protection from the BJP and Congress.
The idea of ruining Mr. Gupta did not horrify me, for I was certain he would do the same to me if necessary. But I felt sad at his helplessness. Mr. Gupta started dressing himself again.
“The BJP is robbing me,” he said. “All the posters and vans are hired through them. How much should a single poster cost, from printing to up on a wall?”
“Twenty, thirty rupees.”
“One hundred and forty, the BJP says. A poster on plain thin paper. And then because I want more posters than the BJP put up, because I can’t afford their price, I have to lie and go around them and hire people on my own. I had to buy a minimum of ten thousand posters from the BJP.” I wondered whether Mr. Gupta thought that revealing his exploitation would somehow make me be kinder to him. Since the campaign started, perhaps to win people’s affection, Mr. Gupta had begun talking about his feelings. Because of the problems that always beset him, this openness made him appear complaining, distracted, and lost. “They were supposed to give me two generators. Why do I have one?” Having finished dressing, Mr. Gupta said, “Come tonight at about eleven and we’ll drink tea.”
I imagined Mr. Gupta had made the invitation because he wanted to shore up our relationship.
The oddity of tea at such a late hour, however, was so great that Anita said she would stay awake and wait for me to return home and tell her about it. I watched the news before leaving for Model Town; the tax raid was mentioned only briefly.
I arrived at the requested time, but Mr. Gupta was away at a dinner. My headache from yesterday was still periodically clamping my skull. It had enervated me and I fell asleep in a chair waiting for him. I was awakened when he arrived a little after twelvethirty, and I had tea with him. All I remember from the meeting was that the more he tried charming me, the more anxious I became.
“Something has to be done,” Anita said when I described this.
“What?” We were in the common room and I was holding a glass of water.
“You have to take care of us.” I wondered if she was encouraging me to find a way to abandon Mr. Gupta. “He’s nobody’s friend.”
“If this scandal dies, then things can go on.”
Anita stared in dissatisfaction at my answer. I finished the glass of water and then went to get one more.
When I returned, she asked, “Do you have crops to irrigate that you want so much water?”
I wondered how Anita’s anger would get deflected when I had nothing to confess every night.
I did not see Mr. Gupta the next day, because even though I believed it was correct to betray him, the actual misery this would create was too much to imagine and I did not want to see the person I would hurt. At night he phoned, and when I said hello, he said, “You didn’t come by.”
“I am sorry. I was busy all day.”
“Ajay is still not home.”
“He’s probably ashamed and hiding.”
Mr. Gupta was silent for a minute. “He should be hiding from me, but he would have contacted his mother if he was all right.”
This made sense, although I didn’t say so.
“His mother is having a prayer for him tomorrow morning. Come and bring your family. It’ll make his mother feel better if a lot of people are praying.”
I asked Anita if she wanted to come and she immediately agreed.
The pockets of the boy who parked cars were bulging with keys. A calf that must have wandered in off the street was being shoved out of Mr. Gupta’s courtyard. The eucalyptus trees that had been torn to feed the elephants appeared ravaged.
“This is not such a nice house,” Anita said when we arrived in an autorickshaw. I had forgotten that during her life with Rajinder Anita had seen many things and people I knew nothing about. “Maybe that’s why he’s running for Parliament.”
“It’s across from a park,” I said.
The prayer was held in the large room in the back of the house where Ajay had tried to get me drunk in order to get the shawl. A pundit on a thick cotton mat beneath a window was singing, and a crowd of women and a few men listened seated on bamboo mats. An air conditioner and a ceiling fan whirred, and I wondered whether this was the only room that the generator’s electricity was being directed to. Along a wall opposite the pundit were several wooden chairs, on two of which sat Mrs. Gupta and Pavan. Mrs. Gupta was short and fat, and this made Pavan’s beauty more distinctive.
We had been led to the prayer by a servant. While I stood deciding where on the floor to sit, Mr. Gupta came in through another door, examined the room for a minute, and left. “Like a mill owner looking at his workers on the factory floor,” Anita said, and moved to the chairs. She sat down beside Pavan.
“My daughter Anita. The poor girl is a widow and lives with me.” I told them this so that they might treat her with the deference due to a widow. But at my words, one of Pavan’s hands rose into the air as if warding something off.
After a moment, as the hand sank back into Pavan’s lap, Anita took it between her own hands. “Don’t worry yet,” she said.
We watched the prayer in silence. Mrs. Gupta cried when, in the middle of reading from the Ramayana, the pundit stood and closed the curtains of the window behind him so that the room became dim. An hour after we arrived, a servant whispered in my ear and brought me to Mr. Gupta.
Over the last two days I had begun to believe that I would have to split the money I had raised between Congress and the BJP. But I was waiting for some sign to act. Now, though, as I followed the servant through empty rooms, I felt that an omen was at last going to be given me.
Mr. Gupta was sitting on a sofa. He wore a suit and tie but was barefoot. Seeing me, he stood and laughed. “You look worried, Mr. Karan.” The bare feet reminded me of my mother. Would he be murdered? I wondered.
“No, sir. I’ve been sick. I’ve had a headache for three days.”
“Good; you shouldn’t be worried.”
I wondered whether he was aware of how vulnerable he appeared. Whereas before, when I went to see Mr. Gupta, I felt as though I was being granted an appointment, now I had the sense that I was the one whose time was being taken up.
“I talked to Mr. Maurya yesterday and he said that he can win this election for us if we have the money.” Mr. Gupta said this eagerly. I knew he was lying. The only way to guarantee victory in a close election was by stealing vote boxes, and this was not possible in the capital. Mr. Maurya would not even imply a guarantee, because he could not swindle a BJP candidate so obviously and hope later to do business with the BJP. When I did not respond, he added, “How much money do we have?”
I did not want to reveal anything to Mr. Gupta but, unable to see where a lie might lead, answered.
“That’s good. Twelve is enough,” he said.
This encouragement heightened the abjectness of his lie.
“Bring me the money today.”
“Yes
.”
“Are you going to do it, Mr. Karan?” Mr. Gupta smiled as he asked this. I wondered if Mr. Gupta had chosen to ask today instead of during the phone call last night because he thought it would be hard to refuse a grieving father.
I did not think I would give him the money. “Yes, sir.” The BJP and Congress would make any promise I asked for in exchange for my giving them the money I had collected. But it was doubtful that they would honor their promise. I looked away from him. “Have you talked to Mr. Bajwa?”
Mr. Gupta stared at me and I wondered whether he was deciding to lie. “Yes, for a minute. He hadn’t phoned because he was afraid of my being angry. I told him I wasn’t.”
The obvious impossibility of this made me think that if Mr. Gupta could say something this ridiculous, he must be lost inside his worries.
“A broken pot can’t be made whole by anger.”
Mr. Gupta nodded. “Bring me the money today.”
I went to see my doctor after leaving Mr. Gupta’s house. Anita stayed behind at the prayer. Dr. Aziz’s narrow office was next to a bakery in Khan Market. When he saw me, he immediately said, “You are not well.”
“No.”
“How long have you been feeling this way?” Dr. Aziz was a short, bearded Muslim with a feminine smile. His examination room had a long table to lie on and a large metal desk whose top and sides were covered with plywood. In the nearly one year I had known him, he had never said a thing to make me think he was stupid or unconcerned.
“A few days.” I told him about the nosebleeds.
“And when did your weight start to drop?” I now realized that he had not been referring to my concerned face when he suggested I looked bad.
“A month and a half ago, I lost my appetite and it hasn’t come back. When I’m hungry I take two bites and I’m full.”
Dr. Aziz took my blood pressure, which was low, and collected blood and urine samples. “It could be that you’ve lost weight and your medicine needs to be readjusted. That might be good.” I smiled so broadly that Dr. Aziz immediately said, “We’ll see.”
The possibility of good health gave me confidence that I would be able to maneuver Congress and the BJP. In the autorickshaw home, I thought of the various people in Congress and the BJP whom I could approach to negotiate my security.
My brother Krishna was drinking tea in the living room. He was sitting on a love seat with his legs folded under him, his saucer in his left hand, and the cup held above it with the right. Anita sat across from him on the sofa, the edges of her lips curving down as they sometimes did in sleep. She was still in her green sari, which meant that Krishna must have arrived immediately after she returned home. They were not talking, and there was an air of offended dignity to Krishna’s thin white mustache. As I entered the living room, Asha came in holding a plate full of biscuits. “I bring good news,” Krishna said. “Munna is getting married.” He sounded relieved to see me.
“Congratulations.” For me, Munna remarrying had all the meaning of his changing jobs. Asha put the biscuits on the table and sat beside me on the bed.
“He’s young,” Krishna said. “It’s important that he have a wife.” The unnecessary justification suggested that Anita had put Krishna on the defensive. Krishna would take a sip of tea and then press down his mustache with his fingers.
“He’s marrying the sister of the one who hanged herself.” Anita looked at me as she said this. She looked ready to cry.
“Water?” Asha asked. I nodded yes.
“It’s good for Munna and for the girl. Otherwise, who would marry a suicide’s sister?” I said.
Anita kept looking at me.
“It’s good for everyone,” Krishna agreed. “The girl’s name is Vineeta.” Asha brought a glass of water and sat back on the bed.
Anita opened her mouth but did not speak.
Krishna invited me to the engagement ceremony and started to leave. Politeness required me to ask him to linger, but I did not.
I stood and was about to go change my clothes when Anita said, “No wonder I am angry all the time.” I could not tell whether she wanted me to say anything. “The girl says she will only marry Munna if he lives away from home and they live alone.”
“That’s smart.”
“Asha, do you understand what has happened?”
Asha nodded.
“A woman has to fight just to avoid being murdered. What kind of world is this?” Anita asked her.
I waited, and when Anita appeared to want a reaction, I said, “It’s a bad one.”
“You’re stupid.” I did not respond, and Anita said, “Do you think I’m being unfair to be angry at you about Munna?”
I shrugged. I did not know if she was. The sadness of Asha watching this made me imagine a world where I had not committed my crimes.
“This is your fault, too, because you are the same as everybody else and everybody else is the same as you. So I might as well hate you as everyone else.” Anita laughed. I stayed quiet. “Go change your clothes.”
I left for my room. A minute or two later Anita appeared in my doorway. “You know that Pavan and Ajay’s marriage was a love marriage.”
“Yes.” I hung my pants on a hook.
“She loves him.” Anita said this with such intensity that I wondered what love meant to her. “Pavan and I ate lunch.” She paused. “Why should she love him? He’s a fool. He was drunk at his own wedding reception.” She stopped after this. Though her voice was angry, the pauses made her sound puzzled.
“A heart is what does not listen.”
“I know. I told her she shouldn’t blame herself.”
“She shouldn’t.”
“I know. Why are you saying that? I need your permission to tell her not to blame herself?”
I took off my shirt.
That night, a little before eight, one of Mr. Gupta’s servants, a boy judging from his voice, phoned and said that Ajay’s body had been found and would I please meet Mr. Gupta at the morgue near the ISBT. He gave me the address.
I tried speaking with the man who listened to our phone, but he would not respond when I jiggled the receiver and said, “Hello, hello.”
The morgue is ten minutes from the Old Vegetable Market. The sky was darkening, but there was enough light to read shop names from the autorickshaw without effort. I kept thinking of Anita, Asha, Kusum, and Rajesh dying. The thoughts made me keep touching my forehead.
I imagined the building would smell strange, of formaldehyde and chemicals. When I rang the bell, a man in a white lab coat and rubber slippers opened a narrow door next to the wide ones. Mr. Gupta was not there yet. The man took me into the basement, which was a long white hallway with rooms on either side. Walking down it, I smelled flesh fermenting in death. The stench came in sudden eruptions through a sweet orange smell. “What’s that orange?” I asked.
“To try covering the stink. It never works, but we have a lot of it to use up.” The stench was so strong that my stomach curled and actually hurt. Most of the rooms we passed had curtains but no doors. Some of them were lit and revealed fragile-looking metal tables waist-high and just slightly wider than a kitchen counter. We stopped outside a door that was bolted. The smell was so strong that my throat would take in only sips of air. The technician pulled part of his coat over his mouth and nose and said, “Oh, God,” with familiar disgust. He flipped a light switch on the wall outside the room and opened the door.
The creatures on the bare floor did not appear human. There were three and they had swollen limbs and faces. Parts of their skin were gray and other parts black. For a moment shock kept me from seeing Ajay among them. Someone had taken his shirt and shoes. He was wearing white pants. Along his throat were two close-together black cuts, one starting almost above where the other let off. Then I realized that it was not dirt on his throat and his collarbones.
Once when Ajay was a child and visiting our office, he asked me to tie his shoelaces.
“Someone was sitti
ng on his chest when they cut his throat. There were footprints on his shirt, along the ribs. Eight of his ribs are broken. But that could have happened in moving him.”
“Put him on a table, for God’s sake,” I told the technician. And because I knew he would not listen to me, I added, “He’s MP Roshan Gupta’s son. Are you crazy?” I felt afraid for Mr. Gupta.
“I wasn’t told anything,” the technician said, lowering the lab coat. He was bald, with a thin face. He looked in my eyes to see if I was lying.
“Wash him, clean him. Or Mr. Gupta will put you in jail.”
With me gripping Ajay by his pants and the technician holding him by his armpits, we were able to lift him onto a stretcher. Ajay’s body had become rigid and this made him look surprised. We rolled him into a lift and, on the second floor, pushed him into a room where several men were sitting watching television. They had food spread on a long table with two sinks at one end. “Make him look all right. This is MP Roshan Gupta’s son.” I was not sure whether they believed me, but they set about their work, and I left the room.
I washed my hands with soap in one of the rooms on the second floor. The stink left them only after several washes. I then went outside. It was night now. The streetlights were on. Somewhere nearby dung chips were burning, giving the air a musty sweetness. The idea of Mr. Gupta’s seeing Ajay as he was now frightened me, as if the event would add permanently to the weight of the world. While I waited I checked under my fingernails, because I could smell the stink again.
Mr. Mishra was the next person to arrive. I felt such relief at seeing him that I hugged him even before he had paid the autorickshaw driver. “I’ve been calling Mr. Gupta every day to have him sign something and he hasn’t been calling back,” Mr. Mishra said. “When I phoned tonight, a servant told me.”
I described what I had seen, and we waited outside together. “I am glad my son has no political ambitions,” Mr. Mishra said at one point, but mostly we were silent. I wondered why Mr. Gupta was taking so long.
