by Hari Kunzru
During this time, the only direct contact they had with Data-bodies was through Sherry. She would park her Chevy Suburban on the street outside, arm the alarm, look around nervously and scuttle into their smell of dirty laundry and cooking oil, mispronouncing their names and bringing another set of administrative paperwork for them to sign. Everything about her seemed insufferably smug: her big hair, her gold S-H-E-R-R-Y necklace, her matching pink lipgloss and nail varnish, even the album of family pictures she carried in her purse. Her very averageness seemed arrogant, the bland superiority of a person whose access to the US labour market was a birthright.
They could have forgiven Sherry her choice of accessories had she not exuded such contempt for them. ‘How unusual,’ she would say, confronted with some unpalatable desi tic like Rohit chewing paan parag or Vijay singing along to bhajans. At least once a visit she would mention that her husband Bryan was having business difficulties, the subtext being that this was the only reason she would demean herself by pandering to their personal needs. ‘When she looks at us,’ Salim complained, watching out of the window as she started her car, ‘she sees a bunch of starving coolies. The bitch thinks she’s doing us a favour just by coming here. She might as well have “gift of the people of the United States of America” stencilled on her butt.’
But they had to be nice to Sherry. She was their only source of information, their sole reference point in the vast flat sprawl of the valley. And, though they didn’t like to admit it, her visits were, next to the afternoon Baywatch reruns, the highlight of their empty weeks.
Arjun would sit on the phone to India, horribly aware of the cost. The family would want to know everything, but somehow their questions only pushed them further away from him. Where is the mandir, asked his mother. Are you drinking bottled water? Are you cold? His father wanted to know about the ‘corporate culture’ of his workplace. It was impossible to tell the truth. ‘Yeah, Sis, Oracle is great. The work is very challenging. No, I didn’t spot anyone yet. Yes, if I see him I’ll get his autograph. No, not at all, I’m just kind of wiped out, that’s all.’
Finally, just when he could bear his state of suspended animation no more, something gave. Within the space of three days Salim and Rohit were placed with companies, one in Los Altos, the other in Menlo Park. In the little house off 101, there was Johnnie Walker and Häagen-Dazs. Two days later it was Arjun’s turn. The employer was a fish processor based somewhere called Portland, Maine. They needed someone to modify a database. They wanted him to start Monday. That, he told them, was no problem.
Until he saw the ticket and realized he was flying via Chicago, he thought ‘main’ must be like ‘central’ or ‘downtown’, and meant that the job was based in the business district of the city in Oregon. But Databodies had subcontracted his services to a bodyshop on the East Coast. Both sets of middlemen would be taking a percentage. He didn’t bother arguing.
As he packed his sweaters, he was uncomfortably aware of the TV booming out from downstairs: Vijay, the last man, mourn-fully watching a cookery show. Arjun had not known what to say.
‘I’m moving,’ he told his father on the phone.
‘You are being promoted already?’ Mr Mehta’s voice was thick with pride.
‘Yes,’ he heard himself say. ‘I’m heading up a software development team in Portland. Troubleshooting.’
‘Troubleshooting? My boy. Wait a moment while I tell your mother.’
Eventually his mother stopped sobbing and passed the receiver to Priti, who squealed and made a static sound with her mouth that he guessed was supposed to be a crowd applauding. He had wanted to be honest with her, but she seemed so entranced by her image of his American life that in phone call after phone call he had never had the heart. She was so happy for him that he had even made up a few things to please her. Keanu Reeves in a Pizza Hut. An earth tremor. Crazy golf. She asked him about the job, and he said it would be ‘an exciting challenge’, hearing the hollow sound of his voice as he said the words. Then she asked for his ‘other news’, and he was suddenly racked by a profound homesickness, wanting so much to be back in India that he could not speak and had to end the call. Ten minutes went by before it occurred to him that throughout their conversation she had spoken with a perfect Australian accent.
As he changed planes at O’Hare, striding from one gate to the next, he felt his dreams were finally coinciding with reality. In Portland he was put up in a Super 8 Motel, where he briefly luxuriated in clean towels, MTV, packets of non-dairy creamer and, most of all, the snow. Surreptitiously he crept outside to the parking lot and scooped a little up in his hands. His first snow. It was more or less as he had imagined, apart from the sounds: the crunch as you walked on it, the squeak when you compacted it in your fist. He took some inside, thinking he would call Priti and get her to listen, but by the time he got to the phone it had melted.
BSC Seafood had a hangar-like plant on the pier next to the Fish Exchange. Inside lines of workers filleted, buttered, breaded, stuffed, packaged and wrapped sea creatures of every kind, slinging hundred-pound airfreight boxes of flatfish into waiting trucks and manhandling blocks of cod towards the machines which would saw them into sticks. Arjun was taken on a brief tour of the facility by the CFO, who told him they were starting up a line of roe products, needed some more fields in the inventory database and had chosen Arjun because your boss said you came cheap’. The job was so trivial that he had to use his imagination to stretch it out to two weeks. He took long breaks, locked in the bathroom with a UNIX manual or standing on a gangway peeking down at the factory floor, an underworld peopled by wraiths in rubber boots and overalls. After three weeks he had to admit to his supervisor that the project was finished. A week later he was back on the West Coast, on the bench.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: small pants?
hello aamir thankyou for your message how are you yes i am all amer-ican now even eating beef pork products that is between you and me someone just gave bacon cheeseburger this is how it starts things ok here yes lots of girls wear short pants yes it is nice no have not spoken to many yet or seen p anderson or bv slayer busy got to go – arjunm
His first anniversary in the US found him sharing a ramshackle house in Daly City with a pair of indistinguishable Tamil Java programmers he privately nicknamed Ram and Shyam. The area was, if anything, lower income than the last. The lot backed on to an electricity substation with a giant humming transformer. His neighbours were a clan of enormous Samoans, who were coated in blue-black tattoos and spent their days fixing their cars and having loud explosive arguments. The Samoans had many enormous Samoan friends, who owned an indeterminate number of enormous dogs that lay slavering on the sidewalk outside his door in a litter of oily engine parts, forty-ounce beer bottles and shit.
No one ever messed with him, not even the dogs, but his over-stressed imagination produced scenes of unimaginable violence, like WWF wrestling filtered through the dark side of the National Geographic Channel. He was having trouble sleeping. He had developed eczema on his hands. He knew every plot line in The Young and the Restless and was becoming cynical about his employer’s business model. Databodies charged the companies he worked for twice, even three times what they paid him, and still deducted money from his pay for rent, legal and administrative fees. He had made no money, gained nothing at all since coming to America except a new and harder picture of the world.
So see the walking man, going to the store again. Instant coffee. Breakfast cereal. Plastic-wrapped bread, 10 per cent polystyrene, 90 per cent air. See the man trudge along the margin of a wide road, a man who suspects either that he is shrinking or that this landscape is actually expanding in front of him, stretching itself out ahead of his weary feet. He has worked for only three and a half months out of twelve. He has been given credit and had it withdrawn. He knows what lies above him, the sublime mobility of those who travel without ever touching
the ground. He has glimpsed what lies below, the other mobility, the forced motion of the shopping-cart pushers, the collectors of cardboard boxes. At least in India the street people can lie down for a while before being moved on.
In honour of the balloon scene, the party planners had proposed the theme ‘floating on air’. Thousands of silver helium bubbles hovered in nets above the heads of the guests, who were served drinks and chaat by waiters dressed as ‘ethereal spirits’, a look heavily reliant on silver lamé. The DJ mixed the obvious songs (‘Up, Up and Away’, ‘Summer Breeze’) into selections from the film’s soundtrack, ignored by a crowd of Mumbai film people too intent on networking to do anything as socially unproductive as dance.
Leela Zahir, it was noted, arrived on the arm of Naveed Iqbal. The corpulent producer waved and made namaste to his acquaintances, apparently oblivious to the furious stares of the Thakkar camp. Kiss Me, Tickle Me was Manoj Thakkar’s film. Leela was supposed, for tonight at least, to be Thakkar’s star. Still, no one wished to cause a scene with Iqbal, not with the friends he had. Leela’s glamorous mother, Faiza, followed behind, escorted by Big Gun Number One himself, Rajiv Rana. Between them, the two women must have been wearing ten lakh rupees of jewellery. The new alignment of forces was hurriedly analysed by the party guests. What did it mean? What promises had been made?
Leela smiled her way into the room, and more than one person experienced a momentary suspension of their cynicism. She had something other-worldly about her, an unmannered, almost involuntary beauty that silenced catty remarks and deflected leering gazes chastely to the floor. She was India’s girl-next-door, and at the same time her newest goddess. In the background, unobserved, hotel staff were crowding the doorways, porters and doormen and gardeners and maids peering across the room, feasting on the crumbs of her presence like uniformed mice.
Leeladevi. Protect us, grant us a boon…
The lucky waiter who carried away her empty glass wrapped it carefully in a cloth and hid it in the kitchen. After his shift he sat on the bus, gripping the package on his lap, conscious of bringing home to his wife and children a treasure, a sliver of goodness to set against the evils of the world.
What does a walking man dream of?
OK, now turn the wheel. That’s right – no – other direction, you were OK the first time. There you go. Check for traffic. Mirror. Signal. Now move off slowly…
He dreams of powered motion.
As a gap opened up between kerb and rim, the wheels of Chris’s Honda Civic performed a single complete revolution, then a second. Driver and passenger sensed an infinitesimal gain in speed. As the car started to travel down the road under his control, the driver experienced a strong and unexpected set of emotions. Components: relief/fear/elation/melancholic recognition of past stasis. Result: a pang so strong he found himself fighting back tears.
Two minutes into his first driving lesson Arjun stamped on the brake (unwittingly executing his first emergency stop) and rubbed his knuckles roughly across his eyes.
Christine leaned over and pulled on the parking brake. The car gently stalled.
‘Arjun, honey, are you OK?’
‘Yes, yes. Of course.’ He hunched into the driver’s seat, gruff and embarrassed. Somehow when he was with Chris, these moments, these emotional moments, seemed to occur. They were very awkward. He tried to pull himself together, announcing like a commander encouraging his troops to go over the top, ‘We must start the engine again.’
‘It’s OK, Arjun. There’s no one coming.’
‘It’s OK?’
‘It’s OK.’
He grinned with relief, the sudden clouds-vanishing grin which Chris secretly thought was cute.
‘Ready to try again?’ she asked.
He nodded.
Only song lyrics have a purchase on such reversals of fortune. What a difference a day, etc. Lyrics also teach (joy/pain, sunshine/ rain) that you can only know how good up feels when you have tasted down.
Up in this instance looked like the municipality of Redmond, Washington. Tall trees, sunlight glittering on the blue-green waters of Lake Sammamish. Biotech and mountain bikes. Neat landscaping and plenty of designated parking. A place dedicated to the healthy alternation of work and play. Software and jet skis. Aerospace and hiking trails. And for Arjun an American life. It had come, boxed and shrinkwrapped, thanks to the final interview, the one after which he knew he would snap, would not stay to breathe another lungful of hydrocarbon-laced valley air but would take the first plane back to New Delhi to breathe the comforting hydrocarbons of home. And instead Virugenix hired him. Virugenix. And not just any job, but a position in the holy of holies, home of the Ghostbusters, the Cyrus J. Greene Labs.
Home was now a third-floor studio in Berry Acres, a new development enclosed by high decorative ironwork gates that opened in response to a magnetic swipe card. His window in Bilberry Nook (Unit 12, located for him by the efficient Virugenix personnel division) looked out on a row of identical wooden-fronted buildings, all painted shades of grey and white. On a clear day he could also see the mist-shrouded peaks of the Cascade Mountains, hanging above the roofs like a dream of Kashmir. It was, as he told Priti, the most beautiful place he could imagine, as far away from the dust and bustle of Noida as the moon.
Some things, however, do not change. Arjun’s apartment was several degrees warmer than anywhere else in Bilberry Nook and from behind its closed door came a low threatening hum, like a wasps’ nest. The sound emanated from a quantity of elderly computer equipment which he had begged, borrowed and networked together in an insanely complex configuration that left space only for a futon and a wobbly operator’s chair, nestling among a fantastical snake-pit of cabling. Backless tower cases bristled with connectors, each resource allocated, each slot stuffed with network cards, SIMMs, removable drives and various warranty-invalidating home-made devices which gave the whole mess a dubious about-to-blow look. Here and there he had attempted to impose order on the chaos, mostly with duct tape. Intractable ganglia of wire had been plastered to the walls, the skirting, the underside of the home-made desk. On the remaining horizontal surfaces were stacks of storage media, almost all computer-related, except for a vertical tower of VHS tapes which reached almost to the ceiling. In one corner, a grudging afterthought, were a couple of IKEA storage cartons containing his clothes, mostly promotional t-shirts bearing the logos of software companies. The only concession to decoration, indeed to RL lifestyle of any kind, were the posters on the wall above the bed. To the left was Amitabh Bachchan in a still from Zanjeer, frozen in a posture so action-packed that it threatened to split his pants. Beside him was a sulkily pouting Leela Zahir, playing the role of wayward Mumbai co-ed Mini in You’ll Have to Ask My Parents.
Every weekday morning Arjun woke up in the midst of his chaos and grinned at the evergreen framed in his window. The tree presumably had a name (was it a fir or a pine?), though he did not know it. It looked like one of the trees that you could make appear with a mouse click and a little noise when playing SimCity. In fact, if he was honest, most of the Puget Sound area looked like that: perfect, glossily pleasing, somehow placed. Then he put on the cleanest of his t-shirts and took the bus downtown, past the Sim marina and the Sim park and the mall full of Sims shopping at the drugstore and drinking tea at the British Pantry. Redmond was a town with nice graphics and an intuitive user interface. His kind of town.
After his bus-ride he would buy a large-sized latte at Starbucks, add three packets of sugar, stir with the plastic stirrer (the ritual of picking up and choosing these items from the stand of assorted lids and cardboard sleeves was very satisfying), then transfer the whole lot to his own insulated plastic beaker for the two-block walk to the Virugenix campus, a cluster of low glass-clad buildings set in meticulously landscaped grounds.
In those days everyone knew Virugenix, the global computer-security specialist. Most computer users had Virugenix software somewhere on their machines, running a firewall or scann
ing their hard drive for malicious code. Their Splat! product suite was an industry standard. Though they had offices in twelve US cities and sales presences in many other countries around the world, Redmond was the site of their research and development operation, the prestigious Greene Labs. To Arjun r & d was it, the alpha and omega. Everything else about a software company was peripheral, more or less just selling.
Miraculously, or so it seemed to him, the anti-virus team had an opening for an assistant tester. Though it was not a position for a fully fledged virus analyst, it was the next best thing: checking that the daily batch of new definitions picked up what they were supposed to, and testing the patches the AV team produced to fix the damage. He would be working with the kind of code he loved most. Within two weeks of his interview, he had said goodbye to Ram, Shyam, the Samoans, dogshit, California and daytime TV, and moved to Washington State.
