The Girl with the Golden Parasol (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

by Prakash, Uday

  Numbers games and the lottery made for big business everywhere. There were three local cable channels that showed porn late at night—“blue films.” During the day the same stations basically showed sermons of Asaram Bapu, Murari Bapu, and others like them. As religious programming proliferated—the bhajans, the revivals, the preaching—so increased crime, rape, abortion, murder, thuggery, and theft. Commerce in women, and violence against them, increased in proportion to the number of beauty pageants and fashion shows.

  Temples were springing up everywhere. It was a way to “clean” illegally seized land and black market cash. Untold amounts of money were circulating among just a few people. Some 45 of every 100 rupees in the country was undeclared, illegal, black. Every day new businesses were set up that existed only on paper, only to disappear in the middle of the night along with people’s money. Fake companies were openly exchanged on the stock market, defrauding honest citizens of their life savings. Farmers, unemployed youth, conned women, all were committing suicide. NGOs and private schools were sprouting like mushrooms and making a killing.

  Apparently, twenty women from the girls’ hostel frequented the Asiana bar and the new three-star hotel, Naurang, and worked as call girls. Everyone knew who they were, but kept quiet. The girls’ connections went right to the top. Cars came and went from the girls’ hostel. These were the “empowered” women. A certain brand of feminism had taken over, dictating that a hardworking girl could become a nurse, teacher, stenographer, typist, or a working “lady” who also attends to household chores. Or, she could become a “read the Gita, become a Sita” kind of overworked, downtrodden yet pious wife. But if she becomes a sex worker, in no time at all she’ll have that nice house and start riding around in cars.

  What sort of paradox was this? No one objected if a woman sold herself in the market. But it was verboten for her to want to establish a human, private connection with someone.

  If Anjali were to win the crown of Miss Femina India, the personal prestige of PWD Minister L. K. Joshi would only increase. But if Anjali cultivates a human, emotional, and real relationship with me, she’ll get nothing but notoriety, Rahul thought.

  This is the way the market doled out its funds. This was how profits were turned. All roads leading to power and wealth were guided by the same equation.

  The Hindu Raj was more or less already in place. All that remained was to stretch one’s patience for a few more riots, a bit more bloodshed, and the completion of a single temple.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Rahul and O.P. were eating dinner in the hostel dining hall. It was about nine thirty at night. It seemed Balbir was happy about something; he’d been serving roti, puffed up and piping hot, tinda and potatoes, and channa dal. O.P. ate a lot of raw green chilies.

  Suddenly they heard a commotion coming from outside.

  O.P. and Rahul ran out to find a group of boys circled around Pratap, Kartikeya, Parvez, Masood, and Praveen.

  As soon as Pratap saw Rahul he shouted, “C’mon over here, yaar! And bring your ‘superstar’ with you too.”

  O.P. had beaten him to it and had already joined them in the middle of the circle.

  The news was that the students from the hostel had, once again, beaten up Lacchu Guru, right in the middle of town, no less, in front of the Ganesh Talkies. This was the revenge for what they’d done to Niketan and Masood.

  The whole idea had been Kartikeya’s and Pratap’s, and they’d been backed up by ten members of the SMTF. The plan was to send Masood and Niketan into the cinema while Kartikeya, Pratap, Parvez, Praveen, Niranjan, Ataluri, and the rest would wait in front outside in a parked Tempo minibus. As soon as Masood and Niketan took out their wallets at the ticket window, two individuals appeared on either side and a scuffle broke out. When Masood began showing some moves, the two of them started to get tougher.

  “Guru! The sisterfucker ain’t playin’ nice,” one of them screamed.

  “So the Muslim fucker eats halal cow and now he thinks he’s Gabbar Khan?” the other screamed.

  Lacchu Guru was sitting on the bench next to the paan stall with another sidekick. They sprang up to help.

  The boys sitting in the Tempo saw their chance, and the attack was on—with Lacchu Guru once again the target.

  In less than ten minutes Lacchu was writhing on the ground, his comrade was begging for mercy, and the other two had fled.

  Two policemen were sitting in a nearby tea stall. Each tilted his bald head upward to the sky. That’s where Aishwarya Rai was smiling with her fair-colored, lusty eyes, hands raised above her head, underarms exposed. When she arrived in Delhi, the tricolor Indian flag flapped from a mast fastened to the car carrying Miss World. The prime minister and president had photos taken with her. The four lions of the Ashoka Pillar lapped at the soles of her feet. From inside the poster pasted beside the Ganesh Talkies, Miss World’s breasts, midriff, and underarms beckoned the town’s citizenry: “Give me your money, I’ll show you my bunny.”

  “The two goondas who ran off must have gone straight to Lacchu Guru’s big brother’s place. Right to Lakhan Lal Pandey’s, head of the town council. So we came back here as fast as we could.”

  “We really hit them where it hurts. Next time they’ll think twice before laying a hand on someone from the hostel,” Pratap said excitedly.

  “VC Agnihotri and the other officials will also get the message. If they only want to listen to the criminals and the goondas, we’ll show them we’re just as tough,” Kartikeya said.

  There was an air of festivity that night.

  The next day Janvani, the so-called national but actually local newspaper, ran a page-one headline that read, “Hooliganism by University Students Causes Anguish to Town Residents.” According to the article, many “criminal type” students were inhabiting the university hostels. Dangerous firearms were being amassed in several rooms. According to reliable sources, some students were secret Pakistani ISI agents and members of Naxalite factions. The students were also connected to the smuggling and sale of narcotics.

  The article also gave an account of the incident of the night before. Some students with concealed weapons launched an attack on family members of the current head of the town council, Mr. Lakhan Lal Pandey, in the Ganesh Talkies cinema. The head of the Municipal Business Association, Mr. Lakshpati Lal Pandey has been admitted to the local hospital. His condition is said to be stable and not life threatening.

  Lastly, an appeal was made to VC Agnihotri and the superintendent of police by certain “eminent” citizens that concrete actions be taken with all deliberate haste and grant the peace-loving citizens of the town greater law and order. The article was signed by reporter Rajeev Shukla.

  On page three of the newspaper, which bears the masthead of “Education, Culture, and Entertainment,” was an article in praise of Vice-Chancellor Agnihotri by Dr. Chandramani Upadhyay. Also included was a poem by the VC’s brother, Prashant Agnihotri, a short travel memoir by the VC’s personal secretary M. L. Soni, and an opinion column entitled “Language and Globalization” by the VC’s accountant.

  It’s safe to say that the tattered editor of that newspaper will get sloshed on Chivas Regal tonight in the Asiana’s “family cabin no. two,” eating so much there’s not even room to belch.

  Shit! What kind of world are we living in? Rahul thought.

  Shaligaram, Shailendra George, and Rahul were all in the same boat in the Hindi department. They went to the Hindi literature section at the library and did a survey, by caste, of the names of the authors of the books. They then moved to periodicals and did the same with the writers and editors of the newspapers and journals. They underlined the names and noted the castes of poets and writers who’d received literary prizes, and the individuals who had awarded them. They compiled a list of who held office and who was ordinary staff for all institutions, academies, and the like associated with the world of Hindi literature. They closely examined the names of reporters, editors, bureau chiefs, an
d producers of TV and print media.

  There couldn’t possibly be another place on this planet where one gang of caste members has seized control of an entire language.

  “It is a total solar eclipse of literature, culture, and language here in this country!”

  No one actually uttered this sentence, but any number of varieties, framed with different words, but all with the same meaning, echoed in the heads of Shailendra George, Shaligaram, and Rahul.

  Rahul’s financial situation was going downhill. Every couple of days someone would show up and inform Rahul that they’d been forbidden to continue private tutoring with him. He hadn’t been able to pay his dining hall bill for two months. Even his toothpaste was running low, and he borrowed detergent from O.P. to wash his clothes.

  Yesterday had been Thursday, and in spite of everything turned upside down, the organic timepiece in Rahul’s heart had been beating through every second in wait: tick-tick, tick-tick.

  And at such a moment this love had chosen to come into his life! In his whole life, it was the first such wondrous, magical sensation! Time and again the yellow butterfly disappeared into the darkness and fog that crept through those days.

  Two days earlier, Hemant Barua had treated everyone in the dining hall. He’d accepted an offer from IBM, dropping out of the PhD program in mathematics. “What can I do? And besides, what kind of scholar was I really going to make?” He was very pleased. He was offered a yearly salary of 900,000 rupees, after first being sent on a three-month training course.

  “I’ll write emails from California, and you guys had better write back,” Hemant said with a touch of sadness in his otherwise shining eyes. “Let’s see if Americans have any free time to play chess.”

  Then he took Rahul aside and said, “I’m leaving in ten days, so take what I have to say very seriously. Get yourself out of this gutter. I’ve warned you from the beginning, and I’ve given you all the data. You will neither get a job in this Hindi business, nor will you become an author. You are a neoromantic idealistic simpleton.”

  Hemant thought a bit more and continued. “You’re not going to like this, and I couldn’t decide whether or not it was best to spell it out for you. But I’m your friend and really love you. So here it is. The truth is that you’re never going to get this girl you’re chasing after and, by the way, also gambling your life with. You’ll end up on the losing end. Mark my words: when it comes time for her to make a choice, she won’t choose you, she’ll choose someone from her own caste. Get yourself out of here, Rahul. You’ve become their walking target,” Hemant said. He began to get choked up, and his eyes filled with tears.

  THIRTY-TWO

  O.P. had already dozed off, but that night, in Tagore Hostel Room 252, where Madhuri Dixit once resided in the window, turning her neck to gaze at Rahul with her mad, intoxicated, dumb doe-like eyes and her hit-by-a-slingshot wounded, fleshy back—sleep wouldn’t come to Rahul.

  A patch of yellow had been inhabiting the same window for several months, which bobbed its way on the winding road up from the valley, first as a tiny, fluttering butterfly and later transforming itself into a yellow parasol. Now on the other side of that window lay a darkness filled with fear, tension, despair, defeat—and silence.

  A couple of dim stars tried to twinkle somewhere far off in the distance. The drowsy chirp of a restless bird tossed and turned over the uneasy sound of a cricket symphony.

  Rahul was passing through a period of torment filled with deep hostility. Why can’t I change how I see things? Why is my heart causing me so much grief, biting me like a cobra again and again? Why do I even bother with this impossible, idiotic, and bloody attempt to discover what might still be alive in something fossilized thousands of years ago in a rough, ugly time? Why am I the one sabotaging my own destiny?

  Rahul sat up in bed, reached for the table lamp, and angled it so he could read a few pages of “How Rama Worshipped Shakti” in the dim fifteen-watt light.

  A curse on this life that’s brought me nothing but frustration!

  A curse on this discipline for which I’ve sacrificed!

  Janaki! Beloved, alas, I could not rescue you.”

  But Rama’s spirit, tireless, was of another sort,

  that knew not meekness, knew not how to beg . . .

  Rahul’s eyes were moist as he turned the pages.

  And Ravana, Ravana, vile wretch, committing atrocities . . .

  The tears in his eyes blurred his vision. Why had the person who’d written these lines been so seething? The words cast their spell over Rahul. The reader of these poems was none other than Rahul’s very essence, opening the meaning of each word with a small explosion.

  I’m not sure whether this thing inside of me is love or hate for you, Miss Joshi! Whatever the case, I shall be waiting for you tomorrow morning.

  Please, do come.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Rahul had filled O.P. in on everything. He was so excited it was as if his own long-awaited dusky she-elf were coming to visit. “I’ll padlock the door from the outside and come back at four thirty. Don’t worry about anything, yaar!” said the six-foot-three ostrich, wiggling his camel-like neck back and forth.

  And it was the camel who had bought, with his own money, a little plastic “packet.” For the last six days, Rahul had stood in front of the chemist’s, hand in pocket. But in the end, out of embarrassment, he couldn’t go through with it, and had returned empty handed.

  Rahul playfully hopped onto the back of the camel and swung from his neck, exclaiming, “My dear bony fellow, I can’t quite figure out who I love more, you or her!”

  “Mogambo khush hua! Mogambo happy man! Heh heh heh heh,” gushed the camel.

  Anjali was going to set off from the department as soon as Padmashree Tiwari’s Vidyapati class ended. Rahul didn’t have to go to the department today. Anjali, however, had to first take the road surrounding the sports field, go between the two rocky overhangs behind the equipment storeroom, get through the bushes, and then very carefully climb up the hill to make sure no one saw her.

  The back door of Tagore Hostel, always locked, had been left open by O.P. Anjali was to use the back stairs to get to the second floor, then keep by the side wall of the hallway and make her way to Room 252. At that hour all of the students were in class, and the doors to their rooms were padlocked. But if, by chance, someone appeared, Anjali could boldly put on an act, carefree, fully self-confident, since O.P. would simply tell the boy that Anjali was his sister.

  Padmashree Rajendra Tiwari’s class ended at eleven thirty, so Anjali could be expected by noon.

  Rahul was in a state of nervous excitement. As if a top were spinning inside of him. Or a toy jumping dog were leaping around, ceaselessly, since its coil was perpetually wound. Rahul’s heart was racing with the same speed as when he watched from his window for the yellow parasol bobbing its way up from the valley. And now, too, the sound of his heartbeat reached right to his ears. Tick-tick, tick-tick.

  But was it love or malice thumping in his heart for Anjali? He himself didn’t know.

  And exactly at five minutes past twelve, she arrived. Her face looked dipped in copper from the sun and fatigue and she was out of breath and exhausted.

  O.P. had filled up the thermos with chai and placed a packet of sugar biscuits next to it. In one fluid motion he scooped up the padlock from the table, flashed Rahul a quick smile, left the room, and closed the door behind him. Then came the sounds of O.P. fastening the bolt from the outside, and his footsteps trailing down the hallway.

  As he left, the dear camel bellowed a tune in a frightfully off-key voice.

  My crazy heart—but where’s my sweetie!

  It’s crazy—from explaining!

  Rahul looked at Anjali, who was enthusiastically looking around Rahul’s room. “So, Miss Joshi, here you are . . . finally,” Rahul said.

  “You have no idea! It wasn’t easy. The path was awful, and I kept slipping,” Anjali said, beaming
with a smile of success. She flipped her sandals off. “Look, it broke,” she said, pointing at her sandal. Her feet were covered in dirt. Then she twisted her elbow around to show Rahul.

  He winced. Her elbow was completely scratched up and bleeding.

  “Get me the Dettol,” Anjali said, as if she were in her own house and knew a bottle of Dettol was kept on the middle shelf on the left side of the cabinet.

  But: there wasn’t Dettol. Rahul grabbed a can of aftershave spray, took hold of her arm and pushed the nozzle . . . pffffffffffff.

  Anjali gritted her teeth. The aftershave spray sharply stung the fresh wound.

  Rahul looked at her again. Her hair was a mess, and she was clearly tired. There was a cut on her big toe, her elbow was scraped up, yet there was such a look of innocence on her face, a kind of singular tranquility seen on someone who’s finally found their way back home after an arduous, tortuous, strange, meandering journey.

  “Where’s your parasol?” Rahul asked with some surprise.

  “I hid it under that bush.”

  “What if someone finds it?” This clearly troubled Rahul a bit.

  “No one will find it.” Anjali was certain.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “What do you mean what? I said so, didn’t I? No one will find it,” Anjali replied.

  Tiny bells of laughter rang inside Rahul for no reason at all. He took Anjali’s hand into his own, and that’s all it took. The electromagnetic cloud burst inside of him; the two began to soar within its field. Rahul kissed each of Anjali’s eyes, then her forehead. The storm gathered itself into a whirlwind. Anjali and Rahul’s lips explored each other’s faces, searching for something.

  “This is O.P.’s bed,” Rahul said, breathing heavily.