The Temple-goers

by Aatish Taseer

  Walking back through these empty cobbled streets, with their narrow pavements and leather-faced men staring vacantly at me, I knew I had to leave. I just didn’t know how I would tell Sanyogita. Money had become a problem as well. In India my mother had helped me with a small allowance and the few thousand I had left in sterling from my job in London had gone far. The village was cheap, but many times more expensive than India. Every meal was out; Sanyogita always ordered fish; we must have been spending fifty euros a day at an increasingly unfavourable exchange rate. The only hopeful news was that the revised version of my novel was complete. It was not an inspired revision, but I’d had detailed notes and had followed them closely. The manuscript was already with the agent in New York and I was awaiting a reply.

  That night at the village casino, which was really just a restaurant with red velvet curtains, deep leather chairs and tiled walls, I tried telling Sanyogita that I needed to go home. But I framed my reasons around my confusion at being in a little village in Spain. Sanyogita seemed receptive. She listened quietly, sipping a small glass of sherry and occasionally wrapping a finger around a piece of acorn-fed ham. When I’d finished, she responded with a sweeping gesture which left me, like with the study, reaching in desperation for adequate feelings.

  ‘Baby, listen, I’ve been thinking the same thing,’ she said, ‘and since this was all my idea in the first place, I feel I should do the cleaning up on my own. I wasn’t going to tell you this till later in the month, it was going to be a surprise, but since you’ve brought it up, I’ll tell you now. I have this friend, Nargis, who’s a publisher in the East Village. She’s like a big Buddhist and a Free Tibet person. And basically, she’s decided to extend the privileges of her citizenship, especially since America has done so little for Tibet, by marrying a Tibetan in Delhi so that he can escape the tyranny of the Chinese and come and live in the States.’

  I felt the frost round my glass of Cruzcampo start to melt.

  ‘But if he’s living in Delhi, hasn’t he already escaped the tyranny of the Chinese?’ I asked, feigning concern.

  ‘Yes, yes, all right,’ Sanyogita said, laughing, ‘but Nargis doesn’t know that. She’s a big-hearted person, you know, a real do-gooder, so maybe she hasn’t thought of that part. It all seems the same from America, anyway. But that’s not the point.’

  ‘What is the point?’

  ‘That I’ve done a flat swap with her! She needed a place to stay in Delhi and so I’ve lent her Jorbagh for two months. In place of which, we have the most adorable little flat in the East Village with a cat called Kuku. You can work, I can do my thing. We’ll have breakfast at the Clinton Street Bakery, we’ll watch films, it’ll be so nice.’

  It wasn’t that I didn’t have a flat in Delhi where I could return to; I had my mother’s. It wasn’t that Sanyogita, in feeling she had to clean up this summer mess, had already bought our tickets to New York; I would gladly have reimbursed her, thinking of the money I would save by not having to live in New York for two months; it was that I knew Sanyogita, and I knew the place from where the gesture had come. This was no entrapment; it was a heartfelt and hopeful gesture, from the depths of Sanyogita’s fairy-tale imagination, dreaming always of escape.

  And so, despite great misgivings, I gave in.

  After a summer of boredom and waiting, I left New York under these circumstances.

  I had heard nothing from the agent. For two months, I waited, viewing every ending week with sinking hopes and every new one with fresh, but misplaced, anticipation. I checked my emails constantly, and if I was away from the computer for too long, I felt an ache at the thought of what news the little blue orb in my inbox might have brought. I tried to live my agent’s life, thinking of when she would come into work, when she might be having lunch with a publisher, when – shaking off the effects of a bottle of red wine – she would write to me to tell me of what he had said. I thought of how she would have half-days on Fridays in the summer, and of where and for how long she would go on holiday. I thought obsessively of these things even as my agent sat in an office barely a few miles away. But I couldn’t bring myself to contact her first. I felt certain that this action would turn good news to bad. I played games with myself. Every changing light – would I make it across the street while the little man was still white? – every arriving train – would the next train be an express train uptown? – every Sunday book review – would it contain any indication of what was popular these days? Indian writing still in? – became heavy with significance. I started to believe that the world around me, the minutiae of life in a big city, contained signs of whether I was to be a writer or not. If this feeling had come from a genuine wish to be a writer, it might have had a foundation in hard work and reading that would have given me solace. But it was an empty wish; it was like my novel, a wish for a lifeline.

  One hot afternoon, when Sanyogita had gone to see an aunt in Long Island, leaving me to take care of Kuku, I stepped out to have an iced coffee. I felt in my pocket for the keys and let the door slam behind me. But even before its metal teeth had closed around the powerful cylindrical bolt, I knew that what I had thought were my keys was in fact loose change. I stood in an airless corridor, permanently lit by a yellowing fluorescent light, staring with aimless intensity at a floor of many tiny hexagons. I didn’t have a phone; I had only enough money for an iced coffee. I didn’t want to leave the building, as that would lock me out of the building as well as the flat. I could hear Kuku mewing, no doubt rubbing his scrawny body along the door, reminding me that I had to feed him. I felt an irrational hatred towards the cat for not being able to help me.

  It was then that I had what I can only describe as a swarming of nerves. Already close to some kind of lip, they cascaded over. My body turned cold with sweat, I felt some kind of essential life-giving liquid drain from me and I had the desire to curl up on the floor by the door, with the strange belief that if I kept my face close to the centimetre gap of cold air between the door and the floor, I would be able to restart the flow of oxygen into my body. The city beyond terrified me. When I thought of it, I could think only of the crowds and commotion around Times Square. And it was like this, hardly able to walk, that I made my way down three flights of stairs, banging on every door in the hope that someone would be able to help me cope with the blackness rising around me.

  On the ground floor, a girl in a summery dress opened the door. She had a garden flat, with an open window and a large white fan. I broke into the tranquillity of her room and collapsed on a purple futon, trying slowly to explain my situation. She listened, nodded, emitting a few comforting ‘uh-huhs’, then picked up a red telephone and called a locksmith. After a rapid conversation, she said he would be there in eight minutes.

  The man who arrived was a Romanian, slim, blond, in a vest. He had been at a nearby café drinking an iced coffee, he said. He looked at the lock with dismay. He said that this was not the kind of lock his tools could open; he would have to drill it. Two hundred dollars. I had no choice. It was Friday and Sanyogita was not back until Monday. He took his drill to the brass lock and bore into a single point just above the keyhole. It was as violent a thing as I had ever seen; I could hear, as brass flakes flew, the lock’s interlocking components break one by one. Then he took a wrench to the lock, and after many failed attempts pulled its little brass face from its place in the door, leaving an empty hole. But the door didn’t open.

  ‘It has a double-lock,’ he said, ‘but you didn’t tell me.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘We’ll have to drill that one too. It’ll be expensive. It’s a good lock. Yeah, yeah. Another two hundred at least.’

  He bore into the second lock now. The brass flakes flew and the lock’s components broke one by one; it was wrenched from its place in the door; a second empty hole appeared. The door fell open, the room reappeared, Kuku rubbed up against a sofa. But the door couldn’t be left like that; the locks had to be replaced. Two hundred dollar
s each. I gave him the money in two-hundred-dollar instalments withdrawn from an electric-blue ATM outside a deli. It felt like cutting away parts of my body. He gave me two sets of brass keys in return.

  I went back upstairs and wrote to the agent.

  The following week, once Sanyogita had returned, the blue orb in my inbox brought this letter, a letter within a letter, of which painful snatches remained with me:

  Aatish – Since I had to go off on a long weekend after your delivery of An Internment, I asked a colleague here – formerly a highly placed publisher and now with us part-time as a reader – to read your novel, and below you will find his report. For reasons you will appreciate (since the report does not pull its punches), I have debated whether to send this to you – but, on balance, feel it will be more helpful than otherwise to you to contemplate a neutral professional judgement. Of course, you are entitled to reject the judgement, but I hope you will find something of value in it.

  Best wishes, Marie

  AN INTERNMENT – BY AATISH TASEER

  Although Tasser can write with fluency and intelligence at times, An Internment is a seriously flawed novel. It is far too early for him – or us – to be thinking about securing a publishing deal for his work…

  The line-by-line style needs serious attention. There are so many awkward and over-elaborate sentences. I’d encourage Tasser to be as ruthless as possible with his own writing – to stop trying too hard – and to work on developing clarity and simplicity in his style…

  All in all – I wouldn’t recommend taking Tasser on as a client now – but it might be worth asking to see a substantially rewritten version of this novel.

  As I finished the email, with its cruel misspellings of my name, I felt as though I had been set free. I realized that it was not so much the fraudulence of the literary effort but waiting for that fraudulence to bear fruit that had been the hardest part. I hadn’t found a way to write about my situation. I had the disarray of my situation to show me why.

  Stronger now for being stripped of my pretences, I boldly approached Sanyogita about wanting to go back to India. She was not angry. She only said, ‘Baby, I hope you don’t mind if I follow in a few days?’

  Part Two

  13

  The season had changed. The moisture was gone from the air and the evenings were now a little smoky. The occasional cluster of yellow petals, the odd burnt-orange tendril, stubbornly hung on in the laburnum’s branches and the gulmohar’s stepped canopy. Their brilliance was unsuited to the new season and there was something of the gloom of streamers and confetti from a past celebration in their now rare occurrence. New pigments and scents flooded the leaves and branches of Delhi’s trees and winter flowers began appearing on roundabouts. One tree particularly, the Alstonia scholaris, or the Indian devil tree, a weed-like cousin of the frangipani, marked the beginning of the festival season. Its nocturnal scent, when filtered through the smoky air, was sweet at first, then quickly cloying, filling the city’s streets and avenues as evening fell. I sat in my mother’s flat, awaiting Aakash and his girlfriend’s arrival.

  At Junglee, too, there had been changes. Pradeep, Aakash’s pale, meatier rival, had moved back to Bombay, leaving the field open to him. The ponytailed owners, afraid to give him too much power, had promoted Montu, the pork- and beef-eating chooda, to the position of trainer, in the hope of putting up a counterbalance. This only inflamed the situation, and Aakash, with Mojij the Christian at his side, now spent a good part of the morning leaning against the cable crossover machine, ridiculing Montu. He would organize his clients’ workouts based on what Montu was doing with his (most of whom were inherited from Pradeep, though even from these Aakash had pinched a few). Then, within earshot of Montu’s client, he would point out his failings. ‘See, wrists not straight. Weight is coming down behind shoulders so effect is falling on back, balance is off. Like that, anyone can do. Now, follow this, wrist’s straight, weight coming down here, yes, balance perfect, thirdeen, fordeen, we’ll do it slowly…’

  There were also changes in Aakash’s physical appearance. His hair, once neat, short and bristly, was now long and uneven and fell jaggedly over his forehead. ‘Messy look,’ he answered briefly when I asked him about it. He had also, to go with the look, grown a short black dacoit’s stubble with a vicious nap. If it grew too long, he would shave it off, leaving either the faint outline of a French beard or a triangle of stubble below his lower lip. He wore a diamond stud in one ear. His manner was also different, not colder, but harder somehow. It manifested itself in the smallest ways. We’d start a set; he’d correct me one or two repetitions into it; I’d ask that we start the count again; he’d tell me to continue, but then either repeat a number of his choice along the way or take the count past fifteen when I least expected it. He now spoke of Ash’s, the one-stop total image clinic, as if it were up and running. He threatened to deny Junglee’s sub-trainers their promised positions as masseurs and stylists if they spoke back to him; he had new phones, new ring tones; he was full of aggressive political opinions. The transformation was like a preparation. It was as if he was gearing up for some bigger fight, for which he could show no weakness, and I suspected somewhere in this the hand of the new girlfriend.

  It had become a point of awkwardness between us that we hadn’t discussed her. Aakash hinted at her existence, but said nothing openly. If she called while we were working out, he smiled knowingly at me, then slipped off into a corner. I came to recognize the ring tone – the Hindi pop song with the single English line – he had assigned to her. Once or twice I even saw her name flash on his phone. He hadn’t saved it as Megha, but as chahat, longing. Then a few days after I came back to Delhi, we were in the final stages of an abs workout when, ‘I will always love you, all my life,’ rang out from Aakash’s pocket. He hesitated, but then, continuing to lend me the support of his two fingers, answered it. ‘Nothing, beev,’ he said, looking down at me trying to lift myself a few inches from the floor, ‘just finishing off sir’s abs. Beev, you know I have no friend circle, only one best friend.’ My abs gave way as Aakash became more engaged in his conversation. ‘Because, beev, he is a very important person. He’s just been two months in New York, and before two months in… where were you?’ ‘Spain,’ I breathed. ‘Spain, two months in Spain. Beev, he’s very busy, he’s a writer, his girlfriend, you know who she is? She’s the Chief Minister of Jhaatkebaal’s niece.’ He let go of my hands and I fell to the floor. ‘OK, OK, beev, I’ll ask him.’ Covering the receiver, he said, ‘She wants to know why she hasn’t met you, if you’re my best friend?’ My face, like my paralysed abs, was not able to express sufficient amazement at his nerve. ‘Because her boyfriend’s a sly Brahmin,’ I managed. Aakash laughed uproariously, then said, ‘He’s inviting us for a beer party at his flat today, can you get away?’ Looking down at me, he mouthed, ‘Is OK?’ ‘Yes, fine,’ I sighed. ‘Good, then it’s set,’ he informed us both. When he’d put the phone down, I asked why he called his girlfriend beev.

  ‘Short for beevi,’ he said, grinning; wife. Then hysterically happy, he added, ‘You’re really going to get a surprise, sir!’

  Aakash and his girlfriend were due at seven that evening. A few minutes before, Shakti came in with the news that there had been a series of bomb blasts in the city. ‘So terrible what’s happened,’ he said with a morose smile. ‘Who would do such a thing?’ Then looking thoughtful for a moment, he added, ‘Baba, it must be God’s benevolence that I bought the samosas and beer for your guests before the blasts happened. He obviously does not wish me to go yet.’

  ‘What? There was a blast in Khan Market?’

  ‘Oh no, where would there be a blast in Khan Market? They were in Greater Kailash, in Gaffar Market, in Connaught Place and one little one in Sectorpur.’

  ‘Then what benevolence?’

  ‘Just,’ he smiled contentedly and slipped away, knowing perhaps the simple pleasure of being alive when others were recently dead.

&nbs
p; I turned the television on. The blasts were the third in a string of recent attacks on major Indian cities. A group called Indian Musthavbin was claiming responsibility. They had labelled the attack Operation BAD and had used plaster of Paris Ganeshs, now abounding in the city, as their method of delivery. The screen was split in three: on the far left, a large intact pink Ganesh, riding on the back of a scooter; in the middle, the scene of the crime, a hole blown through a green ‘Keep Delhi Clean’ dustbin and a bright pool of blood amid chappals, garlands and handbags; on the far right, an expert talking about the difference between a high-intensity blast and a low-intensity blast. ‘In a high-intensity blast, the impact of the blast is high, in a low-intensity blast, the impact…’

  I called Aakash.

  ‘Have you heard?’

  ‘Yes, man. I was there, beev and I were there. We were shopping in CP when it happened. I can’t tell you, if it hadn’t been for beev wanting Pizza Hut’s garlic butter sticks, we wouldn’t be here today. It’s a matter of fate, no?’ After a moment’s silence, he said, ‘Actually, no! Beev’s appetite saved our lives.’ At the cracking of this badly timed joke, I heard a howl of laughter in the background.

  ‘Is that beev?’ I asked.