The Temple-goers

by Aatish Taseer

  ‘Do you think that’s what he’s after?’

  ‘What else? Aatish, have you seen my sister?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you honestly believe a guy like Aakash would go for her for any other reason except that she’s loaded? Let’s see, she’s a dwarf –’ he tapped his fleshy, nail-bitten digits – ‘she’s healthy as hell, she has a face like a chapati, she’s of a lower caste than him… I can’t think of anything else, except that she’s also very annoying, but probably he isn’t too concerned about that.’

  ‘What about that she loves him? Maybe that’s what he sees?’

  ‘Everyone loves Aakash! Find me a person that doesn’t love Aakash. The trainers at Junglee love Aakash, the clients love Aakash, my friend Sparky Punj loves Aakash, you love Aakash, even my fucking chowkidar loves Aakash. So many people love Aakash that I don’t think he even notices until he comes across someone who doesn’t love him.’

  His mention of his chowkidar brought to my mind the description of the man from the story. How real he had seemed, with his smooth skin, stained teeth and murky, amber eyes; it was as if I had seen him myself.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, forcing my mind back to what was being said, ‘but people like that, people who please, can be very insecure.’

  ‘Aakash is not insecure; he’s ambitious. There’s a difference. He doesn’t doubt himself for a minute; he just sometimes doubts whether the world will deliver.’

  I laughed; Kris’s face was still. ‘But don’t you like that? Don’t you think his ambition is an impressive thing?’

  ‘Not when it’s aimed at my family’s wealth,’ he replied.

  ‘And what about your sister? What about her happiness?’

  ‘Aakash will not make her happy, believe me. She’s happy now because she’s getting some Brahmin cock. And we all have this thing, us baniyas, this love of Brahmins. We’re like the untouchables of the upper castes, you see, so nothing excites us more than Brahmin love. But believe me, when Aakash has her in the bag, she won’t be getting Brahmin cock no more.’

  I had forgotten Kris was a ‘Western-educated homosexual’; I had forgotten how freely he had learned to speak of these things. And his language, now discussing the subtleties of caste, now of cock, was unpredictable in tone and in content. Its fluctuations, going so easily from mellow to harsh, gave me an intimation of his disturbance.

  ‘Where’s your sister now?’ I asked, concealing in the airiness of my tone knowledge of her disappearance.

  Kris seemed to search my face for any sign of previous knowledge.

  Seeming either to make a decision to trust me or just acting out of indifference, he said, ‘She’s getting that gross body of hers…’ He put his large hands, with their fleshy fingertips, to his mouth, making the shape of a nozzle, and emitted a long and graphic sucking noise, like a child blowing into his hands to make a fart sound. Then he laughed garishly and was once again of a piece with his sister.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Marriage, I suppose. She’s holding up the queue, you know. I have two younger sisters, less fat, who are both eager to get married.’

  He seemed so pleased with himself that I experienced a feeling of triumph on Aakash’s behalf. I wanted almost to say, ‘Well, you’re too late. He’s already married her and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ My face perhaps gave away some of my distaste, because he became conciliatory. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘don’t think I don’t share your values. I’ve been to college in America too. I’m all for the little guy rising. But you know, don’t mind my saying this, I understand this country a little better than you and Ra and people.’

  ‘Who is me and Ra and people?’

  ‘You know, English-speaking people.’

  ‘You’re English-speaking.’

  ‘Yes, but only first generation. We’re still very much part of the Hindu way of life; we’re still very traditional. To you, Aakash is someone exotic and fascinating; to me, he’s very close. He knows that he can fool you, but he can’t fool me. He knows that when he does his poor boy from Sectorpur number around you, he’s got you where he wants you. The filmy dialogue, the temple visits, the red teeka on the head, all that works on you, but not on me. I have neither any caste fascination nor any love of Bollywood heroes. And in India, aside from film and religion, what else is there? Aakash knows this and that’s why he hates me. He knows that I know what neither you nor my sister knows.’

  His information impressed me. How did he know of the temple visits? Clearly not from Megha. Then another possible route took shape in my mind and gave me a fresh sense of Sanyogita’s unhappiness: she must have spoken to Ra, Ra to Kris. Seeming to enjoy the effect of his knowledge on me, he added, ‘And are you going to this jagran?’

  I nodded, wishing to give him no extra pleasure.

  ‘When is it?’ he blandly asked.

  ‘In a couple of days.’

  ‘When exactly?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘Hmmm, around the time my sister gets back. She better not try to go.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because we’ll kill her,’ Kris blandly replied.

  We had come to the park’s tall iron gates, which were never open.

  ‘Well, I better be going,’ Kris said, stepping through the green turnstile. A Jorbagh taxi was waiting for him and the uniformed chauffeur had opened the back door for Beyoncé, who showed not the slightest willingness to jump in on her own.

  ‘Kris,’ I asked, as the chauffeur helped Beyoncé into the car, ‘how’s the writing going?’

  ‘Pretty good, buddy. Thanks for asking. Should have a story out soon in a US mag.’

  ‘The one you read?’

  ‘No, no, are you crazy? My poor mother’s blood pressure would blow her head off. No, a much gentler story. And you? I hear you’re writing too.’

  ‘No. Yes. I mean nothing; it’s all gone cold on me. A complete blockage. I’m beginning to feel I have no material.’

  ‘Sorry to hear it, man. But keep at it. There’s always a breakthrough round the corner.’

  With this, he got into the car, Beyoncé panting on the seat next to him, and drove away.

  20

  On the morning of the jagran, Aakash had a different hairstyle. It was no longer ‘messy’, but parted in the middle and combed back in the style of an eighties hero. He had a little orange mark at the centre of his forehead from the inaugural puja that morning. We finished early at Junglee and he asked if I would drop him off at the nearest metro station. He had to go back to Sectorpur and help with the preparations. Sixty kilos of wheat had to be turned into puris before eight p.m.

  Factoring in a standard one-hour unit of delay, and that we would be awake all night, I left the house at eight fifteen. But by eight forty-five, just as Sectorpur’s flyovers and cramped sprawl came into view, Aakash began calling to see where I was.

  ‘Five minutes away.’

  ‘Good. Come fast.’

  We drove past the 16 Base Repair Depot and took a left after the fruit seller’s. It was a clear mild night, hardly cold for November. Uttam entered the Air Force Colony, and even before we’d come as far as Aakash’s street, we could see the preparations. On one side there was a blue water truck and a park bounded by banana, neem, ashok, Alstonia scholaris and gulmohar trees. At the centre of it, a large white tent, with scalloped satin skirting, flapped lightly in the wind. On the right was the community centre, a single-storey, pale yellow building. In an open cemented area in front of it, a few hundred people, many of whom were children, sat on the floor on long strips of green carpeting.They ate from leaf thalis coated in a silver laminate, which glistened in the bright light falling on the diners from halogen lamps overhead. Young men and boys walked with bent backs down the line, serving great spoonfuls of chickpeas, vegetable curry and spongy puris from buckets.

  Aakash stood among the diners, in his black capris and beige and white knit T-shirt. He came to meet me outside when h
e saw the car drive in with a look of tired exhilaration. There was a little piece of puri stuck to his cheek. ‘Hi, man. What’s you doing, man?’ There were others from the gym around him: Mojij in a pink shirt, almost with cuffs, and Montu in a tight T-shirt that made him look even fatter than he was.

  After his initial pleasure at seeing me, Aakash’s manner changed to that of a child interrupted in the middle of a game. Having observed the formality of asking if I’d like some tea, he passed me on to his little brother.

  When I failed to recognize him, he said irritably, ‘It’s Anil. You met him in Haryana, remember? When we went to the temples?’

  I did remember; it was just that then, as now, my perceptions were overwhelmed.

  As Aakash walked away, he yelled, ‘Give him a stiff cup of tea.’ Anil nodded and we began to walk towards the flat. But we had barely taken a few steps when the power failed. A red city sky suddenly fell over the jagran. A few stray invertor-run lights glowed, the odd naked bulb, but the colony was in darkness.

  The air became filled with voices, men in Aakash’s family and colony calling the electricity people, appealing to them to turn the electricity back on as there was going to be a jagran that night. The friendly responses they seemed to be receiving, the exchange of first names, some stray laughter, gave me an intimation of how the religious occasion would have served as common ground, how it might have made human the usually clinical communication between citizens and government servants. The man on the other end might also have lived in a colony with a jagran and was perhaps happy to see what he could do.

  We walked towards Aakash’s apartment block, which even in the mixture of moon and tube light seemed to have received a fresh coat of peach and beige paint.

  ‘It has!’ Anil said. ‘They did it in the summer.’ He worked at a travel agency and was telling me that, despite the recent terrorist attacks, tourists, especially Spanish tourists, were still coming in large numbers. He had just been in Pushkar, leading a group, and was thrilled at how many temples there were in a small area. ‘We handle inbound and outbound tourism, but inbound is naturally more interesting.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked as we made our way into the candle-lit flat.

  ‘Just because it’s more interesting,’ he replied, ‘to show people what there is in your country than to promote another. I doubt there’s another country in the world with as much to see as India.’

  Everybody loved India; everybody worked hard. Mojij, who’d followed us in said he was at Junglee every day until two, then at college till six, doing a BA in media studies. Anil, whose English was good, much better than Aakash’s, said he’d been learning French as well, but had never found the time to immerse himself in the language. We sat in the pink front room, in the light of a few slim red and yellow candles. Their glow expanded and shrank, sometimes throwing light as far as the lime-green pagodas, the red rose and the sequined Radha and Krishna, sometimes leaving them in darkness. I noticed that the cushion covers of the brown wooden sofas had embroidered scenes of chalets with fences and gardens. A few moments later, Ma Sharma, in a purple salwar kurta, came in with sweet, strong cups of tea. The little sweeper ran around half naked in a red and white Hawaii T-shirt. The power cut had scattered the mosquitoes into the general darkness, but occasionally one of the women in the house could be heard slapping a fleshy arm or thigh, and loudly exclaiming, ‘Machchar!’ I was beginning to wonder what I had come for when the sound of an exhaust fan and the dim sputtering of lights announced the end of the power cut. A slight feeling of embarrassment ran through the room at the sudden exposure.

  Just then, Amit, Aakash’s elder brother, appeared in the metal doorway and ushered us downstairs, insisting we eat. Before being led into the cemented area, I stopped at the durbar.

  I knew that the word literally meant court, but also had the connotation of a viewing or an audience, of being in the presence of the deity. Amit explained that the boys in the colony had begun the jagran five years before. This came as a surprise; I thought it would have been going on for many years. To think of so large a religious occasion as recent – and put on by young people – was to be aware instantly of new prosperity – and the gods to which people felt it was owed. Amit said that the boys of the colony had just been sitting around one day when they thought, the other colonies have jagrans, why don’t we? They put together a committee, gathered funds and that year put on the first jagran. It was an instant success and the numbers grew each year, with people’s relations coming from out of town for the event. They were very proud this year of the size of the durbar. And they had reason to be; it was vast. Giant papier-mâché mountains, like the mountains of Ladakh, rust, yellow, purple, blue, towered over the tented enclosure, recreating Kailash, Shiva and Parvati’s alpine dwelling. On every summit of every peak there were gods, Shiva, Krishna, orange-tongued and orange-palmed Kali, and at the highest summit, Santoshi Ma, the mother of contentment. Below her, 108 brass lamps were arranged like a champagne pyramid, representing the goddess’s 108 forms. The tent was still empty and a group of colony children were playing on its thick floral carpets. In one corner, a small band warmed up on a podium with Roland equipment, keyboards, brown wooden drums and powerful black speakers. Halogen lamps and free-standing heaters, filled with blackish-orange coals, heated the empty tent.

  We ate dinner in the community centre. There was little conversation, but Anil pointed out that the pumpkin sabzi would aid digestion. I threw my tray away and saw irritatingly that I had made a little yellow stain on my kurta. I had hardly spoken to Aakash so far and thought I might lure him away for an after-dinner cigarette. But he was not in the mood. He passed me on to Amit, who was only too happy to take me to the neighbourhood convenience store, provided he could borrow Uttam to pick up some friends of his. When I said he couldn’t, he became sullen.

  The convenience store was the front room of a ground-floor flat in another block. It had a single grille window overlooking the park and contained sacks of grain, bottles of tomato ketchup and some tinned food. We entered it furtively, almost with the air of people entering a back room for a line of cocaine. The barrel-stomached owner sat in his vest in the window, and like a card dealer, fanned out two Gold Flakes as we came in. We took one each and sat down on a charpoy. The owner threw us a box of matches without interrupting his vigil at the window. The harsh tobacco had begun to compress the food in my stomach when the second power cut happened. Again, voices filled the darkness; the boulder-shaped owner lit a match. People scurried in and out of the convenience store, now asking him for candles, now for five more kilos of flour. This last request was handled by Amit, who dashed out of the room, leaving me alone in the convenience store, with the orange end of a Gold Flake burning steadily to the butt. I was beginning to feel completely bereft of company and purpose when Aakash’s face became visible through the candle-lit bars of the grille window.

  ‘My friend in here?’ he said quickly.

  The shop owner didn’t reply.

  ‘Yes,’ I said frantically, like a castaway calling out to a ship.

  ‘Come on. We have to go,’ he hissed into the darkness.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ll tell you on the way. Hurry up.’

  Outside, people shuffled urgently about as Aakash searched for his bike among dozens of others.

  ‘Let’s take Uttam.’

  ‘We can’t,’ he said distractedly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘What do you mean? Where did he go?’

  ‘My brother sent him to pick up some people from the airport. He said he asked you.’

  ‘Yes, and I said no.’

  ‘Fucker,’ Aakash said. ‘He’s always doing this. Anyway, don’t worry. He’ll be back soon.’

  Aakash, having found his bike, was wheeling it out into the street.

  ‘Come on. Get on,’ he said.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Aakash stopped
wheeling back his bike, swung one leg over the seat, and trying to locate me in the darkness, said quietly, ‘To pick up Megha.’

  ‘She’s back!’

  ‘Yes, man. She’s run away.’

  ‘Fuck. When did you find out?’

  ‘Just a few hours ago. Can’t you see I’ve been taking so much tension? I couldn’t even greet you properly.’

  ‘What’ll happen now?’

  ‘I don’t know, man. We’ll find out.’

  We couldn’t continue the conversation because, at that precise moment, a large, moustached man, seeing Aakash on his bike, approached, asking if he could have a ride.

  ‘Sure,’ Aakash said, ‘let my friend get on, then you get on.’

  ‘How can three go?’ the man asked, eyeing me morosely.

  ‘They can.’

  I got on and, a moment later, felt the fat man’s stomach pin me in place. The bike sank, then rose and rolled out of the colony gates. Aakash steered it unsteadily, speaking to Megha on his mobile as he drove.

  We headed down the dark, keekar-lined road that ran from Aakash’s colony to the main intersection. At the fruit stall the fat man got off. A little further on there was a line of yellow lights gathered under a flyover, and a restaurant with a sign saying ‘Sher-e-Punjab’ in red letters on a white background. Aakash ordered a few bottles of Thums-up, which arrived with straws on metal trays, and we sat down to wait. I made a few attempts at conversation, but Aakash seemed too tense to talk. The only question that aroused his interest, and that had been circulating in my mind from the moment I heard of Megha’s return, was how changed she would be after the lipo.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Aakash said, with some wonder in his voice. ‘We have to be prepared for any eventuality. She told me on the phone that they gave her lipo in eight places and removed nearly five litres of fat. Five litres!’ he repeated, flaring his eyes. ‘Apparently, she still has her bruises and her skin has become very dry.’