Priya

by Namita Gokhale

  ‘Why do you not speak in Hindi?’ I asked, trying to sound puzzled, not irritated. It wasn’t as if I believed he had no right to speak to me in English. But a confidently English-speaking dhobi confused me.

  ‘I am doing Rapidex English Course, Madom,’ he replied. ‘Without the English bhasha, no progress, no aage badhne ka proper chance. You hear of Angrezi Devi? She is goddess of English language. We pray to her. She blesses have-nots to move up. Thanks.’

  Just then I received an excited phone call from the impossible Pooonam, begging me to join her for coffee at the Park Inn hotel. ‘It’s a crisis, my darling,’ she wailed, as the dhobi said ‘See you, Madom’ and left. ‘I need your wise advice. Pleeze pleeze pleeze Priya, I need you.’

  What was up? I needed to stay in the picture, so I set off with Ghafoor to the Park Inn, thankful that it wasn’t a Friday.

  The coffee—a Javanese and pure vanilla concoction—seemed priced at a month’s wages on the current poverty index. Pooonam began on her woes. ‘I’m spoilt for choice, Priya,’ she declared. ‘There are two offers before me and I have to decide between them. One is to head a big charity—the Hope for the Helpless Trust—to really help the poors. This charity-sharity gives a good opening into society, you know. Also to bureaucrats. And of course I am a kind-hearted person.’

  I nodded, though I couldn’t say I agreed.

  ‘And now Cancelli are entering the Indian market. It’s a top- end international brand. They are setting up new shoe-and-bag retail outlets, and they want me to be their brand ambassador!’ Pooonam fluffed out a bit while announcing this, like a pouter pigeon.

  ‘Why can’t you do both?’ I enquired innocently. Pooonam screeched so loudly that the people at the next table turned to stare at us.

  ‘Meri Jaan!’ she chided. ‘A brand ambassador has to look beautiful all the time. It takes a lot of mehnat and very hard work to look beautiful. I need to tone and exercise, groom and accessorize. I have to nurture and exfoliate my skin. Jayanti has to do my hair. I have to have a gorgeous man on call to escort me— or a high-profile woman friend like you. How can I rush around slums in high heels carrying Cancelli bags? Tell me that, my dear Priya, if you are as intelligent as I know you are . . .’

  She was cooing at me again. I was mesmerized by her. Pooonam dripped, radiated, glamour. And she seemed to genuinely like and admire me. I wasn’t used to that.

  ‘The choice is clear, I suppose,’ I pondered. ‘Cancelli wins, Lady Brand Ambassador.’

  ‘Then maybe you could take on the Hope for the Hopeless?’ she pouted. ‘Be the change—it’s all about the power of one! Pleeeeze darling, do help me out on that. I will suggest your name to the committee. Say yes, my gulab jamun.’

  I have always been touchy about my wheatish complexion. ‘What do you mean gulab jamun?’ I bristled.

  ‘Oh sorry darling—I meant my rossogolla!’ she tinkled, a hint of mischief in her highlighted eyes. Was she laughing at me?

  A familiar looking young girl ran into us in the lobby, just as we were about to step out.

  ‘Suki—what a surprise!’ Pooonam exclaimed. ‘Sukita, meet my bestest friend Priya. Suki is Manoviraj Sethia’s younger daughter. And Priya is the mother of the two handsome twins Luv and Kush. Arre look at you . . . you are both wearing blue. Two in blue! Tee hee!! That’s a good sign, isn’t it?’

  I examined Suki with interest. She was wearing solitaire danglers the size of grapes, and the effect was blinding. She held out her hand; her palms were damp and clammy. I had the uneasy feeling of being carefully scrutinized. My sons and our family were on offer.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Kaushal,’ she said at last, after a minute or so of intense consideration. ‘I’ve heard so much about you. I’m sure we’ll meet again. Soon.’

  ‘I have to leave now; my husband must be waiting,’ I said, as I stepped into the shabby government Ambassador car.

  ‘We’re planning a Botox brunch next Sunday,’ Pooonam called after me. ‘Do come, it will be good for your marriage. And learn to keep your husband waiting sometimes.’

  I was furious. I would see less of Madame Brand Ambassador in future, I resolved.

  We were passing Jantar Mantar to make our way to Janpath, when we were halted by a protest march. A tide of women in red and blue ankle-length ghagras, heads and faces demurely covered, their feet in hardy leather jutis. They carried placards in Hindi and English. ‘Hunger is the Oldest Violence’ they said, and ‘Food Security is Our Birth Right’—‘Aahar Hamara Adhikar Hai’. Men in bright turbans were trailing after them, but it was the women who were doing the protesting.

  A frail figure was crossing the road, a shabby jhola slung from his shoulders. Suddenly he fell into a faint before us. There was a furore among the women. ‘Bhaiya ji gir gaye!’ they exclaimed, milling around to attend to him.

  I recognized the man. It was Lenin. He was ashen-pale and soaked in sweat. He didn’t seem to recognize me. We got him into the car. ‘Take us home, quickly,’ I told Ghafoor. ‘Jaldi ghar chalo!’

  In the car, Lenin gave me a sideways look but seemed not to have registered who I was. His head was lolling slightly to one side, and a dribble of spit and froth was settling on the edge of his lip. The lifeless pallor of his face frightened me. His nails were encrusted with dirt. Had he been drinking?

  We reached Dara Shikoh Marg. I led Lenin to the living room, and settled him on the sofa, making sure that his filthy jhola stayed on the floor. Ramdhan brought him a glass of chilled water, which I coaxed him to drink.

  Just then Suresh entered the room, followed by an entourage of assistants and secretaries. A look of extreme surprise crossed his usually impassive face.

  ‘It’s our Lenin—Avinendra Shukul,’ I explained, a note of apology creeping into my voice. ‘Surely you remember him. Our friend—Paro’s friend! Lenin wasn’t feeling well, so I brought him home.’

  Suresh examined Lenin with astonishment and slight distaste. Then he turned to his PA. ‘Call for a doctor immediately,’ he snapped, and left the room again.

  Lenin was looking a bit better now. ‘I’m sorry, my patient Priya,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a bout of tummy troubles after spending a month in Chhattisgarh, in the forests with some hapless tribals. The government, including my respected wife Geeta, calls them M-Maoists and t-t-terrorists but really they are like people everywhere, threatened and trying to s-survive.’

  ‘I met your daughter Paromita again recently,’ I told him, ‘and she’s lovely.’

  ‘Aah, Paromita . . . the poor child. I named her after our Paro, and Geeta after her favourite Buaji, her father’s sister. Paromita seems to have taken after me more than her mother. That’s a difficult inheritance, as you know, P-Priya, better than anyone else.’

  ‘What complete nonsense, Lenin!’ I protested. ‘You are one of the nicest people I have ever met. You know exactly how special you are, for all of us.’

  Lenin was getting into form again. ‘Special!’ he scoffed. ‘Yes, especially naïve, especially s-stupid, th-that’s me. In a world where s-success is all that matters, I’m a s-sentimental failure, a b-blot on s-society. A prodigal father. I hope Paromita keeps away from my example.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Lenin,’ I scolded affectionately.

  ‘But I have been a prodigal parent. You know me better than most people, Priya,’ he continued. He was talking very slowly and softly and it was a strain to listen to him ‘I have a confession to make, about my d-double life. About ten years ago, when Paromita was thirteen, I ran away. I couldn’t cope any more with the cruelty and complacency of India Shining, and with Geeta, who was on the success curve, climbing up. I opted out, left home and moved to a village in Bastar where some friends ran an NGO. I didn’t do anything there, just smoked a lot of hash and beedis and lay in the grass looking up at the blue sky, and wrote a diary sometimes.

  ‘I met Banwari there, fell in love with her. Things were already getting difficult then. The Naxals were growing stronger, and the
Sulwa Judum was active too. Ideologically, I sided with the Marxists—I m-mean that’s clearly where the balance of justice lay—but I was so deeply in love with Banwari that nothing else seemed to matter. I lived in her petticoat, literally, for those years.’

  I nodded sympathetically. ‘Banwari died last year in an encounter—I’m sure the cops just shot her, because I never saw her with a gun. But she had changed too, you know. She had begun to despise me, thought I was weak and w-worthless. I suppose she was right. It’s Paromita who rescued me, got me home, rehabilitated me into the middle classes. It was difficult to return home to Geeta, but Paromita looked after me like a baby. She is a good girl, a good daughter.’

  A good daughter makes a good daughter-in-law, I thought to myself.

  ‘Winners and losers, that’s what this new world is about,’ Lenin went on, unable to stop, as if making a much needed confession. ‘It’s not poverty that is considered the problem anymore—no, it’s the poor themselves! My wife Geeta says I romanticize poverty. You know that’s not true. I love the good life, always have. Paromita took me to one of the new malls recently, and I thought I had died and reached heaven. There was a man playing the piano near the elevators, the theme tune from Dr Zhivago. We went to an organic ice-cream outlet and had a “Slurpy S-Strawberry Special”. It seduced me, that mall, until we stepped out and I saw the steel and glass reflected in the eyes of the b-beggar children outside . . .’ I knew Lenin, and his constantly self-questioning honesty.

  ‘So did you enjoy the ice-cream?’ I asked, trying to lighten the mood.

  Lenin nodded sadly.

  ‘Call me sentimental, or out of tune with the times,’ he continued. ‘Everybody has a mobile with a jhinchak ringtone and life sounds bhangra pop all the way, but I can’t get over the sense of having lost something very precious, something the others haven’t yet noticed in the rush of getting on to the success bus, in the f-fear of getting l-left behind.’

  His head was beginning to loll, in the alarming way it had earlier. The doctor walked in escorted by Suresh’s PA. He checked Lenin’s pulse and listened carefully with his stethoscope before prescribing some innocuous placebo. And then Lenin was in a sudden hurry to leave. ‘I’m all right, Priya, I really am,’ he insisted, as he wobbled out of the room.

  I called for Ghafoor, instructed him about the medicines, settled Lenin into the car, and sent him off home. I tried Paromita’s number on my phone, but it was switched off.

  Lenin has left his jhola behind. I shall return it to him when I see him next. It’s filthy; maybe I should wash or dryclean it before that.

  I emptied out Lenin’s cotton jhola and sent it to the dhobi to be washed. There was a notebook in it and two photographs. One of Paro, a publicity still from when she had acted in that dreadful Krishen Narain Singh convent-Hindi production of Clytemnestra. The other was of a shy, attractive girl wearing two noserings and a flower in her hair. Banwari. She looked like an ayah, if you know what I mean.

  One is taught not to snoop, but I couldn’t resist the temptation. I opened the notebook and began reading . . .

  There was an entry, with a strange heading. ‘A Donkey Factfile’ it read.

  A beast of burden, a complicit domestic creature, the donkey is the true metaphor of our times. The price of a donkey depends on its height, colour, age and number of teeth. The costliest donkeys in India, from Kathewada in Gujarat, are priced at 10 to 15 thousand rupees each. The work output of an average donkey equals that of seven to ten manual labourers, depending of course on their height, race, age, etc. As migrant labour from Bihar, Andhra, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan demand at least minimum wages, builders and construction companies have turned to donkeys for support.

  Lenin’s handwriting was getting larger and stragglier and more difficult to read. I struggled to make sense of the words but couldn’t, and gave up.

  So Lenin had fallen in love again! Lenin the Maoist, the perpetual revolutionary. I knew it was all talk, I couldn’t see him hurling bombs and plotting effectively against the state. He didn’t have it in him.

  I tried to picture him with the girl in the photograph with the flower in her hair. She was completely and absolutely the opposite of Paro, but that didn’t surprise me, somehow. Lenin was a romantic, doomed to lose in love. That explained the hurt that had settled over him, the despair that seemed to engulf him.

  I looked at Banwari’s picture again. She had been very young then, whenever the photograph was taken. Poor Lenin. And, I suppose, poor Banwari.

  Bumped into Poonam in Khan Market today. She was walking a tiny Chihuahua pup on a long spangled leash. She let out an excited squeal when she saw me. ‘Isn’t Lexus chu-weeeet?!!’ she asked. ‘Manoviraj gave him to me! And he’s going to gift me a real Lexus luxury car next . . .’

  Well, she certainly does have her boyfriend on a leash, doesn’t she?

  Kush returned from the States looking unusually upbeat. I had to unpack his bags, send his jeans and underwear to the dhobi, make sure that there were enough starched white cotton kurta-pyjamas in stock for his Delhi desi-boy style profile. I found a pack of condoms in his bag. It shocked me, though I do of course realize that my son is a grown-up man with a sexual life and all that.

  Suresh discussed the proposal with him. ‘Manoviraj Sethia’s daughter Suki is a highly suitable marriage prospect,’ he said. ‘It’s a good idea for you to meet her and judge if you are compatible.’

  ‘I’ll ask Suki out for dinner,’ Kush replied unflinchingly. ‘Do you have a number for her? Though I know her on Facebook already.’

  Kush took Suki to see a film and for an Italian meal after that. He charged the dinner to his father. He discussed it with us over breakfast the next morning. Luv was still asleep—breakfast isn’t his time of day.

  ‘I’ve assessed the Sethia chick,’ Kush announced. ‘It’s like a merger or an amalgamation. One has to study the fundamentals.’

  Kush told Ramdhan to get him a poached egg and a bowl of cereal. I reached out for a chikoo. It was soft and sweet and brown.

  ‘So the money is fine—there’s lots of it and I can use it in my political career. And Suki’s fine too, she’s pretty and fun and practical. But the crucial question remains: Can Sukita be an effective political wife? Can she help me fight an election? Is she the right candidate for that role? Ma, Papa, I’m not convinced about that. But I’ll date her again and weigh the options.’

  Suresh and I exchanged glances. A practical son and an impractical one. Couldn’t God have evened it out a bit?

  I hadn’t forgotten Suki’s clammy handshake and her scrutinizing looks. She was clearly used to getting what she wanted. If she knew what she wanted, that is.

  Kush had gone off again, on a mysterious weekend trip to Dubai, where he was to meet with an Islamic banking consultant to discuss some pending deal that didn’t seem to be moving. I hoped that he could leverage it so he never had to depend on the Sethias of this world for money. Or on Suki.

  THIS MORNING, AS I REACHED BLEARY-EYED FOR MY WAKE-UP CUP OF tea, I saw an arresting photograph on page one of the Indian Times. It was of a noble-looking person with a flowing grey beard atop a reluctant donkey. There was something Biblical about his pose, about the tilt of his head. Compassion reflected in his eyes, and a sort of silent sorrow. Behind him, an unshaven young man who looked like an auto-rickshaw driver held up a placard that read: ‘I am NOT a Dunkey.’ The eyes held me, even though my mobile was buzzing and my morning tea getting cold. It took me some time to make the connection. The man in the ‘I am NOT a Dunkey’ photograph was my friend Lenin

  Lenin had helped organize the ‘Donkey March for the Dispossessed’. Coordinated by a consortium of radical NGOs, it got a hundred donkeys plodding from Jantar Mantar all the way to India Gate, defying police restrictions. ‘Ham Gadhe Nahi Hain’ the placards read. ‘We Are Not Donkeys’. ‘Give Us Back Our Rights, Give Us Back Our Land.’

  The Clarion carried a thoughtful editorial piece, writt
en by a JNU professor, about the significance of the Donkey March. It discussed pressure on agrarian resources, the conflict between Bharat and India, and the needs and demands of the two Indias. Lauding ‘engaged catalysts’ like Lenin, it spoke of ‘staying alive at the bottom’ and of the ‘binary bifurcations’ between urban and rural India. It despaired about the haves and the have-nots, even as it summoned the spectre of sub-Saharan Africa. It spoke of labour nomads, marginalized landowners, and the dynamics of poverty. Good stuff, I thought, even if a bit over the top intellectually.

  ‘The rich get richer, while the poor get poorer,’ it concluded, ‘but the Public must remember that the poor are NOT Dunkeys.’

  I had read it carefully. There were lots of words I did not understand. ‘What is “immiserization”?’ I asked Suresh, who too was pondering the picture of Lenin astride a donkey.

  ‘Immiserization?’ he replied. ‘I haven’t heard that word before. Why don’t you ask that joker Lenin? He seems to know all about donkeys and monkeys.’

  There was a note in his voice, not just of scorn but of mild envy—jokers who made it to the front pages of newspapers were clearly jokers of a different scale.

  The Donkey saga hasn’t ended. The television channels have lapped up the March of the Dispossessed, they can’t seem to have enough of it. ‘What precisely are you trying to prove by this march?’ glamorous young women anchors ask the protestors, in a range of variously accented voices.

  ‘That we are people too.’ ‘We are not donkeys.’ ‘We want our rights.’ ‘We demand our rights.’ ‘It’s the police who are donkeys . . .’ ‘It’s the government which is full of donkeys . . .’

  I surfed the channels searching for a glimpse of Paromita but Lenin’s daughter was not to be seen either as an anchor or among the ranks of the demonstrators. There was a short clip of Lenin riding on a donkey. Some trick of the light gave the shot a strange, surreal serenity. Light filtered through the branches of a leafy tree, framing his face in a luminous halo.