Between the Assassinations (28 page)

It was late on the way back as well. The two of them had to stand in the densely crowded aisle for over an hour, until a pair of seats became empty beside them. Ratna slid into the window seat and motioned for the boy to sit down next to him. “We got lucky, considering how crowded the bus is,” Ratna said with a smile.

Gently, he disengaged his hand from the boy’s.

The boy understood too; he nodded, and took out his wallet, and threw five-rupee notes, one after the other, into Ratna’s lap.

“What’s this for?”

“You said you wanted something for helping me.”

Ratna thrust the notes into the boy’s shirt pocket. “Don’t talk to me like that, fellow. I have helped you so far; and what did I have to gain from it? It was pure public service on my part, remember that. We aren’t related; we have no blood in common.”

The boy said nothing.

“Look! I can’t keep on going with you from doctor to doctor. I’ve got my daughters to marry off, I don’t know where I’ll get the dowry for—”

The boy turned, pressed his face into Ratna’s collarbone, and burst into sobs; his lips rubbed against Ratna’s clavicles and began sucking on them. The passengers stared at them, and Ratna was too bewildered to say a word.

It took another hour before the outline of the black fort appeared on the horizon. The man and the boy got off the bus together. Ratna stood by the main road and waited as the boy blew his nose and shook the phlegm from his fingers. Ratna looked at the black rectangle of the fort, and felt a sense of despair: how had it been decided, and by whom, and when, and why, that Ratnakara Shetty was responsible for helping this firecracker merchant’s son fight his disease? Against the black rectangle of the fort, he had a vision, momentarily, of a white dome, and he heard a throng of mutilated beings chanting in unison. He put a beedi in his mouth, struck a match, and inhaled.

“Let’s go,” he told the boy. “It’s a long walk from here to my house.”

Bajpe, the last area of forested land in Kittur, was marked out by the founding fathers as one of the “cleansing lungs” of the town, and for this reason was for thirty years protected from the avarice of real estate developers. The great forest of Bajpe, which stretched from Kittur right up to the Arabian Sea, was bordered on the town side by the Ganapati Hindu Boys’ School and the small adjacent temple of Ganesha. Next to the temple ran Bishop Street, the only part of the neighborhood where houses had been allowed. Beyond the street stood a large wasteland, and beyond that began a dark lattice of trees—the forest. When relatives from the center of town visited, the residents of Bishop Street were usually up on their terraces or balconies, enjoying the cool breezes that blew from the forest in the evening. Guests and hosts together watched as herons, eagles, and kingfishers flew in and out of the darkening mass of trees, like ideas circulating around an immense brain. The sun, when it plunged behind the forest, burned orange and ocher through the interstices of the foliage, as if peering out of the trees, and the observers had the distinct impression that they were being observed in return. At such moments, guests were wont to declare that the inhabitants of Bajpe were the luckiest people on earth. At the same time, it was assumed that if a man built his house on Bishop Street, he had some reason to want to be so far from civilization.

G
IRIDHAR
R
AO AND
Kamini, the childless couple on Bishop Street, were one of the hidden treasures of Kittur, all their friends declared. Weren’t they a marvel? All the way out in Bajpe, on the very edge of the wilderness, this barren couple kept alive the all-but-dead art of Brahmin hospitality.

It was another Thursday evening, and the half a dozen or so members of the Raos’ circle of
intimates
were making their way through the mud and slush of Bishop Street for their weekly get-together. Ahead of the pack, moving with giant strides, came Mr. Anantha Murthy, the philosopher. Behind him was Mrs. Shirthadi, the wife of the Life Insurance Company of India man. Then Mrs. Pai, and then Mr. Bhatt, and finally Mrs. Aithal, always the last to descend from her green Ambassador.

The Raos’ house was all the way down at the end of Bishop Street, just yards away from the trees. Sitting right on the forest’s edge, the house had the look of a fugitive from the civilized world, ready to spring into the wilderness at a moment’s notice.

“Did everyone hear that?”

Mr. Anantha Murthy turned around. He put a hand on his ear and raised his eyebrows.

A cool breeze was blowing in from the forest. The
intimates
came to a halt, trying to hear what Mr. Murthy had heard.

“I think it’s a woodpecker, somewhere in the trees!”

An irritated voice boomed down:

“Why don’t you get up here first, and listen to the woodpeckers later? The food has been prepared with a lot of care, and it’s getting cold!”

It was Mr. Rao, leaning down from the balcony of his house.

“Okay, okay,” Mr. Anantha Murthy grumbled, picking his way down the muddy track again. “But it’s not every day a man gets to hear a woodpecker.” He turned to Mrs. Shirthadi. “We tend to forget everything that’s important when we live in towns, don’t we, madam?”

She grunted. She was trying to make sure she didn’t get mud on her sari.

The philosopher led the
intimates
into the house. When they had finished scraping their chappals and shoes on the coconut-fiber mat, the visitors found old Sharadha Bhatt squinting at them. She was the proprietor of the place, a widow whose only son lived in Bombay. It was understood that the Raos stayed on in their cramped apartment, so far from the heart of town, partly out of concern for Mrs. Bhatt—she was a distant relative. A suggestion of intense religiosity clung to the old lady. The visitors heard the drone of M. S. Subbulakshmi singing “Suprabhatam” from a small black tape recorder in her room. Sitting with her legs folded on a wooden bed, she struck at her thighs alternately with the front and back of her left palm as she followed the rhythm of the holy music.

Some of the visitors remembered her husband, a celebrated teacher of Carnatic music who had performed on All India Radio, and paid their respects: politely nodding toward her.

Done with their obligation to the ancient lady, they hurried up a wide stairwell to the Raos’ quarters. The childless couple occupied a crushingly small space. Half the living area consisted of a single drawing room, cluttered with sofas and chairs. In a corner, a sitar was propped up against the wall, its shaft having slid down to a forty-five-degree angle.

“Ah! It’s our
intimates
once again!”

Giridhar Rao was neat, modest, and unpretentious in appearance. You could tell at once that he worked in a bank. Since his transfer from Udupi—his hometown—he had been the deputy branch manager at the Corporation Bank’s Cool Water Well branch for nearly a decade now. (The
intimates
knew that Mr. Rao could have risen much higher had he not repeatedly refused to be transferred to Bombay.) His wavy hair was flattened with coconut oil and parted to one side. A handlebar mustache—the one anomaly in his demure appearance—was neatly combed and curled at the ends. Mr. Rao had now thrown a short-sleeved shirt over his singlet. The fabric of the shirt was thin: inside its dark silk, the thick singlet glowed like a skeleton in an X-ray.

“How are you, Kamini?” Mr. Anantha Murthy asked in the direction of the kitchen.

The drawing room furniture was a motley mix—green metal seats discarded from the bank, a torn old sofa, and three fraying cane chairs. The
intimates
headed for their favorite seats. The conversation began haltingly; perhaps they sensed, once again, that they were as haphazard a collection of people as the furniture was. None was aware of any blood relation to the other. By day, Mr. Anantha Murthy was a chartered accountant catering to Kittur’s rich. In the evenings he became a committed philosopher of the Advaita school. He found Mr. Rao a willing (if silent) listener to his theories of the Hindu life—and that was how he had become part of the circle. Mrs. Shirthadi, who usually attended without her busy husband, had been educated in Madras and espoused several “liberated” views. Her English was exceptionally fine, a marvel to listen to. Mr. Rao had asked her to speak on the subject of Charles Dickens at the bank a few years ago. Mrs. Aithal and her husband had met Kamini at a violin concert the previous May. The two of them were originally from Vizag.

The
intimates
knew that the Raos had selected them for their distinction—for their delicacy. They realized that they bore a responsibility upon entering that cozy little garret. Certain topics were taboo. Within the wide circumference of acceptable conversation—world news, philosophy, bank politics, the relentless expansion of Kittur, the rainfall this year—the
intimates
had learned to meander freely. Forest breezes came in from the balcony, and a transistor radio precariously balanced on the edge of the parapet emitted a steady patter of the BBC’s evening news service.

A late arrival—Mrs. Karwar, who taught Victorian literature at the university—threw the house into chaos. Her vivacious five-year-old, Lalitha, charged up the stairs shrieking.

“Look here, Kamini,” Mr. Rao shouted at the kitchen. “Mrs. Karwar has smuggled your secret lover into the house!”

Kamini rushed out of the kitchen. Fair skinned and shapely, she was almost a beauty. (Her forehead was protuberant, and her hair thinnish at the front.) She was famous for her “Chinese” eyes: narrow slits that were half closed beneath the curve of heavy eyelids, like prematurely opened lotus buds. Her hair—she was known to be a “modern” woman—was cut short in the Western style. Ladies admired her hips, which, never having been widened by childbirth, still sported a girlish slimness.

She rushed up to Lalitha. She hoisted the little girl into the air, kissing her several times.

“Look, let’s wait till my husband’s back is turned, and then we’ll get on my moped and drive away, huh? We can leave that evil man behind us and drive away to my sister’s house in Bombay, okay?”

Giridhar Rao put his hands to his waist and glared at the giggling girl.

“Are you planning on stealing my wife? Are you really her secret lover?”

“Hey, keep listening to your BBC,” Kamini retorted, leading Lalitha by the hand into the kitchen.

The
intimates
acknowledged their keen delight in this pantomime. The Raos certainly did not lack the skill to keep a child happy.

The voices of the BBC continued from the radio outside—a gravy of words that the
intimates
dipped into when their conversation ran dry. Mr. Anantha Murthy broke one long pause by declaring that the situation in Afghanistan was getting out of hand. One of these mornings the Soviets would come streaming over Kashmir with their red flags. Then the country would regret having missed its chance to ally itself with America back in 1948.

“Don’t you feel this way, Mr. Rao?”

Their host had never anything more to express than a friendly grin. Mr. Murthy did not mind. He acknowledged that Mr. Rao was not a “man of many words”—but he was a “deep” fellow all the same. If you ever wanted to check little details of world history—like, for instance, who was the American president who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima; not Roosevelt, but the little man with the round glasses—then you turned to Giridhar Rao. He knew everything; he said nothing. That kind of fellow.

“How is it you remain so calm, Mr. Rao, despite all this chaos and killing that the BBC is always telling you about? What is your secret?” Mrs. Shirthadi asked him, as she often did.

The bank manager smiled. “When I need peace of mind, madam, I just go to my private beach.”

“Are you a secret millionaire?” Mrs. Shirthadi demanded. “What’s this private beach you keep talking about?”

“Oh, nothing, really.” He gestured toward the distance. “Just a little lake with some gravel around it. It’s a very soothing place.”

“And why haven’t we all been invited there?” demanded Mr. Murthy.

The guests sat up. A triumphant Mrs. Rao entered the drawing room bearing a plastic tray whose multiple compartments brimmed with the evening’s first offerings: dried walnuts (which looked like little shrunken brains), juicy figs, sultana raisins, chopped almonds, slices of desiccated pineapple…

Before the guests had recovered, the next assault followed:

“Dinner is ready!”

They went into the dining room—the only other room in the house (it led into a little alcove-kitchen). An enormous bed, plump with cushions, lay in the middle of the dining room. There was no pretending not to see the conjugal site. It lay there, brazenly open to view. A small table was pulled up right next to it, and three of the guests hesitantly took their seats there. Their embarrassment disappeared almost immediately. The informality of their hosts, the voluptuous softness of the bedding beneath them—these things soothed their nerves. Then dinner rolled out of Kamini’s little kitchen. Course after course of fine tomato saaru, idli, and dosas flowed out of that factory of gustatory treats.

“This kind of cooking would amaze people even in Bombay,” proposed Mr. Anantha Murthy, when Kamini’s pièce de résistance—fluffy North Indian rotis, lined inside with chili powder—arrived on the table. Kamini beamed and protested: he was all wrong, she had so many inadequacies as a cook and a housewife!

When the guests rose, they realized that their buttocks had left wide, warm, and deep markings on the bed, like an elephant’s footprints in clay. Giridhar Rao brushed aside their apologies:

“Our guests are like gods to us; they can do no wrong. That’s the philosophy in this house.”

They stood in line outside the washroom, where water flowed from a green rubber pipe twisted into a loop around the tap. Then back to the drawing room for the highlight of the evening—almond kheer.

Kamini brought out the dessert in breathtakingly large tumblers. The shake—served warm or cold, according to each guest’s pleasure—was so full of almonds that the guests protested that they had to
chew
the drink! When they looked into their tumblers, they held their breath in wonder: shiny flecks, strands of real saffron, floated between the pieces of almond.

They left the apartment silently, heeding Mr. Rao’s request not to disturb the sleeping Sharadha Bhatt. (The old lady turned restlessly on her wooden bed as they departed; in the background the religious music droned on.)

“Do come next week!” Mr. Rao said from the terrace. “It’s the week of the Satyanarayana Pooja! I’ll make sure Kamini does a better job with the cooking next week, unlike tonight’s disaster!” He turned into the house and raised his voice: “Did you hear that, Kamini? The food had better be good next time, or you’re divorced.”

There was a laugh, and a high-pitched scream from inside: “You’ll be the one to get divorced, unless you shut up!”

Once at a safe distance, the
intimates
burst into chatter.

What a pair! The man and woman such complete opposites! He was “bland,” she was “spicy.” He was “conservative,” she was “modern.” She was “quick,” he was “deep.”

Still picking their way along the muddy road, they began to discuss the forbidden topic with all the excitement and eagerness of people who were discussing it for the first time.

“It’s obvious,” said one of the women, Mrs. Aithal or Mrs. Shirthadi. “Kamini is the one ‘at fault.’ She wouldn’t have
the operation.
No wonder her life is racked by guilt. Don’t you see how she throws herself on any available child in a storm of frustrated maternity, showering them with kisses and blandishments and caramel chocolates? What does that signify, if not guilt?”

“And why did she refuse the operation?” demanded Mr. Anantha Murthy.