BLOOD RED SARI (8 page)

4.1

ANITA SPENT THE NIGHT
at a hotel near Papanasam Cliff.

On the long walk back to the highway, she had half a mind to take a taxi to Thiruvananthapuram and catch the first flight back to Mumbai. But Lalima stopped her. She had come here for Lalima, and the least she could do was pay her respects before going back.
Tomorrow,
she promised herself,
tomorrow after I light a candle for her, I will go back to Mumbai.

And after that, never again would she come back to the place of her birth and childhood, never again face those Munsters, the Addams Family, as Lalima and she had called them.

They had come up with the name one summer after Ezhu had brought back two videotapes filled with cartoons taped from TV. She still remembered how goggle-eyed they had been at the thought of a channel dedicated to cartoons and which ran all day and night – 24/7 as one would say now – and how they had sat together on the leaking couch in Lalima’s house and watched Wily Coyote and Road Runner, Yogi Bear,
Spongebob Squarepants
, Bugs Bunny, Foghorn Leghorn,
Speed Racer
, Daffy Duck,
Tweety and Sylvester
,
The Addams Family
, Elmer Fudd,
The Munsters
, Porky Pig,
The Perils of Pauline
, all day long for two whole days, rewinding the tape over and over again until Lalima’s amma had grown weary and thrown them out of the house, telling them to go spend some time in the sun. Watching
The Munsters
, Anita and Lalima had looked at each another and waggled their eyebrows as they did when they found something mutually amusing. Neither of them had actually said it out loud, but from that day onwards, they routinely referred to Anita’s family as The Munsters. As in ‘The Munsters are at it again’ or ‘I can’t come over today, The Munsters are forcing me to go to church with them’.

That was also the night Anita became fully aware of her sexual proclivities.

While watching one of those tapes later that night, they had paused the VCR between cartoons because Anita had to go use the loo and in the meantime Lalima had discovered an image left over from the programme that had previously been recorded on the tape. Apparently, Ezhu had taped the cartoons over a blue film. The errant bit of undeleted film didn’t show very much, just a bare-chested girl with part of what appeared to be a male appendage poking into the frame. The image was blurry enough that the said appendage might just be the man’s finger, or it might be what they both assumed it was. Excited and whispering to avoid waking Lalima’s mother, they kept pressing the cue button to fast forward frame by frame, but there were only two or three frames, blurred and grainy from the over-taping, and it was hard to be sure. The hardest part was suppressing their irrepressible giggling to avoid waking Amma. Ezhu denied it hotly when confronted the next day, but Lalima said she had seen a magazine once in his suitcase, peeking out between piles of shirts, and the portion of the cover she had glimpsed had said ‘PLAYB’ in big bold type.

That errant image left over from the alleged blue film – which Ezhu insisted was a National Geographic documentary on African tribal mating rituals – had marked the first year that they had openly begun talking about the ‘S-word’ and all things related. Later that night, about to fall asleep facing each other on Lalima’s cot, Anita had been overcome by a wave of new emotion, a great desire to reach out and caress her friend, accompanied by a sweet aching in her groin. Unable to resist, she had reached out and put her hand on Lalima’s shoulder and neck, then leaned into her warm intimate space to kiss her on the lips. Lalima, who became a zombie once she was very sleepy, mistook it for friendly affection, and thumped Anita on the side of the head roughly. The blow made Anita’s ear ring and she realized what she had been about to do – or guessed at it, since she had no real idea what these feelings meant or might lead to – and she blew a soundless whistle up Lalima’s nose, making her sneeze. Then she turned over and went to sleep. From that day onwards, Anita began to grow aware of the fact that she might not be a typical Malayali girl in certain respects. An understatement, to be sure, but even the most historic changes often begin with a nondescript event. Looking back later, she would always pinpoint that moment when she had tried to kiss the half-asleep Lalima as the moment of realization that she was gay.

Now, unpacking her bags on the bed, she was suddenly overcome by a wave of emotion. There was a whole bunch of things mixed up in it: her family, the past, the present, Lalima … She slumped to the cold tiled floor, spine hitting the skeleton of the bed, and dunked her face between her knees. She thought she was going to cry, but no tears came. She focused on breathing slowly, taking deep, calming breaths. It helped a little. It had been a long day and an even longer month. She had just come off a case in Mumbai, investigating a murder in a tony private club on behalf of a media group that later turned out to want the crime covered up rather than exposed because the killer was a major advertiser in their group’s publications and TV channels. The fact that the murderer was also a serial rapist who used his Page 3 celebrity status to gain his victims’ trust didn’t bother them in the least. Anita had turned the evidence in that case over to a person who she knew wouldn’t hesitate to wreak vigilante justice on the bastard. The media group had suspected her of doing it and had refused to pay the balance portion of her fee, which had crimped her finances. She was short of cash and had no other job in hand – none that would pay decently, at least. There were plenty of messages on her voice mail from spouses wanting their wives or husbands or significant others followed, but sleazy infidelity cases rarely paid enough to cover the aggravation of dealing with jilted wives and cuckolded husbands. More often than not, the aggrieved parties blamed
her
, the messenger, for the message, as if by clicking pictures of the illicit trysts of their partners, she had made them happen. She had had it with those cases. But if she didn’t get something soon, she would have to pick the least sleazy of them and try to make a rupee or two. Mrs Matondkar was patient about her missing the rent mostly, but she could also get cranky occasionally. That usually had something to do with Anita being overdue more than three months. Right now, she was at two-and-a-half months, which meant she needed to give the old bag some cash or endure nagging lectures day and night.

She had no idea when she fell asleep.

She opened her eyes to find herself lying asleep on her side, crouched in a foetal position with the bed against her spine and the room in pitch darkness. Even so, she instantly knew where she was:
I’m in a room in a hotel in Papanasam; I’m here for Lalima’s funeral.
Her cell phone was buzzing somewhere close by and there was a knock at the door. She had sleep grit in her eyes and her breath smelt awful to herself, but the impromptu slumber had refreshed her. She grabbed her phone as she stood up, noting by the flashing screen that she had slept the afternoon and evening away, almost seven hours, and that Philip was calling. She happened across the light switch while patting the wall to find her way to the door and switched it on: cold fluorescent lighting bathed the room.

She fumbled the door open.

It was Philip.

‘Chechi,’ he said, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘May I come in?’

Someone dropped a spoon in another room – their door was open, the sound of a television playing also audible. The clattering made him glance over his shoulder in a way that suggested pursuit. She let him in.

They sat sipping filter coffee. Ordering some filter coffee first, Anita had taken a moment to pee and then splash some water on her face. She had forgotten her toothbrush and had settled for rubbing her finger over her teeth. The filter coffee was hot and smelt wonderful. She had missed filter coffee in Mumbai. Mrs Matondkar had some kink about filter coffee and refused to let Anita make it in her kitchen – one of her many small eccentricities. And the only places that still served good filter coffee in the city were the handful of Udupi joints that hadn’t caved in and morphed into restobars, and there were fewer of those each year.

Philip looked thirty years older since she’d last seen him, which was about thirteen years ago. He had put on some weight, all in the wrong places, and his watery grey eyes looked even more dog-sad than they had before. His hairline had receded considerably and he hadn’t shaved in days. He sat rubbing the skin of his palms with his thumbs, an old nervous tic he had had as a kid. He looked haggard. He would pick up the cup of coffee, sip it noisily, then put it down quickly and go back to rubbing his palms. Anita didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to know there was something seriously fucked up about him. Then again, her whole family was fucked up.
It’s The Munsters again, Lalima, they just won’t quit.

Finally, she reached out and touched his knee gently, barely a fingertip. He winced as if struck by a belt.

‘Want to tell me what’s up?’ she said.

He looked around, then sat up, leaning forward awkwardly in the low cane chair. She could see a bald patch beginning at the back of his head. It was shiny. He looked at her and she was shocked to see his pupils looking huge, like a schoolgirl’s eyes in an anime cartoon.
He’s hopped up
, she thought. She knew the signs.
But on what?

‘The package,’ he said. ‘Lalima must have sent you a package. Where is it? I have to give it to them. Otherwise, they’ll fucking kill me, chechi.’

4.2

NACHIKETA WAS STRANDED AT
the Delhi–Gurgaon border toll plaza when she got the call. Traffic was bad as usual on NH-8 but what irked her was the proliferation of Qualises filled with foreigners blocking every single toll lane. The huge hoardings told her what all the firangs were here for: the Annual BPO World Convention. Bad enough that they descended in tens of thousands upon an already choked traffic and infrastructure system, but did they have to block all the toll lanes too? Really? Couldn’t they simply queue up and occupy eight or ten of them? She wasn’t the only irked driver: people were honking angrily all around her.

A Sikh driver in the adjoining lane got out of his Honda CRV and walked over to the nearest Qualis to knock at the driver’s window. The driver looked like a Jat; he ignored the Sikh. The turbanned sardar said something through the closed window. The driver ignored him, then lurched the car forward into the space left by the car in front as the line crawled forward. The Sikh mouthed what was clearly an abuse, gave the Qualis driver the raised finger, which gesture, since the car was moving forward, was extended to the blonde and brunette foreigners packed into the back seats as well. They glared at him in evident shock and one of them said something to the driver. Nachiketa saw the driver lean back and reply, saying something that made them smile.

Probably telling them in Haryanvi-accented English that all sardarjis are crazy. And at some point, they’ll meet a Sikh who’ll tell them that all Jats are crazy. Welcome to India. We all hate each other equally. Please to be paying in USD, sirji.

The Qualis in front of her lurched forward and she inched the car ahead. Her phone rang just then and she was tempted to ignore it. She was too euphoric from the judgment today to want to deal with another client. This was her day, whatever was left of it, and all she wanted was to go home, crack open a bottle of Sula and listen to some Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. During the weekend, she was going to meet up with the girls and part-ay! But she happened to glance at the screen of the Blackberry and it was flashing ‘Office – Direct Line’, which meant the landline on her desk. That had to be Shonali.

She slipped the Bluetooth earphone over her ear and pressed the button. ‘Yeah, Shonali?’

Silence.

The Qualis in front of her had stopped moving, but hadn’t put its brakes on; the vehicle rolled slowly back towards Nachiketa’s Civic. She hit her horn with the heel of her hand and the red brake lights came on at once, though she could see the driver’s eyes glaring at her through his rear-view mirror. This one looked like it was filled with Swedes. Every passenger was tall, thin and blonde. They reminded her of the cast of the movie based on a Stieg Larsson novel, the original Swedish one starring Noomi Rapace, which she had loved – and
whom
she had loved. She was dreading what Hollywood would do to the US adaptations.

‘Hello, Shonali? What up, girl?’ She wondered if she was crying. Shonali could get emotional at times, usually over a man. Though she was cut up about her mother, the fact was that after ten years of fighting cancer through successive courses of chemo, radiation and ultrasonic treatments, she had pretty much exhausted her reserves of emotion on that front. The news that the cancer had metastasized yet again, this time to the brain and lungs, wasn’t exactly earth-shattering.
Don’t be bitchy, Nachos
, she told herself admonishingly. People might say ‘it’s better she went soon, she was suffering so much’ all they liked, but the fact was dying was dying and gone was gone forever.