Family Planning (13 page)

T
THUS, AT THE MEETING OF PAY SCALES
—where thirteen “resigned” Members of Parliament were in attendance around a beveled table—Rakesh made his displeasure clear. “Why did the news of this so-called mass resignation come to me so late, please tell me? I know there is this impression I am
personally
building each flyover by hand and that all thirteen of my children are operating the machinery and that I must not be disturbed, but you know, even an artist like me must be fully immersed in the real world. There are a thousand ways for me to be reached. One can try one of the twelve cell phones my staff has. Even buggers, low-ranked IAS buggers can reach me. Then there are a thousand pigeons
that migrate between my office and my house. One can tie a locket around one of their green necks. One can e-mail me. You can even call up and tell my children. So?”

The enormous difficulty of delivering such a speech was best highlighted by the number of times cell phones rang and were answered during its delivery: nine.

Unfortunately, the first person to respond was none other than Rakesh’s famed nemesis and favored resignation subject, Vineet Yograj. “Where were you at five o’clock? Yesterday?” Yograj asked in his eager, friendly, gruff manner. He was a man with a teak-dark face and an onion-shaped white goatee who was renowned for grilling anyone he met. “You are very busy with Flyover Fast-Track correct? Working overtime? No time for us these days, Rakesh-ji?”

Rakesh puffed out his chest and said, “Vineet-saahb has thrown open the proceedings with his trademark interrogation. Anyone else?”

“But Rakesh-ji, why were you not at the cabinet meeting?” said Vineet, unfazed. He was sitting two seats to Rakesh’s right. He opened his clenched fists. “Before I forget! I have brought cardamom for all of you. Please take some. I’ve bought it fresh from Kerela. It has great medicinal value.”

Vineet’s ploy paid off. The female MPs across the table leaned toward him, thus affording him a better view of their bloused breasts as he rolled the green pods of cardamom into their outstretched hands. The transaction thus completed, the pods were passed around the table. Only Rakesh pulled back stiffly into his seat and said with a smirk, “No thank you, ji.
This is exactly why I don’t attend cabinet meetings. God knows what poison Vineet-saahb you will feed us.”

“The reason Vineet-ji is asking,” said an MP, “is that we reached a consensus after the cabinet meeting only.”

“What at the cabinet meeting?” said Rakesh, putting a hand beside his ear. “The bill?”

“No.
Consensus
, ji.”

Rakesh slapped the table. “But you weren’t even there, Iyenger-saahb.”

Iyenger was not a cabinet minister.

“But we met outside the room. After Madam Rupa-ji left. After Madam was out of sight.”

“Out of sight, out of mind, isn’t it?” said Rakesh. “Apparently, the same thing happened to me. I could not attend the cabinet meeting because I had to talk to a delegation of American planners—what can one do? Such commitments are always there. Now. I have offered my excuse. What about you? Why didn’t I hear?”

He looked threateningly around the room at the junior MPs, eyebrows grossly bunched, left hand turning a spoon in his cup of tea so that it sounded like the ringing of a school bell. The sandstone building let in a slice of sun and gust after gust of air. The light—low-density, orange—filled the spaces between men and women, expanded, flamed against the contours of the room so that the Savarkar Room felt to Mr. Ahuja like a dirigible plunged by accident of speed and latitude into perpetual afternoon. Not surprising, then, that Mr. Ahuja—having had a sleepless night—felt tired, jet-lagged, and not at
all in the mood for the flattery the junior MPs began dishing out.

One MP said, “According to me, Rakesh-ji, there are two reasons. One is that I thought you would hear eventually—which it seems you did. And two, ji—this is the highest compliment I can give—I think you are above politics. That is why I did not call.”

“He is right,” said Iyenger. “Nowadays I see you more on STARNews than in Parliament. I thought you will laugh on my face if I said we are resigning for such a silly reason.”

“You have become a pukka CEO!” added another. “A technocrat!”

“We are very inspired by your efforts with your ministry.”

Rakesh was irritated. To say he was “above politics” was to essentially say he wasn’t a good politician. Yes, this was ridiculous: he was being punished now for being an efficient worker? For sweating over infrastructure rather than cultivating contacts? Trembling with anger, he got up and reached to draw the blinds—but as he did, his papers fluttered from the table and an MP whipped her dupatta over her shoulder. He turned around, felt the tubes of his shirtsleeves flute with turbulence. The MPs were holding their cups of tea to their noses; on the table below, ring after ring of condensation startled into a blinding orange, then eclipsed into an even teak. All eyes turned from the wooden tabletop. To him. A familiar and delirious rhythm of saliva and silence percolated in his throat. His hands flattened on the paper; he leaned in to the crowd of gray heads—the perfect posture for
a lambasting session. “I wasn’t at the cabinet meeting, but I am here now, naah?” said Rakesh, holding his palm up. “You people talk such nonsense. Luckily, I am as foolish as all of you people. I have also resigned.”

The round of repartees was jovial. Again, he felt triumphant. They’d accused him of not being enough of a politician, and he’d hit back with a fantastic backhand, a googly, a double play. Now they thought he’d joined
their
ranks for the cause of Mohan Bedi, and Rupa Bhalla thought he was 100 percent behind her. He’d covered both bases.

“Okay,” said Rakesh, snorting, “let us get down to business.”

But when the agenda was being passed around, Vineet asked Rakesh, “Accha, ji. Where did you buy this stylish shirt from?”

“Gift,” said Rakesh.

“The tie?”

“Inherited.”

“Jacket?”

“Borrowed.”

(The other MPs watched this volleying, extremely amused.)

“Borrowed? From whom?” inquired Yograj, politeness itself.

“What did you just say? Anyway. Please let us get on with business.”

“But you didn’t tell,” said Vineet. “How did you hear of the resignation?”

“You’ll have to speak up.”

“HOW DID YOU HEAR?”

“Well. You
are
shouting! That is how.”

“You are pulling my leg. How did you hear about the resignation?”

“Sources.”

Vineet said. “I hear you visited Madam today?”

“To resign, why else?”

“Look,” said Vineet, turning to the other MPs, “I told you Rakesh-ji is having great inner strength. He must be having the flaxseeds I gave last time. None of us others resigned in person.”

“Yes. How was she?” they asked. “What did she say?”

“Come again?”

“HOW WAS SHE?”

“Angry,” Rakesh snorted. “She said she was going to suspend most of you. I had to convince her not to, even as I myself was resigning! I think madam realized that I was the final nail in the coffin. How many people can she suspend?” Then he added, “You people should be happy I was there at the right moment.”

Well done, Ahuja!

However. The exhilaration of his extemporaneous turncoat lasted only so long: back in the car, on the way to the ministry, the gaps in his teeth nicely irrigated by tea, he was again bothered that no one had updated him about the resignations.
Maybe he
should have
put the buggers in their place—minced no words about how he wanted no part in this TV farce, shown that he was furious that they’d mock his commitment to the flyovers rather than praising it. Then again, that would only make him more unpopular in the party. But what if he already was unpopular in the party—and then Rupa Bhalla found out about his false promise of support? Who would he have on his side then?

There were no easy answers. All the way to the ministry, every cow he saw was a personal affront to him—a shit-covered hurdle for traffic. The street by now—so pristine in the morning—was a study in chaos. The setting sun offered its own ferocious interpretation of events: light shot between the flat metal hoardings on either side like gunfire in an alley; a man loaded five children mass-suicidally onto the back of his scooter; under a crinkled blue tarpaulin a fat policeman hydrated himself with a glass of the filthiest lemon juice, wiping his mustache just as Mr. Ahuja passed.

Closer, the reflection of Mr. Ahuja’s wristwatch—its perfect sphere of heat and light—described a parabolic path over the gray-padded ceiling of the car. The streetlights were straight poles with branched lights that looked like the simplistic V-shaped birds his children made in their first crayonic paintings—he would never let his children drive. This much he was clear about. Never mind that Arjun was approaching eighteen. Never mind that Arjun would never respect him. Never mind that Arjun traveled in a DTC bus every day just like the one that was overtaking Mr. Ahuja’s
official, white,
Government Lion Embossed License Plate, Hindustan Motors Millennium-Edition, Leather-Seat
Ambassador at a speed sanctioned only by the movie
Speed
and was now breaking every single rule of inertia in order to suddenly halt behind the five-person scooter—the smallest child on the scooter dropping her ice-cream bar and turning around to wipe her fingers on the dirty grille of the bus as it rocked up and down on its shock absorbers.

Mr. Ahuja asked his driver, Mathur, to slap the red official siren atop the car.

“Important meeting, sir?” Mathur asked, leaning out of the car.

“No, yaar, I’m thinking in terms of your sons. Do you want to see them grow up into young men? If this traffic continues, this car will be a coffin by the time you get home.”

“Yes, sir, but they will be short—like me,” said Mathur, adjusting the pillow he sat on to reach the dashboard. “That is the only thing.”

Then the car extruded a massive honk and they were off. Rakesh held his breath.

He tried to see himself through the jaundiced eyes of his colleagues. After all, he’d become what he hated: a complainer, a problem finder. He’d always pooh-poohed Indians who complained about traffic, taking a certain nationalist pride in the open show of might and opportunism, but ever since Rashmi’s accident, he’d begun to palpitate over the risks drivers took to slice into the smallest gap, to overtake blindly from the left, the number of dents on even the newest cars,
the way a pedestrian was expected to write a fresh will before crossing the road.

The traffic had been the same level of terrible when he and Rashmi came home for their first holiday from Vermont nearly twenty years ago. What had changed was Rashmi. She’d imbibed the straight magical lines of the West, its fetish for sanity. She asked the driver not to run red lights. Rakesh pointed out that this was his Masi’s driver, and that we people from USA should not order him around and that
if we don’t run this bloody red light we’ll be flattened by the angry-looking truck approaching from the right, do you see it?
Rashmi prayed calmly to the driver not to kill the poor man on the rickshaw in front of them. The driver didn’t listen. Rashmi said, What is wrong with us Indians? Rakesh took offense, and said, Firstly, speak for yourself, darling, and also, What is wrong with the British that they conquered India and then left us poor and with bad laws and a corrupt civil service and then created schools where we educated people to be engineers and journalists only so that they could leave the country and then live abroad and come back for a few days in the year and say: Oh, look how trickly and toxic the shower is, if I get naked a thousand flies will feast on my body, everybody I touch is like a beggar only—

(He was in a bad mood because he’d argued with his parents.)

She said, You’ve done it again.

He said, I’m sorry.

You can’t just say sorry and think it’s over.

I’m so sorry, he said.

The driver heard their argument and laughed. This made Rakesh doubly mad. He said, Let me drive.

Rashmi said, You don’t have an Indian license.

Soon Rashmi and Rakesh were sitting in the front. Rakesh was hunched over the steering wheel.

Rashmi said, We Indians believe in fate. Look at these people driving like maniacs. We Indians. Believe in. Fate.

Rakesh said, What fate.

Look at this cow you’re about to hit.

Cows believe in fate.

He hit the cow.

Now Rakesh had damaged his Masi’s brand-new Contessa (a big cow-shaped dent had formed on its bonnet) and had to bribe the driver.

The driver said, Sir, money you will give me, but what about my job?

We’ll say it wasn’t your fault, Rashmi said in her sweetest voice.

They sat shamefaced in front of Rakesh’s Masi. Already their family relations were strained—Rakesh’s mother and Masi were involved in a property dispute—and now Rakesh was going to admit that he’d wrecked her car.

Rashmi said, I did it.

What happened, beta? asked the Masi.

Because I was driving like an American, she said.

Then she gave Rakesh the most short-lived piercing glare possible. She knew how to handle him. She’d won by suddenly making a sacrifice. She was so stunning—with her erect posture and the teasing lilt of her voice, and her hands that sprayed out every which way as she talked—that even his terrifying auntie was charmed. Rakesh, too, could never say anything to Rashmi on the subject of Indian-style driving ever again, and long afterward, in Vermont, he couldn’t explain to himself why every mistake a driver made in America felt for him like a minor (guilty) victory; why on the day John the neighbor reversed into their mailbox, he mowed the lawn three times; why when the morning news came in of a nonfatal pileup on the highway, he was strangely ecstatic and cooked rajma like he was a master chef; why on the day Rashmi died, he was aware that if he and Rashmi had been mere spectators of the accident—if it hadn’t, in other words, been the day she died—he’d have thrust his hands under the waterfall of her hair, cradled her neck in the confluence of his fingers, and finally told her why he was so happy: she was alive and he had won the argument she’d set into motion on the cow-killing Delhi day two years before. He’d proved that Americans were as prone to bad driving as Indians, that the only difference was that America had police officers and bureaucrats that enforced rules, and Indians had officers with titles like District Magistrate of Jats, Joint Secretary for Tribal Welfare Scheme Attached to the Ministry of Welfare, Inspector of Mining, Collector for the Sub District Falling Between Chhatisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, Director
Sub) of Special Preservation of Languages whose job was to simply figure out the purpose of these titles.