The Way Things Were (24 page)

‘Don’t you see, Toby, don’t you see?’

‘See what, Uma?’

‘He was trying to bring you in. He was trying to end the evening on a pleasant note, after you and that bloody fool, Viski, were so vicious . . .’

‘I was not vicious . . .’

‘You were. You say you’re above these things. But what I saw tonight was the ugliest kind of casteism. And then just now . . .’

‘But I responded to him! I listened. What more could I have done?’

‘Sounded a little enthusiastic? A little less superior perhaps?’

‘Uma, he was referring to the work of a well-known fraud. The man has tampered with seals to turn bulls into horses. A couple of scholars at Harvard have had to write an article rubbishing his findings.
Horseplay in Harappa
. I’ll give it to you when we get home. Read it . . .’

‘I don’t give a shit. Don’t give me this involved inside-academia cant. All right? No one knows – or frankly really cares – about these things. But they do care that people are courteous and don’t humiliate their guests.’

‘Look, what Viski did was awful. But I was not party to it. And, let me tell you, old Hirachand till he got it in the neck from Viski was no saint . . .’

‘He’s a guest! A guest for God’s sake.
My
guest. What do you always tell me a guest is in Sanskrit?’

‘Atithi.’

‘Atithi, right. And what does that mean?’

‘You know what it means.’

‘I want to hear it from you.’

‘He who has no date: who may come at any time.’

‘And, when he does, you’re expected, in this culture you claim to revere so much, to treat him like a bloody god. Not make him feel small for not being as erudite or refined as the Delhi drawing room set. Who, in my opinion, are the shallowest, most worthless people in the world. Someone like Hirachand, he might not be as full of manners as you lot, but the future of this country is his. And you, Raja saab, should get used to that, better start swimming . . .’

‘Uma, what is this really about?’

The question almost brought tears to her eyes.

‘I was so looking forward to this evening. For once some new people. For once something other than this small congested world of Delhi. And we drove them away! Sent them packing. So that we could all just rot here together. Oh, Toby! I didn’t marry you only to become more deeply trapped. I married you because I thought you would help me get out.’

They had crossed the Safdarjung flyover. The car slowed and veered a little to the left.

‘What are you doing? Smoking? Since when are you smoking?’

He did not reply. A match in his cupped hands turned his fingers red. They drove on in silence.

The fight that was one thing in the neutrality of the car became another thing in the familiarity of the home. Outside, it had been about two people – something they so rarely were anymore; inside, the family, the sleeping children, the adored little brother asleep on the sofa,
Midnight’s Children
open on his chest, all became implicated, all factors. Uma, seeing this, felt grief. She felt it was this, the imprisoning security of this, with captivity as its other face, that she had warred against in the car. And Toby had been its defender. It made her feel ungrateful, and bad. Bad to her entrails, bad and wretched, for wanting to undo all this. She knew then – and later the thought returned to her – that she would never have the courage to break this circle of safety. But if it would open on its own, even for an instant – which it did – she would slip its noose.

I.P., on hearing them come in, rose and went straight to the bar. Eyes closed, juda sliding off his head, he returned, like a somnambulant, with two large whiskies.

‘Nothing for me?’ Uma said caustically.

I.P. now flared his eyes wide and blinked them confusedly at her. ‘No offence, Mishi didi.’

‘Offence taken,’ she said and strode past him.

He searched Toby’s face for an explanation but found only weariness.

‘Brother-in-law,’ he said mockingly, ‘I’ve been having an interesting dream.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘It was about Bhakra-Nangal . . .’

‘The dam?’

‘The dam, yes, temples of our modern republic. Didn’t old Pundit ji call them that?’

‘He did.’

‘Well, in my dream – it was very strange! – I was part of a group of people, surveyors or somesuch, and we were on the lake formed by the dam’s waters, a massive lake, looking for the source of the water into the lake.’

‘But that lake is vast, I.P. It stretches all the way from Punjab into Himachal.’

‘It’s a dream, sir. A dream. But it had a very weird mood. Not like the dam was breaking or anything. But the wall of the dam cast this enormous shadow. No matter how long or how far we went, we could not get away from the shadow of the dam. The sun was high, but it was dark. And we were cold in our little boat. A wooden thing with a diesel engine. There was this endless feeling of anticipation. First to cross the line of shadow, and feel the warmth of the sun, then to find the source.’

At this point Uma reappeared briefly. ‘I’m off to bed.’

‘Good night,’ the two men said, I.P. brightly, Toby cautiously. She gave them a wintry smile and closed the door.

Observing Toby’s expression darken, I.P., trying again to distract him, said, ‘Toby saab, I want you to tell me something: which country do you feel most resembles India? I mean which country’s problems – not just poverty and illiteracy – but, you know, big problems, cultural and civilizational ones, are most like India’s?’

Toby did not answer. He could not pry his mind away from what Uma had said in the car.

‘Come again?’ he said, after a long pause.

I.P. smiled.

‘Which country reminds you most of ours?’

‘Culturally speaking,’ Toby said abstractedly, ‘I’d probably say Russia.’

‘Russia? Why Russia?’

‘I’m not sure exactly why, I.P. But I can tell you that whenever I’m reading them, the Russians – Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky; Dostoevsky, especially – or even the biographies of these great men, I’m forever writing in the margins things like, India! or ditto India! or just like India!’

‘What sort of things?’

‘All sorts of things. Themes of impostorship in Dostoevsky, imitation, an anxiety about foreign influence, this perpetual balancing of Slavophilia – of trying to be true to Russia and her soul – while at the same time assimilating ideas from Europe. “The riddle of the two civilizations”, you know! And then there are other similarities: the isolated elite living at a great remove from the general population . . . Speaking a different language, chasing after European fashions . . .’

‘But surely we’re not the only people to do that.’

‘Yes, but it is something apart here. The disdain we have for our own people and their beliefs . . .’

‘The elite, you mean?’

‘Of course, I.P.! Don’t you think?’

‘I suppose, but . . .’

‘I was rereading
Demons
the other day. And there is this bit in it, where Shatov, an ex-liberal of some kind, says, “It all comes from a lackeyishness of thinking . . . there’s hatred there, too . . . an endless animal hatred of Russia that has eaten into their organs.” Incredible! I felt I could have replaced Russia with India and I would be here, in Delhi, among the drawing room set. The lackeyishness of thinking! What a phrase, I.P., what a phrase.’

‘But what is behind it?’ I.P. said enthusiastically, seeing that he had succeeded in distracting Toby. ‘You think it’s because of the English having been here?’

‘No. It must be deeper than that. There’s some great unsettled anxiety among the people, an ancient anxiety, about what is ours and what is not. An old friend of mine – a writer, Vijaipal . . .’

‘Of course! Who doesn’t know him?!’

‘He used to talk of this fear among Indians of India being a nullity, of her having nothing of her own. And I think, in some respects, he must have been right. But, tell me: why did you ask me this question, which country is most like ours?’

‘I suppose I wanted a historical point of reference, something to compare India with. Because, on its own, it is such a difficult place to form an idea of. It either exists for you instinctively in the form of tradition or one is bereft of it. And reading doesn’t help much. Modern Indian literature – the stuff in English, at least – isn’t really up to the task, is it? It doesn’t give one an idea of, as you say, the soul of the place. And our history writing is either non-existent or written by foreigners: so, an Indian reading it in India is either an infidel or a savage. Not good for the morale, you know. It can feel pretty impenetrable, at times, India.’

‘It is impenetrable. And increasingly so, as time goes on. Because the confusions multiply. And what the great critic Belinsky said of Russia is true of India too: he described it as duality, but it is really schizophrenia, cultural schizophrenia. Even the modern state is so imperfect an articulation of that old idea of India: so clumsy and insecure and violent, I.P. Terribly violent.’

The two men stayed away from the more delicate subject of the evening, Toby and Uma’s fight, and the tensions it had raised. Yet I.P., in drawing Toby’s mind away from what had happened, managed to console him. From the moment Toby entered the flat, he had felt his warmth. He had felt it in the way that I.P., without a word, fixed them drinks, then sought his opinion; he felt his great tenderness. It was as if he had read to the deepest vibrations of Toby and Uma’s fight and made it his business to make Toby feel valued. To remind him of his worth. Then suddenly, almost as if he had seen something relax in Toby’s face, a dilation of the pupils into their blue and yellow irises, he felt his work was done. And he wanted to go.

‘Don’t be silly. Stay the night. It’s almost 1 a.m. Where will you go at this hour? To Fatehkot House?’

‘I promised my friend, Thud, I would go to his birthday party . . .’

‘Thud?’

I.P. gave a loud laugh. ‘Vicky Thaddani.’

In the morning – Diwali morning – Deep Fatehkotia walked over to the flat, a lock of silver hair falling in a spiral over her beetled brow.

‘And that was Diwali morning?’

‘Diwali, yes, Gauri.’

They have come to the end of the long handsomely proportioned corridor with its dust-strewn floor of marble diamonds. A pair of glass doors give onto a badminton court, a fountain, a garden, some large trees. Gazing out at this scene, of which the dividing wall will make fast work, Skanda says, ‘The strangest Diwali of our lives. One of those pale wintry days, when the sun has a sickly orange colour, the air is still and smoky, and there is an appalling winter haze, the kind I’ve only ever seen in Delhi. Every now and then an H-Bomb will go off. You know the ones I mean? Those deafening little fuckers with their thick green thread. Such a dense and moody day! It felt like nothing would pierce its pall, let alone the faintest of faint intimations that something was wrong.’

‘Was there that?’

‘Oh, for sure. People coming round at all hours. The furtive ferrying back and forth between the houses. The phone calls to everybody we knew. To police stations, to hospitals, to politicians.’

‘What did everyone think had happened?’

‘An accident, I suppose. I.P. had not showed up at Thud’s and he hadn’t come home. That was all anyone knew on that first day. And people just milled about with worried expressions on their faces. Which cleared only when they feigned normalcy for our sake. Then they smiled so brightly, and tried to sound so cheerful, that it struck an even more discordant note – made us even more uneasy – than their worry.’

‘Us?’

‘The children. Iqbal. Fareed. Rudrani. Me.’

‘You were all together?’

‘Yes, as we would be again during the riots. And there was that same mood: of a kind of deep placidity, almost as if everyone was on holiday, an air of board games and idling on beds, of closed rooms and waiting. Or that, at least, was how it seemed to us. Because there was nothing to be done, you know. But, all the time, mingled with that thick calm, like a stifled sob, there was this unease, this feeling that something was wrong.’

‘Did you have a Diwali at all?’

‘We did, a blackish Diwali at Fatehkot House. Eventually the day just seeped into night, and just before it did, my father said, “We must do the puja; we must bathe and light the diyas; there must be Diwali.”’

‘“Toby, how can you . . . ” my mother said.

‘“No, he’s right,” my grandfather said – the Brigadier loved my father – “we can’t just sit here all night moping about. It’s bad for the morale.”

‘And so there was Diwali. Everyone went home and came back an hour or so later, bathed and dressed. My father led the puja. One by one, the diyas in Fatehkot House came on. There was a bit of pataka action: rockets fizzling in old beer bottles; chakris spitting sparks; children using phuljaris to burn letters into the dark. And anars – my personal favourites! – foaming at the mouth, then burning themselves out to their core. The adults drank and played cards. So, yes, on the surface, there was Diwali. But, underneath, an awful anticipation. Funny, in fact, how certain festivals of family, of feasts and renewal, seem almost to anticipate calamity.’

‘The expectation, you mean?’

‘Yes. But, also, that encroaching sense of carnival. Of a dark element: of mala, Gauri! And take a look at this thread:
mélas
, Greek for dark and black and obscure, enigmatic; in Sanskrit, mala, which is dirty and impure; in Latin,
m
ă
lus
means evil; in English, the semantic stream broadens out into melancholy, Melanesia, malaise.’

‘I like the way that physical things – like dirt and impurity, or blackness – become their associations. It’s very suggestive.’

‘It is. And it was what was in the air, preparing the scene for the arrival of the messenger. In this case, a drunken Narindar, who seemed almost to embody the hysteria that had lingered all day on the margins of that black Diwali. The hysteria that everyone had worked so hard to suppress. He was every bit the breathless wheeling madman, who, full of his news, breaks onto the scene of feast and festivity like a human bomb. The messenger, Gauri! “Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more / Than would make up his message!”’