The Way Things Were (35 page)

Outside, Viski handed I.P. the tickets, narrow and slim, with blue and red coupons, plus Raj envelopes fat with foreign exchange, rarer than gold in those days. He came up with them as far as the barricades. Watching him get out, and rouse the army of taxi drivers, seeing the black iron gates shudder and open, I.P., for the first time, became aware of the man he had become. A man without a visible identity. An unreadable smile appeared brighter in his eyes than on his lips. It seemed to contain all the scorn of the world.

The gates were open. On one side stood a taxi driver, in a vest and blue-green checkered tehmat; on the other, Viski.

‘I say, sir,’ he hollered into the open window, ‘you are now leaving the immunity offered to you by the Taxi Drivers’ Republic of Khalistan. Bon voyage, I say, fellow!’

With this, he gave a little snap salute, and clicked his heels, and the car rolled out into the joyless morning of a city preparing for another day of riots.

On Curzon Road, too, a sooty dawn rises pink over the house. It appears at first blackly in the trees, as if behind a screen, then brightens in scrappy snatches, restoring to the branches their texture, and to the twisting leaves their rich green colour. A conversation is under way, in which public school manners, worn and trusted, conceal deep tribalisms.

‘Sogdia, fellow!’ Viski says, looking with something like dismay at the brightening sky. ‘From the grasslands of Sogdia and Manchuria. It is from there that we hail.’

‘Sogdia, sardar saab?’

‘Silk road, fellow. There was never anything in this mosquito-ridden swamp. And the Brahmin, let me tell you, he knows it. He knows the place is a big fat zero and that even
his
culture has come from elsewhere . . .’

Viski waves at the pale yellow parapet through whose thick clover-shaped apertures the morning seeps in. The men who stand around him – one young, one old – understand him to mean a place beyond the girdling mountains to the north.

‘That is why he would always make his peace with the invader. Ha! He had much more contempt for the poor sods below him than they did. He’d been denying them their humanity for centuries. What did he care if he had to do it now in the name of some new Brahminism. Islam, Empire, Socialism, Globalization. There’s always a new Brahminism, fellow, always a new way to suppress the soul of people. And the people, you know, they fall in line.’

‘Sardar saab,’ the older man, with a round face and a dense fuzzy white beard, says, ‘I hope you’ll agree that it was us – the Sikhs! – who always held the line, who stayed and fought. Those coward Hindus never did anything to defend this place. It was us who resisted the invader. Us, who fought him, and died. And once they had broken through the Jat Sikh resistance . . .’

‘They found a country,’ the younger man says, ‘with her bloody legs open.’

The men laugh and the burning ends of their cigarettes play in the dismal light, bringing upon this scene of smoking Sikhs an air of conspiracy.

A younger man, unturbaned, joins them. And one feels, immediately, a pressure at the edge of the tribal circle. The conversation dies; and privately, it is understood that its resumption will depend upon what highly particular configuration of region, religion, class and caste the new arrival answers to.

The young man has barely greeted the older men when a voice further away calls out to him, ‘Dadu, m’fucker, come here, spliff’s smoking . . .’

‘Serdy, wait, yaar. Grown-up-shrown-up conversation going on and all.’

‘Don’t let us hold you . . .’

‘No, no, sir. What he’s calling me to do I can do anytime. But it’s not every day I get to speak to such . . .’ He stumbles, he fluffs, ‘Dignified . . . learned . . .’

‘Oye! Cut the crap!’ the voice calls.

‘Shuddup, serdy!’

A red fire burning close to its base illuminates, for a moment, the craggy front of Viski’s face. The glow climbs its furrows then, as if defeated by the steepness of the gradient, it shrinks back down.

‘Were you in school with the boys?’ Viski says.

‘Sir, yes. I was with Ik-Ball, your son, I mean Iqbal, throughout. Both in Tata House and then in Oberoi.’

‘Oberoi’s not a real house,’ the older turbaned man inserts.

‘Sir, it was to us. We were in it!’

The men laugh.

Encouraged, the younger man says, ‘You know, sir, it was me who gave your son his name . . .’

‘Really?’ Viski says, ‘I thought it was me.’

‘I mean, sir, his school name. Ik-ball. One-Ball. You see, one day he came back after his medical, you know . . .’

‘Yes, yes, after old Goel was done fondling his balls.’

‘Exactly! And he says, to the whole house, “Hey guys, how many balls are you meant to have?” So we laugh and say, “Two, buddy.” And he’s like, “Shit, serdy, I only got one.” After that, sir, you can guess: he was not just Iqbal, but Ik-Ball!’

Gusts of laughter go through the little group. Heads are thrown back and fresh fires lit at the ends of cigarettes.

Then, with no warning at all, the young man whose name is Dadu – and who is clearly very high – dives down to touch Viski’s feet, causing him to jump back in alarm.

‘What . . . what . . . son? What are you doing?’

The man looks him in the eye. ‘Bas. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time. Now it’s done. That’s all.’

‘But why?’ Viski says.

‘I just wanted you to know that I know. And bas. It’s done.’

‘Know what, son?’ Viski says.

‘Bas,’ he says resolutely, though his voice – he is fighting to keep his composure – is thick with emotion now. Then, as if he can only by some mode of deflection express himself, he turns to the youngest in the group of men, and says, ‘This man, standing here, let me tell you, serdy, he’s our fucking Schindler. In 1984 . . . His mother,’ he says, his voice now wild in his throat, ‘when they were – bhenchodh! – putting tyres around Sikhs and setting them alight, she put sindoor in her hair, made herself a goddamn Hindu, and went from camp to camp, helping us. Great bloody family. Family of Sikh heroes.’

It is not the first time something like this has happened to Viski. But never perhaps so late at night, never so unexpectedly. He stands there for a moment like a man who’s been struck. It is left to the others, who, having received so forceful a confirmation of the new arrival’s identity, to comfort him. At length Viski puts his hand on his shoulder. Then, for his chief emotions are ever anger and laughter, he says, ‘On a lighter note . . . Let me tell you a story from that time.’

Dadu rubs his eyes and Viski begins: ‘Once it was over – the violence, you know – my boys, Iqbal and Fareed, they had a bit of trouble in school.’

Dadu, still snivelling from his outburst, looks with wide eyes up at Viski.

‘You know the usual teasing,’ Viski continues, and grins. ‘Heckling. Fareed was younger and had a worse time of it. So, one day, soon after it all happened, he came home in tears. One of the boys had said to him, “You’re a Sikh. Sikhs are killers. Sikhs killed Indira Gandhi.” That kind of thing. Now it so happened my brother-in-law had come over for lunch . . . A very fine man. The old Raja of Kalasuryaketu. He has, in fact, only just passed away . . . I recently had word. But anyway, so, Fareed comes home in floods of tears. And old Toby saab hears what has happened to him and he takes little Fareed on his lap. And he says, “They said that to you? Tomorrow you go back to them and say, ‘OK, fine, we killed Indira Gandhi. But who killed Mahatma Gandhi?’ And so, Fareed, armed with this retort, goes back to school the next day, and again the heckling begins. But this time our Fareedu’s prepared. When someone says, you killed Mrs Gandhi, he says, “OK, fine, we did, but who killed Mahatma Gandhi?”
Gandhi ko kis ne mara?
The boy who’s teasing him says, “I don’t know? Who did?” And our little Fareedu says,’ Viski thunders, giving a clap of his hands, his eyes brimming with laughter, ‘“Neither bloody do I!”’

At this point Isha rushes out onto the terrace, still enshrouded in fog. ‘You swines, you’re still at it. Look who I have with me!’

The incident Viski described had occurred a few days after I.P.’s departure. Skanda had been present too. But first there was the drive home with his father, through the city of charred shop fronts, blackened cinema halls, graveyards of cars and taxis, whose carcasses lay in the street, their paint browned and blistered from the fires. The riots were by no means over, but a thirst had been slaked and an ugly sense of release now began to creep over the city. A photographer from the time described it – the mob’s expression the day after – as the expression of men who’ve just finished playing Holi. Men fulfilled, gratified, men, who, though they are tired, their eyes feverish and rheumy, find it in themselves to keep going.

I.P. had seen them too. And when Toby said, ‘We’re going to miss you so much, I.P.,’ he had taken out his notebook and written, almost with a wish to wound, ‘I can’t wait to be on the other side.’

Father and son had watched him disappear into the musty interior of that old airport, leaving behind him, as easily as he left behind the smell of wet cement, of urine and yellowing paper – the smells of the modern state – his past in India. It was hard not to be moved. Hard not to see it for what it was: the reprisal, cold and unfeeling, of the individual against the society that had tried to break him. He had a great wish in that moment to let India hang, to leave India to the Indians, as it were. And as the inky stamp came onto his passport – 2 NOV 1984 – his only regret was the decorum of it all. He wished he could have let that oily official at Immigration, boredom and sloth and greed etched into his face, know that he was not just another traveller, not just a man leaving on a short trip, but a man leaving for good. A man going voluntarily into exile, with nothing but hatred for his country, and who, if given the opportunity, would gladly have put a stake in her heart.

Toby knew, already in the car home, the final and shattering blow I.P.’s departure would deal to his marriage. In big and small ways, he could sense that it was emblematic of their own private calamity. He could almost hear the words that waited for him: ‘There’s nothing to feel proud about, Toby. Nothing honourable in what you’ve done. You enabled a man to escape. That is all. And there is no pride in escaping. I.P., in his heart of hearts, would have known that. That is why he didn’t ask us . . .’

It was the tragedy of their marriage – of all failed marriages perhaps – that so much was known, and nothing could be done.

They drove home through streets flooded with morning light. The sun’s indifference gave the impression of a world forsaken, of petty men left to their petty hatreds.

‘So, Skandu,’ Toby said, as they drew nearer the flat. ‘You think you will carry on with your Sanskrit?’

‘Yes, Baba. Why?’

‘No. I was just thinking: you have so firm a grip on it now.’

Skanda did not reply.

As they approached the barricades manned by the taxi drivers, Toby said, ‘So, then, you will have
this
, at least.’

‘This?’ Skanda said.

‘The language, I mean. Sanskrit. Even if the rest of it goes’ – he gave a joyless laugh – ‘belly up. You’ll have this, from my side, I mean . . .’

He glanced at his son.

Skanda had not understood. But it caused him no alarm: he was used to not understanding all that his father said.

Skanda wants badly to go home, but Viski is very drunk and will not let anyone leave. He has ordered ‘Gangnam Style’ be put on repeat, and leaping up, still dressed in full turban and bandgala, like an old pasha, he wags a furious finger at the rest of them and mouths the words of the song. He has brought over an old Englishman, with a tired and cynical face, whom he calls the ‘Ashtray’, to sit with Skanda. He insists that he knew his father. But the Englishman does nothing but smoke and drink, and has a terrible hacking cough. Then, looking at Skanda with confusion, as if some explanation is due, he says, ‘It was actually your stepfather I used to know, though I did know your father a little too. I was a regular at your house once your parents split. Old Maniraja had me set up a foundation for him, but when things got too hot after the Mosque came down in 1992, he dropped me.
Threw me
, as the Americans would say, under the bus.’

Isha has removed her scarf and is sitting back in her chair, running her hand pleasurably over her bald head. From time to time, she slurs, ‘Very glad you came, baba.’ Then she squeezes her eyes shut, as if embracing him with them, and looks just like a newborn baby. Someone called Dadu is rolling a joint on the glass and wicker table. Morning light, though still unable to pierce the curtain of fog, seeps in. But every time Skanda catches Gauri’s eye, hinting that it is time to leave, Viski is upon them like a hawk.

‘Do you know what this man’s name is?’ he asks them, gesturing to the Englishman. ‘Choate. Ben Choate! Unfortunate name to have in India, I say! Bloody fraud scholar. Not like your father, Skanda.’

‘Really, Viski!’ Choate says weakly in his defence, coughing as he speaks. ‘How many times are you going to make that joke? I mean, really!’

Viski looks long at him, then at Skanda. ‘They used to send us very fine Englishmen once upon a time,’ he says, as if speaking of a brand of cigars or a rare and special kind of cloth. Then he chuckles to himself. ‘But there is such a thing as jahaalat. Ignorance, you know. And sometimes people come at the wrong time and the society is unable to see their worth. Have I shown you . . . ?’ And suddenly he is up, and begging he be given a few minutes to find something.

‘Don’t be silly, Viski,’ Isha says, ‘they’re leaving.’

‘Two minutes,’ he says, with the desperation of a man needing to pee, and is gone.

In the meantime Iqbal, who has been standing at the parapet smoking, comes over. They had met some minutes before, but parted after a brief greeting, from embarrassment perhaps that two first cousins should know each other as little as they do. He is tall and handsome and bearded, with the somewhat hawkish features of the Frontier. He says, ‘I can’t believe we’re cousins, yaar. It’s been . . . what . . . I think my last memory of you was Gulmarg. 19-80-whatever, yaar. Fuck! How’ve you been, bro?’