Half of What I Say

By Anil Menon

Conflicted over his sinister duties with the Lokshakti, Vyas writes a confessional love-letter to his wife. But how did the letter end up with the scholar-politician, Durga Dhasal? And when the Lokshakti murders Dhasal, Vyas has to find the incriminating letter before it's too late.
The trail leads Vyas to various people, including: the passionate scientist torn between exit and loyalty; the businessman who collects ruins; the beguiling actress who was once Shahzadi Jahanara; the eunuch poet fond of Jewish jokes. It leads him to a powerful, subversive new myth. The lost letter leads Vyas to himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Sep 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9789385436512

Anil Menon

Anil Menon’s most recent work is The Inconceivable Idea Of The Sun: Stories, a collection of his speculative short fiction. Menon’s Half of What I Say was shortlisted for the 2016 Hindu Literary Prize. He co-edited Breaking the Bow, an international anthology of short fiction inspired by the Ramayana. His debut YA novel, The Beast With Nine Billion Feet, was shortlisted for the 2010 Vodafone-Crossword award and the 2010 Parallax prize. His short fiction has been translated into many languages, including Chinese, Hebrew, Igbo, and Romanian. He currently serves as the editor-in-chief of The Bombay Literary Magazine.   

Book preview

1

I AM DURGA DHASAL. I’M GLAD TO BE HERE, TO SHARE YOUR SPECIAL moment. And it is a special moment. You are graduating from Delhi

University, a fine university by any standard, especially your standard, since you are now done with it and need a job. (Laughter.) Yes, this is a sunlit day, an important day, and a day whose memory will provide a pale warmth for the rest of your short, competitive, ulcer-ridden lives.

I’m joking, I’m joking! I look at you and think: what great new beginnings, what stories waiting to be told, what worlds waiting to be made. It’s great to be out of college, isn’t it? No doubt it’s scary. But it’s great to be in that stage of your life where you have inserted the key into the ignition and are about to start the engine. Take it from me, there’s no other moment quite like it. So give yourself a big hand. (Applause.) I remember it was a great day for me as well. I too was wondering what my future was going to be like. I didn’t know it was going to be hair implants. (Laughter.)

When you were in college—see, I already use the past tense— when you were in college, I’m sure you had all these great late-night conversations on the meaning of life, the existence of God, what’s wrong with politics, and so on. Later on, as we settle into jobs, marriages, adulthood, we seem to forget we were interested in these questions. Sometimes we think about those conversations and smile nostalgically. How passionate we were! How idealistic! How much time we wasted on unanswerable questions! Suppose you are at an office meeting, and the boss asks you, so, what’s the next item on the action list, do you think you will reply: finding myself ! (Laughter.)

Yet, in college we can say these crazy things and dream these crazy things without feeling we’re crazy. Or, we know we’re crazy, but sanity is not that big a deal. Look around you, bhai. You know more than half your friends should probably be locked up. (Laughter.)

These conversations—kapats, addas, gup-shup, my generation called them—are what you will miss the most. Sure, we can call our friends whenever we like, but is it the same as lying on your friend’s katmal-infested bistar, snarfing down his home-made laddoos, knowing you should be studying for the Electronics final, but instead arguing about whether Dara Singh could beat Rambo in a UFC fight? (Laughter)

For many of you, it’s the first time you got to really know somebody who’s not a school friend or a blood relation. They may be from a different state, speak a different language, be of a different gender, had experiences you didn’t think were possible, and have opinions that leave you speechless with disbelief. They are completely different from you, and you wouldn’t have your best friends any other way. You find yourself growing like you’ve never grown before.

So how do we keep growing? Surely it can’t end with college! Surely we can’t reserve it for a few Art of Life weekends?

One thing I sometimes hear from older people is: sure Dhasal, all this growth business is great but we buggers have to live in the real world. And the real world is brutal. It’s cruel. We have to work in dead-end jobs. You’re just lucky.

They’re right. I am very lucky, incredibly lucky to be standing here. Yes, I’m a genius and was born with a six-pack, but that’s not what I mean. (Laughter.) I’m not talking about the random coincidental or accidental event that just happens to be lucky or unlucky for you. I’m not talking of that kind of luck. That kind of luck is bogus. I remember my Aayi—that means mother in Marathi—telling me a nice little story about bogus luck.

Once upon a time, in one of the six hundred thousand villages in Bharat, there lived a farmer, his wife, and the apple of their eyes, a son. And everybody said, oh he’s so lucky to have such a tall and strong son. The farmer refused to use Monsanto’s mutant crops because his son had filled his ears with the evils of GE farming. Then everybody said, oh how unlucky he is to have a Maoist for a son. But when the locusts came, it turned out that the farmer had made the right choice because the locusts had learned to love Monsanto crops. The farmer made a lot of money. Then everybody said, oh, how lucky he is to have a son who knows what’s what. The farmer bought a nice bike with some of the money, gifted it to his son and the son went and had a serious accident. And everybody said, oh, how unlucky he is, his son might now be a cripple for life. Then a war started and every kid in the village ran off to join the army, except for the farmer’s son who was confined to his cot. And everyone said, oh—(Laughter.) Exactly. This kind of luck is bogus, because as Diogenes said, call no man lucky until he is dead, and if he is dead and you aren’t, then guess who’s luckier?

But there’s a different kind of luck. I call it bacch-gaya luck. With this kind of luck, no matter what happens later, there’s never any regret. I know I’m lucky to be here because no matter what happens, I know my life would have been worse, if what happened had not happened when I was young. Bacch-gaya luck is a terrible kind of luck, because it’s like a rope thrown out for a drowning man. Miss it and you’re doomed. For millions of our brothers and sisters in the six-hundred thousand villages across this great land of ours, they may simply never have this rope thrown out to them.

We have 33 percent of the world’s extreme poor. These are people who have roughly less than 50 rupees per day to spend. 33 percent!

A child who is born in a poor country has a 1 in 6 chance of dying before their fifth birthday. This chance is 1 in 165 for a child born in a rich country.

How are such numbers possible? It defies belief! How can we all live on Earth, this one world with its one sun, and pretend that we belong to different worlds with many different suns? What can we do when our pretence becomes so real, we become unable to recognize our common humanity? And most important of all, what can we do to bring those unfortunates, condemned to live in shadow worlds by these acts of misrecognition, out from the shadows and into the light?

I grew up in such a shadow world. You’ve seen me countless times on your thresholds. You’re waiting in your car, impatient for the light to turn green. A kid darts out, raggedy sister in tow, offering a clutchful of car deodorizers, flowers, magazines, peanuts. That was I. You’ve seen me sitting at the corner of a pavement, waiting for nothing in particular. You’ve seen me laughing and marvelled that I should have anything at all to laugh about. You’ve seen me many times, but perhaps you’ve never seen me at all.

Unlike many of you, I wasn’t raised in English. I didn’t learn to speak English till I was thirteen or fourteen. For the first fifteen years of my life, I attended a Marathi-medium school, then a Hindi-medium school. Even now, when I count or calculate, my mind shifts to Marathi.

I don’t want to give the impression I was unhappy or unloved. I had a loving Aayi, a father who was strong and kind and I had five siblings, three brothers and two sisters. I was the youngest, and judging from the exasperated look on my mother’s face and the guilty look on my father’s, I guess I was bit of a surprise. (Laughter.) My father’s name was Sukhdeo Dhasal. He was a jawan in the

Indian army and often away for extended stretches. He was from

Phulgaon, a few miles from Koregaon, where a famous battle had taken place in 1818. My father was very proud of this battle because a Mahar regiment of some seven hundred men under a British captain had taken on Peshwa Baji Rao II’s mighty army of 20,000 cavalry and 8,000 infantry and won. He would often take me to the memorial pillar and talk about the battle as if he’d personally fought in it. So for a long time I thought we were Englishmen. My siblings and I would reenact this battle, and I’d play the role of Francis Staunton, the brave English captain who had led the Bombay Light Infantry. In any case, though Phulgaon was only twenty-two miles from Pune, it was a century behind it. There were few opportunities. Fortunately, in 1978, my father was assigned to the 35th Light Infantry Brigade in Delhi. He was in Meerut when our bogus luck took a turn for the worse. You are all too young to remember this, but the CRPF mutinied in Delhi in ’78 or ’79. They blocked the streets, marched upon Race Course Road, and gheraoed the Prime Minister. Brigadier Kalkat took his troops to Delhi and in a lightning-quick morning operation all the ringleaders were captured. The powers-that-be decided that the 35th Brigade would henceforth be stationed in the capital itself. My father was given quarters and he immediately wrote Aayi to join him in Delhi. We sold the do beegha zameen we had in Phulgaon. There was no one to take care of it, and it was pretty clear none of my siblings had any talent at farming. We had no sentimental attachment to the land whatsoever. I was thrilled to go to Delhi. We all were. Aayi brought new clothes for all of us. I remember taking the Rajdhani, it was my first train ride.

Most of you probably don’t consider a train as your first real girlfriend. (Laughter.) I do. I fell in love with the train. Not that particular train, but the idea of the train. I couldn’t get over its strength, its thundering power, the fact that a couple of human beings could control something so magnificent. I think I lost my awe of magic that day. I knew I was seeing something completely different from all the magical devices I’d heard in my Aayi’s stories. I didn’t have the words, but I remember my heart swelling with pride that we humans were capable of such a machine. Even now, whenever I see a train, I remember my first girlfriend, Mumbai Rajdhani. (Laughter.)

Three years after we moved to Delhi, my father had his stroke. The Indian army isn’t kind to its broken parts. We had to move out, the pension was horribly inadequate to support a family with eight mouths. We shifted to Kanchan basti. One of my father’s contacts had a junkyard business in Kanchan Basti and my eldest siblings were put to work. I knew something terrible had happened to the family, but I didn’t grasp just how precarious our situation was. I only knew that I hated what had happened. I hated the basti. I hated having to go to the filthy lavatories, I hated the mosquitoes that plagued us at night, I hated the hut we called school, I hated having to interact with the savage kids, I hated the fact my father was flat on his back all day and all night, I hated seeing him cry when my mother changed his soiled clothes.

I remember my seventh birthday, my first in the basti. Aayi was so happy. I couldn’t understand why she was happy. Our lives sucked. We were living in hell. She was working as a maid servant. Her husband was a paraplegic. So why was she smiling? She put a sandalwood tilak on my forehead, cupped my chin, and said majhya nandlal kiti chikna distos ga. My son is so handsome.

There’s a saying in Marathi: if you’ve fallen into a well, you can be sure someone will drop a bucket on your head. (Muted Laughter.) That was true for us. Things went from bad to worse. My siblings fell sick one by one. None survived. None survived the fetid fumes of Delhi’s Kanchan basti. Open drains, mounds of rotting decomposing waste, industrial sewage from the urinary glands of neo-liberal capitalism. My parents watched helplessly as cholera, typhoid, malaria, dengue and chikungunya took their children. I was ten when chikungunya took my one remaining sister, Laxmi. I remember her screams from the pain in her swollen inflamed joints, Aayi’s useless poultices, my father’s never-ending ‘Is she feeling better?’ My Aayi prayed and prayed. Why is this happening to us? Why is this happening to us?

There was a new medicine called Welltrax. It was too scarce on the regular market and on the black market it was impossibly expensive. In desperation, my mother sent me to ask the doctor-saab. I didn’t ask her why she thought he would have a stock or why he would give us any. It was late but I knew the slum like the back of my hand and I didn’t need any lights to guide my feet. I ran like Narada-muni rushing to answer the call of nature. It was the longest run of my life. When I reached the doctor’s house at the edge of the basti, it was late. I rang the doorbell and rang it again and then again. The doctor-saab’s servant, Lalit Prasad, came to the door. He told me to get lost. The doctor-saab was asleep and could not be disturbed. I begged, pleaded, roared that my sister was dying. Something human stirred in Lalit Prasad’s eyes. He told me to wait outside the house. He said he’d ask the doctor-saab. I could hear them talking. Doctor-saab sounded amused, not angry. What was he, Mother Teresa? Listen Lalit Prasad, these people are born dead. Doctors can’t cure poverty. So the girl will be carried away by one villain rather than another. Such is life. I heard Lalit Prasad agree with every sentence—hah ji, hah ji, hah ji—and then Lalit Prasad asked: saab-ji, what should I do with the boy? Doctor-saab’s wife intervened with a shout. Arre, tell the chokra to go to hell. These people never give my husband a minute’s rest. Always hanging around with their hands out, expecting free treatment. Her husband wasn’t making house-calls, let alone to a Mahar’s house. Her husband had just showered.

I smelled defeat. I ran inside, darted past Lalit Prasad, and threw myself at Doctor-saab’s feet. Please, please, please. I clung to his feet even as Lalit Prasad rained blows on my shoulders and head. I begged in English.

Now, I must inform you that there are many opportunities to learn English in Kanchan Basti. It’s a popular tourist spot for foreigners. Many white people come to visit us. Tall fair Aryans, so like the Shining Ones described in our Vedas, ten feet tall, gilded in silver, each and every one of them. They came, took photographs, made movies. They didn’t seem to mind touching us. At Phulgaon, we had to be careful about touching people. In my father’s time, things had been even stranger, and in my great grandfather’s time it had been horrible indeed. But these people, these Children of the Sun, seemed to have no such taboos at all. They brought smiles, medicines, Bibles, small kindnesses. In particular, there was one blonde-haired woman with lovely blue eyes—Mrs Sorenson—who would invariably pull me on to her lap while she distributed goodies. I would make her laugh by smelling her hair and making happy faces. So I could beg to the doctor-saab in English.

My sister died that day, her limbs twisted, her mouth frozen in a rictus. That smile is carved on my mind.

Both my parents died a short while later, and I quickly ended up on the streets. I had long passed the stage of disbelief by then. I was living in the shadow world. I sold flowers, peanuts, toys, windshield wipers. I sold my body a couple of times. As I said, we have met before, at traffic lights, street corners, news-stands and railway bridges. As I speak and you listen, we’re continuing to meet at a million such junctions across this great land.

So how is it that I am here? I am here in the sunlit world for two reasons that are also causes. First, I’d won the genetic lottery. I have a mind that is good at mathematics, science, languages. Such matters come quickly to me. The second reason came in the form of an empathic soul. The blue-eyed lady—Mrs Sorenson—searched for me, found me, and made sure I was placed in the care of the Don Bosco orphanage. She watched over me. Ultimately, thanks to the kindness of strangers and a freak accident of nature, I got my visa into the sunlit world.

Except I could not see it that way. Something had happened to me. I had lost the ability to tell worlds apart. I couldn’t categorize: now, I’m in this world, I must behave this way. I could never tell when or where the attack would happen. I could be on a conference podium about to present my research results, and I would be suddenly returned to negotiating for a verandah space in Kanchan basti. One moment I could be lifting my golf club at a lovely resort in Scotland, and the next instant I would be crouched over my sister’s bed. Once a friend took me to a fancy French restaurant and when the food arrived, I was possessed by uncontrollable fits of laughter. But most of all, I couldn’t understand why everyone around me was going around pretending there were all these separate worlds.

This pretence has a name. It’s called ‘suspension of disbelief.’ I was warned to become an expert at it as quickly as I could, if I didn’t want to go mad. I was assured this was a normal part of growing up. If I didn’t, I was in for it. I was told I wouldn’t be able to enjoy literature. I would be driven mad by Little Red Riding Hood’s mania for wearing a riding hood but never go riding. And Cinderella. If her shoe was such a good fit, how come it had slipped off in the first place? (Laughter.) That filthy naked dead body on the street that somebody else should pick up? Are you dazed with disbelief that your world could be so? Look boss, the body is from a different world. It is lying there only because waste allocation among different disposal alternatives is in equilibrium when the marginal social cost of each alternative is the same across the complete set; sooner or later, the invisible hand of the market will pick the body up and carry it away. See how the suspension of disbelief works?

I think what I’m trying to say is this. I was lucky, yes. Bacch-gaya lucky. However, we can’t run a world on bacch-gaya luck anymore. My friends, I want you to go out and build a world where people don’t need bacch-gaya luck. A society that routinely relies on bacch-gaya luck is a sad society, because it condemns millions of its people to suffer.

Now I can hear some of you thinking, Dhasal, look man, I can’t even fix a masala dosa for myself, and you want me to fix the world? Now who wants me to suspend disbelief ? (Laughter.)

But it isn’t belief that’s required of you, it’s action. Belief and disbelief cost nothing. What does it matter what you believe or disbelieve, if you do not act? When religious beliefs divide us into different worlds, it is time to rethink one’s actions, not worry about belief. Set aside your Vedas, your cross, your turban, your topi. There is no Hindu, no Mussulman, no Sikh and no Isahi. We’re one humanity. What matters is that you act to make this a liveable world for all.

Everything you do, matters. Suppose you write a program that helps sell T-shirts on the web. Well, that reshapes the way people buy clothes. Suppose you make a new kind of one-minute dal. Well, that can reshape eating habits. Suppose you make a movie about the importance of friends over relatives; well, you reshape human expectations. Living in this world is like walking on a sand dune. It’s impossible not to change the world as one walks.

As you must have learned from your friends by now, we can be different from one another, but still live in the same world. There is a word for this possibility in all cultures, all languages. In Sanskrit, we call it vipralambh, love-in-separation, or more philosophically, love-in-difference. It is not just a possibility. It is also a promise the universe makes to each and every one of us. Once I realized this truth I discovered that my parents, though dead, were always available to me. Stars who died many millions of years ago are still visible in the night sky. My beloved siblings, though dead, are always with me. Even the ultimate separation can be bridged in love. Such a world is the only one I can believe in.

Such bright young smiling faces! I’m filled with hope. I can tell you’re all going to remake this world into a better world. A world where children needn’t die of chikungunya. A world where ruined jawans are taken care of. A world where an orphan arouses not just useless pity but also action to find him a home. A world where there’s no war, no poverty, and I must add, for your sake, no convocation speeches over fifteen minutes. (Laughter.)

My friends, my comrades, my beloved brothers and sisters, I charge you with the task of building this better world. Burn bright. Burn true. Burn as long as life permits and fill this world with love and light. Thank you.

2

SOMETIMES, IN THE MORE HABITUAL MOMENTS OF THE DAY, SAY, missing Tanaz, reading reports, watching the world slip by, lying in bed unable to sleep, or swirling the threads of saffron in my chai,

I’m led to contemplate the other lives I might have had. I hadn’t always been with Cultural Affairs. Once I had been other things, had intended to be other things, been at forks, could have turned left instead of right, and who is to say where the other fork might have led.

I can almost hear my wife’s voice, amused: To me, where else?

Yes, without question. In any case, I knew where I would go next, what would happen next. A final rail journey from Kanpur to Delhi and I’d reach Tanaz. After one year, seven months and seventeen days of separation, I would be home. I would call out her name, and my wife would answer, not my imagination. So comforting had been that anticipation and the futures it held in trust, I half-dreaded the moment when fact would make imagination no longer necessary. Walking down Kanpur Central’s railway platform, flanked by my two uniformed men striding confidently, even arrogantly, beside me, my glance was drawn upwards towards the dust scattering the harsh orange light from the ceiling fixtures, sepia-staining the long rectangular spaces of the railway station. I wished my men would stop strutting; something about wearing a uniform invariably reduced men to swagger sticks. It was only five in the morning but an old woman in a floral cotton sari and threadbare khaki coat was sweeping the platform, one hand folded behind her back. A white woman in a sweat-stained T-shirt and faded jeans stood by one of the elevators, weeping. The lady seemed self-sufficient in her sorrow.

‘You, either keep moving or get out of the way,’ barked the sweeper-woman.

Then she looked up, and her expression transformed from attitude to fear. She straightened. I smiled and after a second’s hesitation, the old woman returned the smile, adding a comical half-salute with her broom.

I moved on. We are in the same profession, I said to my men, and for some reason, they decided I was joking and laughed. I cut through the crowd, happy to drown in brown, idly wondering about the story fragments around me whose endings I would never learn. I liked rail stations. I was glad I had decided to take the Shatabdi Express to Delhi. It was slower, yes. But that wasn’t the only plus. I liked the slowness of rail travel. At a short distance from us, to our right, I noticed a young female officer on a railway bench. She wasn’t alone. Seated next to her was a mongrel stray. Judging from the animated conversation she was having, they appeared to be on familiar terms.

The khaki and shoulder badges marked her as a soldier from the Jhansi Reserve Corps, which had seen considerable action in Orissa and Manipur. If memory served, the Lokshakti had originally formed the unit from the Nagaland Mahila Indian Reserve Battalion and operationalized it for peacekeeping tasks such as crowd-control, disaster relief, curfew enforcement, QoL operations, that sort of thing. Tasks quite different from the ones she had actually engaged in.

Also, tasks quite different from the one she was currently engaged in. People ahead of us were slowing down to stare at the young soldier. Understandable. Some objects, like alpacas or the Eiffel Tower, are meant to be stared at. Bilkis was one of those objects. I would have made it my business to intervene even if the people hadn’t been laughing at an officer of the Lokshakti; that is, laughing at the Lokshakti. They were laughing at my friend. As we approached the bench, the crowd magically found other things to do.

‘Lieutenant, atten-shun!’ barked one of my men, before I could restrain him.

Bilkis jumped to her feet. When I had first met her some months ago, I’d taken her for a Punjabi kudi, raised on lassi and film songs, but she could have been a Pashtun, a Balochi, perhaps even a Chitrali; certainly one of those Northern places Sikander had trampled centuries earlier. I had been struck by her unexpectedly sweet face, now marred by a film of tears. Bilkis seemed unaware she was weeping.

‘See what they have done to Balbir,’ she said to me, as if we were resuming a conversation.

I glanced at the stray. Some joker had hung the Lokshakti’s logo—a red Ashok Chakra over a pair of crossed swords on a black background—around the dog’s neck. The mongrel didn’t look like a Balbir to me. But there is no reasoning with pet lovers.

My officer was about to reprimand her, and I put a restraining hand on him. One glance at her uniform, badly ironed, stained, revealed Bilkis wasn’t Bilkis, perhaps irretrievably so. Despite myself I felt a wrenching disquiet; mental illness evokes a peculiar dread. My mind raced with fixes. I would take care of her. Tanaz would understand. Bilkis could stay in our guest room; we never had guests. Doctors could be arranged. Bilkis was young, she would heal.

But she’d already come to her senses. First she half-saluted me, then gazed in a confused manner at the dog. With an incredibly fast sweep of her hand—I hardly saw the knife appear in her hand—she cut the cord around the mongrel’s neck. Balbir must have noticed the change in her because the moment she released her hold, the mongrel leaped off the bench and fled, all without making a sound. I had seen her enough times in action not to be surprised.

‘Vyas! Vyas, you—’

We embraced. Brother, sister. I took the cord from her, turned away as she surreptitiously wiped her tears. She said something about having missed her train to Delhi. I spoke with my men, told them to arrange for an extra seat in my coach, and then told them to go on ahead and wait for me in the VIP room. I didn’t need their escort. I had all the escort I needed at the moment. Yes sir, yes sir.

Their neutral expressions and exaggerated gestures of acquiescence revealed their astonishment.

‘Have you eaten, Bilkis?’ I asked.

She didn’t seem to know, and I decided she hadn’t. Bilkis was curiously pliant as if all she wanted was to be freed of decision-making. When I suggested she spend a few days with her Abba-jaan, she started as if she’d seen a ghost and shook her head. I explained she could travel with me to Delhi, and Bilkis merely nodded, as if the option was, as I had intended, an instruction. She had a pathetic and much-abused army trunk, which I gallantly offered to carry and nearly tore off an arm trying to lift.

‘Let me carry it,’ she said, ‘it’s got everything I have.’

Well, if she insisted. I led her to the railway canteen, which turned out to have a VIP dining room. Bilkis ordered an idli plate, a kathi roll and a large Fanta. I ordered a chai. She supersized the idli plate, which proved to be prescient, because watching her eat made me hungry. She gave me a complacent smile as I reached for a share. We had met in Odissa. The Lokshakti with the army’s help had finally managed to wipe out the Maoists, mostly by taking the metaphor somewhat literally. I had been busy with the clean-up of the once booming radical publishing network in Odissa. To my surprise I had found many of them run entirely by women, armed women, and shutting them down sometimes required muscle. The Lokshakti, ever sensitive about appearances, had decided to call in the Jhansi unit rather than use the Kalki’s so-called Lokveer and after some half-adozen operations, Bilkis and I became friends because we became friends. By the time Bilkis finished eating, she’d fully recovered. Or so I judged. She wouldn’t admit to stress but her long list of woes spoke for her. Bilkis was tired of combat. She was tired of being single. She was tired of losing dear friends. She was tired of delivering the bad news to their kith and kin. Balbir, I learned, had been one such friend. She claimed I’d met Balbir Singh and described him to me. The name didn’t ring a bell, and frankly, for me one sardar looks a lot like another. But I was sad to hear her friend had died in action and said so. It hardly registered. She belly-ached about how she’d been tasked with finding Balbir’s artist girlfriend and delivering the bad news. When I offered to arrange for someone else to handle that delicate responsibility, Bilkis refused.

‘I’m not complaining! Besides, I have a duty.’

Dooty had a central place in the Book of Bilkis. People had a dooty to do their jobs. A dooty to stand for something, a dooty to act, and a dooty to do the right thing, not just the logical thing. Dooty’s dooty, it seemed, was to be a pain in the ass. Dooty had a boinkable sister called Ijjat but that’s another story.

Bilkis was tired, tired, tired. In particular, Bilkis was tired of being a mere Lieutenant.

‘I’d like to become a Captain before I die. Merit has to mean something. Four tours, three gallantry commendations, my CO even told me, to my face—Bilkis, in my mind you’re already Captain—and I replied, thank you, thank you sir-ji, but please let the army also know what’s on your mind. Do you think I’m asking for too much?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘No, tell me if I’m being unreasonable.’

‘It’s perfectly reasonable.’

There was no use pointing out to her that rationality and the army had gone their separate ways shortly after Ug the Caveman had raised the first infantry unit.

‘Yes, yes. Just shut up, right?’ She smiled, then added in the offhand tone she used to state facts, ‘You’re not a nobody like me, are you Vyas?’

‘Well, that depends. I manage the Department of Cultural Affairs. It is merely the tail of the elephant that is the Lokshakti. If you saw my office, you’d laugh. No one takes my work seriously. Anyway, what does my rank matter? It changes nothing between us.’

‘Are you sure you don’t mind sharing your compartment with me?

I snore.’

It was hurtful, the question, as if status had ever been an issue between us. And I knew she snored. She knew I knew. Why even raise the topic of sleep when the entire journey would be over in six or seven hours? There was no point in asking Bilkis. She used thoughts to think about the world, not the thinker. Had her conscious mind published a newspaper, she would have believed every word on its pages.

My cellphone rang—Tanaz!—and in my hasty fumble I dropped the cell. Bilkis caught it in one smooth motion. She glanced at the display, then handed the phone over as if it had suddenly acquired a slither and a forked tongue. Victor-chacha, she mouthed.

I walked towards the relative privacy of a pillar, took the call.

‘Sir?’

‘Vyas!’ General Victor Dorabjee sounded as relaxed as a British squire on his morning constitutional. ‘Hope I am not interrupting a round of poker with the missus?’

‘I’m still in Kanpur, sir. I’ll reach Delhi in the evening.’

‘Good, good. Your filly’s been counting the minutes till she sees you again. You’ll get quite the moist reception, I imagine.’ ‘Yes.’

‘Quite.’ The General paused. ‘Have you been watching the news?

Durga Dhasal’s dead.’ ‘Dead!’

‘Yes. You know how he could never resist attacking Hinduism. This time it was the convocation address at DU. Took some potshots at us as well. All very elliptical of course. Last night, around eight, a mob stormed his apartment. The usual saffron excitables. They roughed up the old man a bit. One of Kalki’s men was at the scene and luckily he reined in the duffers before they totally wrecked the place. Dhasal himself was less lucky. He had a heart attack en route to the hospital. Cremation’s tomorrow. Some minor clashes here and there. On the whole, we’ve come out looking quite good. The old man’s finally gone. Sic transit gloria, what.’ He laughed.

Durgal Dhasal is dead. Durgal Dhasal is dead. The words rang out clear in my head but they didn’t ring in the truth. The truth was I didn’t know if I was in trouble. Which itself was troubling. Getting rammed is unpleasant enough, but to be also rammed by surprise adds insult to injury. I would have to do something. Durgal Dhasal is dead. Durgal Dhasal is dead. The words tolled for me.

‘Woohoo. Vyas? You there?’

‘Yes sir. I wish he hadn’t died. Not just yet—’

‘If only the bloody universe took that into consideration.’ Dorabjee sounded irritated. ‘I’m bloody relieved, that’s what I am. You didn’t know him like I did. The old man was more devious than all our jokers put together. He was a royal pain in the arse. Without him, the CPI will go back to being what it has always been, the crazy uncle of Indian politics.’

‘No, it’s not that, his death has created some awkward problems—’

‘Who gives a queef ? Next, we’ll bring the DU radicals to heel— I say, I’m a bit piqued. Yes, piqued. I thought you’d be pleased to hear the news. He hated your department in particular, wanted it shut down. Have you forgotten? And here you are, snivelling. I’ve never liked this streak of sentimentality in you. I need people with commitment. I hope I can count on commitment, I really do, yes.’

Dorabjee wanted me to do my job. He wanted my approval. If I approved, he was nonchalant, but if I withheld it, he’d wring one out of me. He was a doer, a man of action. He might, like Aurangzeb, wish for all bookworms to have a single neck so he could sever it with a single cut, but since that wasn’t so, he needed me, or rather, my department, to watch the hydra. I had Dorabjee’s indulgence so long as I acted like I was unaware of this dependency. I had to lead like Fred Astaire while pretending to be Ginger Rogers. ‘Of course I’m committed, Victor. Two hundred percent. But it’s put me in a spot. Has anyone else entered the apartment since the attack?’

‘No, it’s sealed. But I’ll be sending a clean-up crew soon. All his stuff will be sent to Archives. The usual. Why?’

‘I request you hold off on that, sir. I’d like to look around the place first.’

‘Look for what?’ He sounded fearful.

‘This is really embarrassing,’ I began.

Durga Dhasal had harassed my department, and on Dorabjee’s orders, we’d returned the favour. We had pestered him with notices, summons, subpoenas, ne exeats, quo warranto writs and nuisance suits of every kind; legal buggering, as Dorabjee put it. Dhasal hadn’t been intimidated of course. On the contrary, I’d been the one buggered with infinite documents to sign.

‘I’m waiting for the bloody point,’ complained Dorabjee.

‘Thing is sir, I was writing Tanaz a love letter—’

‘A love letter!’

‘Yes, sir.’ There was nothing for it but to thrash on. ‘I, well, write, that’s to say, sometimes I’m moved to write—’

‘Love letters? On paper?’

‘Yes. Long story short, there was a screw-up. I accidentally had my assistant send the wrong set of papers to Dhasal—’

‘Papers. Plural? How many pages is this Song of Songs?’

‘Twenty pages or so.’ I coughed. ‘Maximum twenty-five. As I was saying, I sent the wrong set and a week later, Tanaz called to ask why I’d sent her a subpoena. Dhasal must have got my love letter.’

Silence. Then I heard a howl of laughter.

‘So you see,’ I continued, ‘I’d like to search his place, find the damn thing. I don’t want Archives leaking it to someone—’

‘Yes, I bet. I bet. By Jove!’ More laughter. ‘I’m tempted to let them have it. Most tempted. Just to teach you a lesson.’

‘General, the letter was rather intimate.’

‘Rather intimate? A sex letter? Good God man, this is the era of the sex tape.’

‘Sir, I’m thinking about Tanaz. And you know how it is. Your enemies are just waiting for a chance to embarrass you.’

‘Hold on, let me think.’ He sucked on his cigar. Irritated. ‘I see your concern. I won’t be made a laughing-stock. Okay, find the damn letter. But make it quick. I’ll send some muscle to help move things around.’

‘Thank you sir, but that’s not necessary—’

‘Oh it is. Believe me, it is necessary. By the by, when did all this happen?’

I told him the incident had happened last week. I had planned to approach Dhasal, explain the error, retrieve my letter, hand over the subpoena.

‘That simple, is it? You blithering idiot. You and your scribbling. Vyas, you realize your cock-up could have compromised my niece’s honour? Compromised me! You realize Dhasal could have placed you in his debt? That is, he could have made you just a little less loyal to me? A loyalty I’m increasingly beginning to question. A questionable loyalty, Vyas.’

I said nothing. My silence would reassure him more than any words I could offer.

‘Oh, I suppose we should make a good fist of it. Love is batty and all that.’ I could again hear Dorabjee sucking on his cigar. Suspicious. ‘And now, it so happens you can do me a favour too. Mind you, it still won’t be quid pro quo. Not by a long shot.’ He gave me his instructions. ‘Don’t take too long to wrap your nonsense. No more letters! Use the phone like every other sad panda. I want you to focus on the student radicals. They’re really getting under my skin.’

I told him I would. Thanked him.

‘Carry on then. Kiss my niece for me. Cheerio.’

I would certainly kiss Tanaz, perhaps even on his account. Tanaz wasn’t his niece exactly, more like a cousin’s daughter. But Dorabjee liked to play the family connection on occasion. He had the Mafiosi’s faith in love. Love strengthened him.

‘Bad news?’ said Bilkis, when I returned to her side.

‘Yes, in a way. Durga Dhasal is dead.’

‘Dhasal? Which unit?’

I laughed. ‘Never mind.’

‘Excuse me, I do mind.’ She hadn’t liked my laugh. ‘What’s the crisis?’

‘Did I say there was a crisis?’

Bilkis gazed at me. I had missed that wolf-eyed inspection.

‘Do you keep secrets from Tanaz too?’

‘My existence proves I don’t.’

I like to see Bilkis laugh. When she laughs it’s possible to see the little bully in pigtails she must have been.

‘Sensible girl,’ said Bilkis approvingly. ‘I like Tanaz a lot.’

‘No you don’t. You can’t stand her.’

Blood rushed to her face and I knew I was in for an elaborate cover-up.

‘Hai Allah, where do you get these crazy notions? You’re so wrong! I don’t judge her one bit. It’s obvious from her photo she’s a sweet girl. So pretty, almost like one of those lovely American dolls. In fact I’ve often wondered how you managed to hook her. I had a doll just like her—have I told you about Shahzadi Nafisa? No? Really? How strange. I thought you knew everything about everyone.

‘Well, it happened like this. I had an uncle, Siddiq-chacha, who worked in Saudi Arabia. For my seventh birthday, he sent me a Princess Charm-School Barbie doll, and I named her Shahzadi Nafisa after my mother, who died, as I’ve told you, from a womanly cancer. I loved that doll. Oh how I loved it. Unfortunately, I accidentally left Shahzadi Nafisa in the sun and she was ruined. When you first showed me Tanaz’s photo, I had to control myself from breaking down and apologizing. It was like meeting Shahzadi Nafisa all over again. You almost expect Tanaz to say ‘Ma-ma’ if you press her belly button. Of course, she doesn’t have a belly, so don’t go around saying I said that. If anything, she is skinny, even too skinny. But you said her mother was really fat, so maybe that’ll change. Tanaz is a very nice girl. What do you call her? Chakli? I like your chakli a lot.’

‘Yes, now I am convinced.’

She looked satisfied. ‘Good.’

We headed for the railway’s VIP waiting room. The air was cold enough to satisfy a Canadian buffalo. My men had ejected a couple of Majors from their seats. I gestured to Bilkis to make herself comfortable. We sat side by side, in silence; the unexpectedness of our meeting had finally caught up with us. Finally, she asked: ‘What are you thinking about?’

I told her I was working on a story about a man who had decided to write a story about giving up on stories.

She looked interested. ‘Does it have a happy ending? Otherwise, don’t bother.’

‘It will have a happy ending. Unlike what happened to Shahzadi

Nafisa.’

She laughed. ‘Listen, about my doll, Shahzadi Nafisa. You know I would never leave her in the sun. I’m sure it was my friend Jehan—she was so jealous of the Shahzadi. Have I told you about Jehan? Jahanara?’

She had. Often. Like Tanaz, Bilkis didn’t seem to have made any new friends after her school days. Jehan figured large in Bilkis’ landscape. Jehan; Jahanara. Jehan, back bencher, orphan, speculative glances throughout the year. Jehan, who had suddenly cornered Bilkis in the madrasa’s prayer room, pressed her against the wall, breast to breast, and hissed:

Fatty, you’re the grass the donkey has; you’re the dung from his ass.

Jackass.

Pain in the ass,

Still man, whatever.

‘Jehan and I didn’t become real friends until she murdered my Nafisa. So no regrets.’

Bilkis leaned against me, ever so slightly. She is sleepy. I liked Bilkis against me, her shoulder pressed against mine. She exuded warmth. Perhaps it was me, I felt a little feverish. Train journeys always did that to me. And my journey wasn’t done yet. I had to find my compromising letter. I’d lied to the General. The letter compromised me, not Tanaz. Still, at least I wouldn’t have to write any more love letters. I closed my eyes and thought about my wife. In a few hours I would be home.

#

(Tanaz Chikliwala is on her way to the next site, the Govindas Industrial Estate in the lower west side of Delhi. She has been in constant motion since morning.)

I’m not tired at all. When I’m out doing field surveys, I never feel tired. Plus today I have extra motivation. My husband is finally coming home! I’ve taken a half-day, but it means moving twice as fast.

(She checks the time.)

Great. It’s only ten. I can do at least five more forms. Maybe six. The Kanpur train’s scheduled to arrive at one-thirty. But the train will be late. I bet I could do seven forms. It isn’t just about the money. It is also about being responsible. About doing your job properly. You have to be sincere.

Cubic-boron-nitrite. No, not nitrite, nitride. I need to practise. Say it once, say it twice, say it true and say it thrice. That’s what Francesca-madam, my third standard English teacher, used to say. Cubic-boron-nitrite—nitride. Oh God! Cubic-boron-nitride. Why do scientists think up such weirdo words? If I