Reviewing a lifetime, brooding, regretting, revising, it seemed like ages to Nusswan since their arrival had been announced. He checked his watch — it had been less than five minutes. He put the dial to his ear: it was working. Astonishing, how time and mind conspired in their tricks.
He told the peon to send in the visitors immediately. He wanted to continue in reality the celebration he had begun in imagination.
“What?” said Dina to the peon. “So soon?” She whispered to Maneck, “See, already you have brought us good luck — he never calls me in so fast.”
Nusswan rose and shot his cuffs, ready to extend a warm greeting to the man who would be brother-in-law. When he saw Maneck’s youth enter the office, his knees almost gave way. His crazy sister had done it again! He clenched the edge of the desk, pale with visions of shame and scandal in the community.
“Are you turning into a European, Nusswan? Or are you sick?” asked Dina.
“I’m fine, thank you,” he answered stiffly.
“How are Ruby and the boys?”
“They are well.”
“Good. I’m sorry to trouble you when you are so busy.”
“It’s all right.” Not two seconds in his office, and she was at him. Stupid to have raised his hopes. Where Dina was concerned, it was wiser to despair. Not one paisa would he spend on this wedding. If child marriage was a terrible ancient scourge, child-and-adult marriage was a modern madness. He wanted no part of it. And the doctor telling him to watch his blood pressure, to curtail his activities on the Share Bazaar — while here was his own sister, doing her share to shorten his life.
“But where are my manners,” said Dina. “Talking on without introductions. Maneck, this is my brother, Nusswan.”
“How do you do?” said Maneck.
“Plea… pleased to meet you.” Nusswan fell back in his chair after shaking hands. A typewriter pounded away in the next room. The ceiling fan hiccuped discreetly. Under a paperweight, a sheaf of papers fluttered like a bird in trouble.
“Maneck has heard a lot about you from me,” said Dina, “and I wanted the two of you to meet. He came to live with me a few months ago.”
“Live with you?” His sister had gone mad! Where did she think she was, in Hollywood?
“Yes, live with me. What else would a paying guest do?”
“Oh yes! Of course! What else?” The relief was so keen, it was unbearable. He wanted to fall to his knees. Oh, thank God! Saved! Thank God Almighty!
Then, hiding behind the sunshine and rainbow that had burst on the horizon, Nusswan discovered his pot of sludge: there would be no wedding. He felt cheated. Just like her. Cruel, unfeeling, leading him on with false hopes. To think how genuinely happy he had been for her a few minutes ago. Once again she had mocked him.
“The prices keep going up,” she said. “I couldn’t manage, I had to take a boarder. And I was so lucky to find a wonderful boy like Maneck.”
“Yes, of course. Very nice to meet you, Maneck. And where do you work?”
“Work?” said Dina indignantly. “He is just seventeen, he goes to college.”
“And what are you studying?”
“Refrigeration and air-conditioning.”
“Very wise choice,” said Nusswan. “These days only a technical education will get you ahead. The future lies with technology and modernization.” Filling the silence with words was a way of dealing with the tumult of emotions his sister had exploded in him. Empty words, to carry away the foolishness he felt.
“Yes, the country has been held back for too long by outdated ideologies. But our time has come. Magnificent changes are taking place. And the credit goes to our Prime Minister. A true spirit of renaissance.”
Dina didn’t mind his rambling, relieved that at least the matrimonial topic had not been revived. “I have a boarder, but I have lost my tailors,” she said.
“What a pity,” said Nusswan, slightly confused by her interruption. “The main thing is, now we have pragmatic policies instead of irrelevant theories. For example, poverty is being tackled head-on. All the ugly bustees and filthy jhopadpattis are being erased. Young man, you are not old enough to remember how wonderful this city once was. But thanks to our visionary leader and the Beautification Programme, it will be restored to its former glory. Then you will see and appreciate.”
“I was able to finish the last dresses only because Maneck helped,” put in Dina. “He worked so hard, side by side with me.”
“That’s very good,” said Nusswan. “Very good indeed.” The sound of his own voice had made him loquacious as usual. “Hardworking, educated people like Maneck is what we need. Not lazy, ignorant millions. And we also need strict family planning. All these rumours of forced sterilization are not helping. You must have heard that nonsense.”
Dina and Maneck shook their heads in unison.
“Probably started by the CIA — saying people in remote villages are being dragged from their huts for compulsory sterilization. Such lies. But my point is, even if the rumour is true, what is wrong in that, with such a huge population problem?”
“Wouldn’t it be undemocratic to mutilate people against their will?” asked Maneck, in a tone that suggested total agreement rather than a challenge.
“Mutilate. Ha ha ha,” said Nusswan, avuncular and willing to pretend it was a clever joke. “It’s all relative. At the best of times, democracy is a seesaw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion. You see, to make a democratic omelette you have to break a few democratic eggs. To fight fascism and other evil forces threatening our country, there is nothing wrong in taking strong measures. Especially when the foreign hand is always interfering to destabilize us. Did you know the CIA is trying to sabotage the Family Planning Programme?”
Maneck and Dina shook their heads again, again in perfect unison and with straight faces. There was the subtlest touch of burlesque about it.
Nusswan eyed them suspiciously before continuing. “What’s happening is, CIA agents are tampering with consignments of birth-control devices and stirring up trouble among religious groups. Now don’t you agree that Emergency measures are necessary against such dangers?”
“Maybe,” said Dina. “But I think the government should let homeless people sleep on the pavements. Then my tailors wouldn’t have disappeared and I wouldn’t have come here to bother you.”
Nusswan lifted his index finger and waggled it like a hyperactive windshield wiper. “People sleeping on pavements gives industry a bad name. My friend was saying last week — he’s the director of a multinational, mind you, not some small, two-paisa business — he was saying that at least two hundred million people are surplus to requirements, they should be eliminated.”
“Eliminated?”
“Yes. You know — got rid of. Counting them as unemployment statistics year after year gets us nowhere, just makes the numbers look bad. What kind of lives do they have anyway? They sit in the gutter and look like corpses. Death would be a mercy.”
“But how would they be eliminated?” inquired Maneck in his most likeable, most deferential tone.
“That’s easy. One way would be to feed them a free meal containing arsenic or cyanide, whichever is cost-effective. Lorries could go around to the temples and places where they gather to beg.”
“Do many business people think like this?” asked Dina curiously.
“A lot of us think like this, but until now we did not have the courage to say so. With the Emergency, people can freely speak their minds. That’s another good thing about it.”