I feel as if Anurag looks at intimacy through the wrong end of a telescope. It is alluring but far away, its outlines difficult to discern. Other human beings pass close to the soul once in a while, unexpected passings like this woman in the Bangkok hotel, but for the most part they remain hostile and remote. The world of human relations seems completely ravaged for him, in fact. It is sunk in the mire of money, and it is best to treat it as it asks to be treated: as a source merely of connections, advancement, money. For purity, for authentic attachments, one has to look to other species.
His phone has been ringing non-stop.
“It’s my girlfriend,” he says. “I don’t pick up because she thinks I’m in Mumbai.”
“But you haven’t been in Mumbai for weeks.”
“I know. That’s why it’s awkward. But she’s a bitch. She only thinks about money. She doesn’t care what kind of person I am. She thinks I’m a loser. She thinks she’s higher than me because her family is rich. So why the fuck does she call me if she is more than me?”
She sends a text message.
“Many congratulations on your new relationship.”
He reads it out to me.
“You have someone else?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “She’s trying to provoke me.”
He writes back, “Yep. I’m very happy with animals. They don’t care how much is in my pocket.”
She calls immediately. He answers and puts her on speaker. I wonder if any of this would be happening if there were no audience. She says,
“Can you just drop the attitude and talk to me like a normal person?”
“What do you want from me?” Anurag asks, rolling his eyes at me. “Do you want to be with me or not?”
“I just want to have a normal conversation. I can’t say that I want to be with you because I don’t feel I know anything about you right now.”
“See you’re confused right?”
“I’m not confused. I just don’t know what’s going on.”
“What is going on is that you just talk negative about me.”
“This negative outlook that I have about you has just been developed by you, it’s been created by you. I’m a very positive person. I think it is you who has the negative opinion about yourself.”
“What about that wedding you went to? You wouldn’t even let me come in with you. Is that how you show your positive opinion of me? I drove you there because I care about you. I sat outside in the car from 10 p.m. till 6 a.m. waiting for you because I didn’t want you to go home alone. You didn’t come out once to see how I was. Why did you leave me outside? Am I not good enough to be seen with you? Why didn’t you take me in?”
“Because I’m not sure about you.”
“You seem very sure of me in bed, but you’re not sure of me in front of other people?”
“You’re disgusting,” she says, and the call ends.
Anurag is frustrated and takes a big gulp of his drink.
“She doesn’t think I’m good enough for her world. She thinks her world is better than me. So I say to her, ‘Then go and be with the world. Why are you hanging around me?’ But now she’s heard I’m working with the Gandhi family, she’s scared I might become a rich guy. That’s why she’s calling me up. She’s from a west Delhi business family and she only understands money. Her dad had seventeen Mercedes and still her mother left him because she couldn’t handle these people obsessed with money.”
She sends another message.
“Can we have lunch tomorrow?”
He sighs, and with a great effort acquiesces. “OK,” he writes back.
“But you won’t be in Mumbai tomorrow,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “I’ll cancel it in the morning.”
There is a long silence. It’s nice out here in the park. The suffocation of the city abates somewhat.
“What was the most beautiful moment in your life?” I ask him.
“When I was seventeen. I gave up my studies to go to Bombay and be a film star. I had a Muslim girlfriend who was perfect. She used to cook me breakfast every day. But then we ran into the Hindu — Muslim problem and now she’s married to someone else. Those were beautiful days. I was modelling, I was working out every day, doing martial arts, I looked good. One day I was walking down the street and a big Lexus SUV pulled up next to me. The back window went down and inside was Sanjay Dutt. The movie star. He looked at me and without saying anything he saluted me. For my physique.
“I still want to be an actor but you need money for it. You need a lot of money to get into that business.”
It’s true that Anurag has an impressive physique. Still not thirty, he is tall and powerful. He has a thick mop of black hair. Were it not for a slight maladjustment he would be a strikingly beautiful man. But there is something bitter in his regard which means that he just misses. He looks shifty and ill at ease.
We’ve been drinking for a couple of hours, and the Coke is finished. We gather up the bottles; we leave the remaining rum with the watchman. We walk back through the park and climb over the fence, more unsteady than when we arrived. We find my car, which Anurag unlocks proprietarily, and we drive away. A few minutes later, Anurag stops by the side of the road and asks me to wind down the passenger window. He whistles out of it and two dogs immediately come bounding out of the trees. They put their paws on the window ledge and crane their heads into the car. Anurag reaches out to them. The dogs are hyperventilating with excitement. He strokes them and they lick his hand.
“These are two of my favourites,” he says.
He tells them he has to go and that he’ll visit them soon. As we drive away he is dialling a number.
“I’m trying to call the guy in my company. He’s forty-two and he manages money for many Congress politicians. You can speak to him. He works in India but he has a US phone number. Imagine that.”
He listens to the phone but there’s no response.
“He doesn’t always pick up,” says Anurag. And, by way of explanation, “He’s a little diabetic.”
The fact that it is after one in the morning might also have something to do with it.
He pulls up at a roadside kebab place that is still open. There are a few plastic chairs arranged on the sidewalk but Anurag doesn’t want to get out of the car because we can’t drink there. He summons the waiter by flashing his lights on and off: the horn on my car is broken. The waiter comes over with a menu limp from many late-night hands. Anurag orders paranthas for us and kebabs for some of his canine friends.
“Make them without spices,” he says.
He winds up the window, inserts two plastic cups into the car’s holder, and pours us both neat vodka. His phone rings: it is his colleague returning his call.
“I wanted to introduce a friend of mine,” says Anurag into the phone. “He’s British. He needs a big loan for his business.”
He thrusts the phone into my hand. The man on the other end speaks well and quickly. He asks me nothing about myself and yet speaks as if the deal is already done.
“We can provide excellent terms in the UK,” he says. “Through one other company we can give you funding anywhere else in the world too. So just tell Anurag how much you need and we’ll take this forward.”
“Okay,” I say.
Anurag takes the phone back and speaks into it.
“I have good news,” he says. “I bagged a Kolkata company. Their business is grain and they need 1,000 crores [$200 million]. Yeah it’s signed.”