Jasbir has never been in the physical presence of a thirdgendered. He knows all about them – as he knows all about most things – from the single-professional-male general interest magazines to which he subscribes. Those pages, between the ads for designer watches and robot tooth-whitening, portray them as fantastical, Arabian Nights creatures equally blessed and cursed with glamour. Nahin the matchmaker seems old and tired as a god, knotting and unknotting yts fingers over the papers on the coffee table – ‘The bloody drugs, darlings’ – occasionally breaking into great spasmodic shudders. It’s one way of avoiding the Wife Game, Jasbir thinks.
Nahin slides sheets of paper around on the tabletop. The documents are patterned as rich as damask with convoluted chartings of circles and spirals annotated in inscrutable alphabets. There is a photograph of a woman in each top right corner. The women are young and handsome but have the wide-eyed expressions of being photographed for the first time.
‘Now, I’ve performed all the calculations and these five are both compatible and auspicious,’ Nahin says. Yt clears a large gobbet of phlegm from yts throat.
‘I notice they’re all from the country,’ says Jasbir’s father.
‘Country ways are good ways,’ says Jasbir’s mother.
Wedged between them on the short sofa, Jasbir looks over Nahin’s shawled shoulder to where Ram Tarun Das stands in the doorway. He raises his eyebrows, shakes his head.
‘Country girls are better breeders,’ Nahin says. ‘You said dynasty was a concern. You’ll also find a closer match in jati and in general they settle for a much more reasonable dowry than a city girl. City girls want it all. Me me me. No good ever comes of selfishness.’
The nute’s long fingers stir the country girls around the coffee table, then slide three toward Jasbir and his family. Dadaji and Mamaji sit forward. Jasbir slumps back. Ram Tarun Das folds his arms, rolls his eyes.
‘These three are the best starred,’ Nahin says. ‘I can arrange a meeting with their parents almost immediately. There would be some small expenditure in their coming up to Delhi to meet with you; this would be in addition to my fee.’
In a flicker, Ram Tarun Das is behind Jasbir, his whisper a startle in his ear.
‘There is a line in the Western wedding vows: speak now or forever hold your peace.’
‘How much is my mother paying you?’ Jasbir says into the moment of silence.
‘I couldn’t possibly betray client confidentiality.’ Nahin has eyes small and dark as currants.
‘I’ll disengage you for an additional fifty per cent.’
Nahin’s hands hesitate over the pretty hand drawn spirals and wheels. You were a man before, Jasbir thinks. That’s a man’s gesture. See, I’ve learned how to read people.
‘I double,’ shrills Mrs Dayal.
‘Wait wait wait,’ Jasbir’s father protests but Jasbir is already shouting over him. He has to kill this idiocy here, before his family in their wedding fever fall into strategies they cannot afford.
‘You’re wasting your time and my parents’ money,’ Jasbir says. ‘You see, I’ve already met a suitable girl.’
Goggle eyes, open mouths around the coffee table, but none so astounded and gaping as Ram Tarun Das’s.
The Prasads at Number 25 Acacia Colony Bungalows have already sent over a pre-emptive complaint about the tango music but Jasbir flicks up the volume fit to rattle the brilliants on the chandelier. At first he scorned the dance, the stiffness, the formality, the strictness of the tempo. So very un-Indian. No one’s uncle would ever dance this at a wedding. But he has persisted – never say that Jasbir Dayal is not a trier – and the personality of the tango has subtly permeated him, like rain into a dry riverbed. He has found the discipline and begun to understand the passion. He walks tall in the Dams and Watercourses. He no longer slouches at the watercooler.
‘When I advised to you speak or forever hold your peace, sir, I did not actually mean, lie through your teeth to your parents,’ Ram Tarun Das says. In tango he takes the woman’s part. The lighthoek can generate an illusion of weight and heft so the aeai feels solid as Jasbir’s partner. If it can do all that, surely it could make him look like a woman? Jasbir thinks. In his dedication to detail Sujay often overlooks the obvious. ‘Especially in matters where they can rather easily find you out.’
‘I had to stop them wasting their money on that nute.’
‘They would have kept outbidding you.’
‘Then, even more, I had to stop them wasting my money as well.’
Jasbir knocks Ram Tarun Das’s foot across the floor in a sweetly executed barrida. He glides past the open verandah door where Sujay glances up from soap-opera building. He has become accustomed to seeing his landlord tango cheek to cheek with an elderly Rajput gentleman. Yours is a weird world of ghosts and djinns and half-realities, Jasbir thinks.
‘So how many times has your father called asking about Shulka?’ Ram Tarun Das’s free leg traces a curve on the floor in a well-executed volcada. Tango is all about seeing the music. It is making the unseen visible.
You know, Jasbir thinks. You’re woven through every part of this house like a pattern in silk.
‘Eight,’ he says weakly. ‘Maybe if I called her…’
‘Absolutely not,’ Ram Tarun Das insists, pulling in breath-to-breath close in the embreza. ‘Any minuscule advantage you might have enjoyed, any atom of hope you might have entertained, would be forfeit. I forbid it.’
‘Well, can you at least give me a probability? Surely knowing everything you know about the art of shaadi, you could at least let me know if I’ve any chance?’
‘Sir,’ says Ram Tarun Das, ‘I am a Master of Grooming, Grace and Gentlemanliness. I can direct you to any number of simple and unsophisticated bookie-aeais; they will give you a price on anything though you may not fancy their odds. One thing I will say: Miss Shulka’s responses were very – suitable.’
Ram Tarun Das hooks his leg around Jasbir’s waist in a final gancho. The music comes to its strictly appointed conclusion. From behind it come two sounds. One is Mrs Prasad weeping. She must be leaning against the party wall to make her upset so clearly audible. The other is a call tone, a very specific call tone, a deplorable but insanely hummable filmi hit My Back, My Crack, My Sack that Jasbir set on the house system to identify one caller, and one caller only.
Sujay looks up, startled.
‘Hello?’ Jasbir sends frantic, pleading hand signals to Ram Tarun Das, now seated across the room, his hands resting on the top of his cane.
‘Lexus Mumbai red monkey Ritu Parvaaz,’ says Shulka Mathur. ‘So what do they mean?’
‘No, my mind is made up, I’m hiring a private detective,’ Deependra says, rinsing his hands. On the twelfth floor of the Ministry of Waters all the dating gossip happens at the wash-hand basins in the Number 16 Gentlemen’s WC. Urinals: too obviously competitive. Cubicles: a violation of privacy. Truths are best washed with the hands at the basins, and secrets and revelations can always be concealed by judicious use of the hot-air hand-drier.
‘Deependra, this is paranoia. What’s she done?’ Jasbir whispers. A level 0.3 aeai chip in the tap admonishes him not to waste precious water.