‘When did you find out she was using an aeai assistant?’
‘Oh, at once, sir. These things are obvious to us. And if you’ll forgive the parlance, we don’t waste time. Fascination at the first nanosecond. Thereafter, well, as you saw on the unfortunate scene from Town and Country, we scripted you.’
‘So we thought you were guiding us…’
‘When it was you who were our go-betweens, yes.’
‘So what happens now?’ Jasbir slaps his hands on his thighs.
‘We are meshing at a very high level. I can only catch hints and shadows of it, but I feel a new aeai is being born, on a level far beyond either of us, or any of our co-characters. Is this a birth? I don’t know, but how can I convey to you the tremendous, rushing excitement I feel?’
‘I meant me.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. Of course you did. I am quite, quite dizzy with it all. If I might make one observation; there’s truth in what your parents say. First the marriage, then the love. Love grows in the thing you see every day.’
Thieving macaques dart around Jasbir’s legs and pluck at the creases of his pants. Midnight metro, the last train home. The few late-night passengers observe a quarantine of mutual solitude. The djinns of unexplained wind that haunt subway systems send litter spiralling across the platform. The tunnel focuses distant shunts and clanks, uncanny at this zero hour. There should be someone around at the phatphat stand. If not he’ll walk. It doesn’t matter.
He met her at a fashionable bar, all leather and darkened glass, in an international downtown hotel. She looked wonderful. The simple act of her stirring sugar into coffee tore his heart in two.
‘When did you find out?’
‘Devashri Didi told me.’
‘Devashri Didi.’
‘And yours?
‘Ram Tarun Das, Master of Grooming, Grace and Gentlemanliness. A very proper, old fashioned Rajput gent. He always called me sir; right up to the end. My house-mate made him. He works in character design on Town and Country.’
‘My older sister works in PR in the meta-soap department at Jazhay. She got one of the actor designers to put Devashri Didi together.’ Jasbir has always found the idea of artificial actors believing they played equally artificial roles head-frying. Then he found aeai love.
‘Is she married? Your older sister, I mean.’
‘Blissfully. And children.’
‘Well, I hope our aeais are very happy together.’ Jasbir raised a glass. Shulka lifted her coffee cup. She wasn’t a drinker. She didn’t like alcohol. Devashri Didi had told her it looked good for the Begum Jaitly’s modern shaadi.
‘My little quiz?’ Jasbir asked.
‘Devashri Didi gave me the answers you were expecting. She’d told me it was a standard ploy, personality quizzes and psychic tests.’
‘And the Sanskrit?’
‘Can’t speak a word.’
Jasbir laughed honestly.
‘The personal spiritual journey?’
‘I’m a strictly material girl. Devashri Didi said…’
‘…I’d be impressed if I thought you had a deep spiritual dimension. I’m not a history buff either. And An Eligible Boy?’
‘That unreadable tripe?’
‘Me neither.’
‘Is there anything true about either of us?’
‘One thing,’ Jasbir said. ‘I can tango.’
Her surprise, breaking into a delighted smile, was also true. Then she folded it away.
‘Was there ever any chance?’ Jasbir asked.
‘Why did you have to ask that? We could have just admitted that we were both playing games and shaken hands and laughed and left it at that. Jasbir, would it help if I told you that I wasn’t even looking? I was trying the system out. It’s different for suitable girls. I’ve got a plan.’
‘Oh,’ said Jasbir.
‘You did ask and we agreed, right at the start tonight, no more pretence.’ She turned her coffee cup so that the handle faced right and laid her spoon neatly in the saucer. ‘I have to go now.’ She snapped her bag shut and stood up. Don’t walk away, Jasbir said in his silent Master of Grooming, Grace and Gentlemanliness voice. She walked away.
‘And Jasbir.’
‘What?’
‘You’re a lovely man, but this was not a date.’
A monkey takes a liberty too far, plucking at Jasbir’s shin. Jasbir’s kick connects and sends it shrieking and cursing across the platform. Sorry, monkey. It wasn’t you. Booms rattle up the subway tube; gusting hot air and the smell of electricity herald the arrival of the last metro. As the lights swing around the curve in the tunnel, Jasbir imagines how it would be to step out and drop in front of it. The game would be over. Deependra has it easy. Indefinite sick leave, civil service counselling and pharma. But for Jasbir there is no end to it and he is so so tired of playing. Then the train slams past him in a shout of blue and silver and yellow light, slams him back into himself. He sees his face reflected in the glass, his teeth still divinely white. Jasbir shakes his head and smiles and instead steps through the opening door.
It is as he suspected. The last phatphat has gone home for the night from the rank at Barwala metro station. It’s four kays along the pitted, flaking roads to Acacia Bungalow Colony behind its gates and walls. Under an hour’s walk. Why not? The night is warm, he’s nothing better to do and he might yet pull a passing cab. Jasbir steps out. After half an hour a last, patrolling phatphat passes on the other side of the road. It flashes its light and pulls around to come in beside him. Jasbir waves it on. He is enjoying the night and the melancholy. There are stars up there, beyond the golden airglow of great Delhi.
Light spills through the French windows from the verandah into the dark living room. Sujay is at work still. In four kilometres Jasbir has generated a sweat. He ducks into the shower, closes his eyes in bliss as the jets of water hit him. Let it run let it run let it run. He doesn’t care how much he wastes, how much it costs, how badly the villagers need it for their crops. Wash the old tired dirt from me.
A scratch at the door. Does Jasbir hear the mumble of a voice? He shuts off the shower.
‘Sujay?’
‘I’ve, ah, left you tea.’
‘Oh, thank you.’
There’s silence but Jasbir knows Sujay hasn’t gone. ‘Ahm, just to say that I have always… I will… always. Always…’ Jasbir holds his breath, water running down his body and dripping on to the shower tray. ‘I’ll always be here for you.’
Jasbir wraps a towel around his waist, opens the bathroom door and lifts the tea.
Presently Latin music thunders out from the brightly lit windows of Number 27 Acacia Bungalows. Lights go on up and down the close. Mrs Prasad beats her shoe on the wall and begins to wail. The tango begins.
The Little Goddess
I remember the night I became a goddess.
The men collected me from the hotel at sunset. I was light-headed with hunger, for the child-assessors said I must not eat on the day of the test. I had been up since dawn, the washing and dressing and making-up was a long and tiring business. My parents bathed my feet in the bidet. We had never seen such a thing before and that seemed the natural use for it. None of us had ever stayed in a hotel. We thought it most grand, though I see now that it was a budget tourist chain. I remember the smell of onions cooking in ghee as I came down in the elevator. It smelled like the best food in the world.