Lakshman firmly cautioned Gautam against this though.
The next morning we were in the middle of pleasing each other when his clunky old Nokia sounded. We were both about to come, and Gautam was irritated by the interruption. So was I.
I picked up the phone from the nightstand, recognized the number at once, and handed it to him. “Hello?” he answered.
Ashok Kumar’s voice sounded sinister due to a recent case of laryngitis. He knew exactly what we were up to all the time, and I wondered if jealousy had driven him to call at that particular moment.
Gautam wrote down Kumar’s address and then phoned G.S. Lakshman to tell him the news. “This is just what we need,” he said. “Some quotes from Kumar will give us more credibility.”
Lakshman’s response was audible from five feet away. “That chutiya bastard doesn’t deserve the right to speak!”
After putting down the phone, Gautam moved to turn on the computer. But I made him come back to bed to finish off what he’d begun.
Around 4 o’clock the same day, he hired an Indica to take him to Sultanpur. It was bitter and gray out, and I stood at the gate waving goodbye like some wife sending her husband off to war.
Gautam’s notes from this occasion are particularly vivid.
To drown out the chaos of Aurobindo Marg, he put in a CD with the words Old Hindi Songs for Lauri scribbled on it. The theme song from his favorite Guru Dutt movie played: “Yehdhuniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai?” (“Even if you meet withsuccess in this world, what does it really matter anyway?”) At a traffic light adorned with advertisements for a telecom company there was a knock at the window. A little girl was selling copies of Satya. She was barefoot and dirty and held a malnourished infant in her hands. Despite all that was on his mind — or maybe because of all that was on his mind — he gave the girl a ten-rupee note but said she could keep the paper, just like an NRI or some firang.
At Qutab Minar they veered onto MG Road, passing the mangled skeletons of fashion malls, illegal buildings that the Municipal Corporation had torn down to set an example and make the metro’s construction a smoother process. “Monuments to progress’s war,” Gautam called them. After twenty minutes of furniture shops, they turned right at a sign that read Manhattan Estates and then drove another kilometer.
Two rifle-wielding sentries manned the gate that led to the Kumar farmhouse.
I was all too familiar with the sights that greeted Gautam next: the fleet of antique American cars and the guards armed with semiautomatic weapons and sunglasses; the pool and the pagoda-like temple.
Gautam waited for Kumar in a dimly lit room with hardwood floors and ceilings, a sign of great wealth in a country whose forests have all but been eradicated. One of Husain’s Mother Teresa paintings hung on the wall, and a fire crackled in the corner. Its flames flickered so perfectly that Gautam wondered if it was real until a uniformed servant poked at its logs.
“Thank you for coming,” said the raspy-voiced man when he entered the room twenty minutes later. Gautam described Ashok as short and handsome. He was wearing a casual suit without a tie and had grown a light black beard during his week-long convalescence. This was the man who’d made me.
During business trips to Calcutta, Ashok always managed to spend a few hours in bed with me. He started to linger longer and longer after our sessions and eventually decided he could use a woman like me in Delhi. I left behind my life of servicing Communist officials and Marwaris in Sonagachi all too willingly and became his pet project, living proof that social mobility actually exists in this country. You must be thinking, How can a girl from such simple origins evolve into such a creature? That’s impossible.
Well, first of all, I didn’t start out life poor; before my seventh birthday I’d worn frocks, taken piano lessons, and learned to sing Rabindrasangeet. Besides, it’s not that difficult to hold a wine glass by the stem, use toilet paper, or shout styupid idyot at servants. There are many insurmountable challenges in this world, but learning how to mourn the country’s rural-urban divide at champagne dinners isn’t one of them. All you need is money and the backing of powerful people. Ashok Kumar gave me both.
Seating himself across from Gautam, Kumar started off by trying to charm him. He praised the article Gautam had written about his father the poet. But Gautam wasn’t up for chit chat. This was, after all, the monster responsible for the death of his friend.
“Mr. Kumar, you know why I’m here,” he said. “I know you’re directly connected to the murder of Khem Thakur, and I know about your financial links with the Canadians. Would you like to make a formal response to these allegations?”
“Why would I?”
“Why did you call me here then?”
“Because I’d like to ask you not to write these half-truths about me.”
“You can’t intimidate me, Mr. Kumar.”
Breaking from the conversation, Kumar picked up a phone. He ordered some fresh-squeezed orange juice and cappuccinos. Then he said, “You’ve learned quite a bit about me, Gautam. Don’t you know I never start off a relationship with threats? I first offer incentives.”
“Mr. Kumar, I can’t be bought.”
“Gautam, I’ve learned a lot about you as well.”
“I’m sure you have.”
“I know about Lauri,” Ashok declared, his eyes surely beady now.
“What does she have to do with any of this?”
“I’ve found out about your daughter, Gautam. I know Lauri gave birth to a child.” These words must have made Gautam sweaty and speechless. He’d never spoken out loud about the daughter he’d never met. “They live in America, which I know is a problem. But I can bring you to your daughter, Gautam.”
“How’s that?” His question was barely audible, a whisper.
“Just forget about all this nonsense. I’m asking you to forget about Khem Thakur, bauxite mining, and Ashok Kumar.”
“And then what?”
“It’s very simple. Do that and you’ll have a green card.”
After his trip to Kumar’s palace, Gautam avoided me and started smoking charas with a vengeance again. He stopped sleeping and began taking walks at odd hours, mulling over what would have been an easy decision for most. Children, they say, are the only things that give life meaning. But as he detailed in his journals, choosing to be united with his daughter meant Ashok getting away with it. And Gautam wasn’t sure if fatherhood was a responsibility he even wanted. He wasn’t sure if he could face Lauri Zeller or forgive her.
We hadn’t seen each other for three days when I showed up at his barsaati one evening just before sunset. It had been a particularly biting afternoon, so I’d wrapped myself in a beige shawl. This one I didn’t have to acquire for the assignment. My father had gifted it to my mother, and it was the only thing of value she’d managed not to sell. Suraj was pumping water into the tanks and greeted me at the gate. “It’s good that you’ve come,” he said. “I’m worried about Gautam bhaiyya.”
When I walked into the barsaati, Gautam was taking a hit from his chillum. His eyes were closed and he was relishing this action, as if the pipe were his lover. He’d never smoked in front of me before and looked like a real junkie.
Upon hearing me enter, he opened his eyes but didn’t stop sucking until he’d had his fill. Then he said, “I wasn’t expecting you,” in a soft, airy voice. It was completely devoid of the poise it’d been filled with since we’d gotten close.