“They weren’t dying of drought in ’twenty-eight,’” one of the paperboys says angrily. Ganguly pulls up, next witticism aborted. Bachelor reporters do not speak out of turn to Prime Ministerial Private Secretaries. Shaheen Badoor Khan uses the embarrassment to duck out of the conversation. The low-caste girls follow him with their eyes. Power has the same smell, town or country. Shaheen Badoor Khan dips his head to them, but Bilquis is on an intercept course with her former lawyer friends. The Ladies Who Used to Litigate. Bilquis’s career, like a generation of educated working women, has vanished behind a veil of social functions and restrictions. No law, no imam, no caste tradition took them out of the workplace. Why work, when five men claw for every job and any educated, socially adept woman can marry into money and prestige? Welcome to the glass zenana.
The clever women are talking now about a widow of their acquaintance; an accomplished woman, a Shivaji activist, quite intelligent. No sooner back from the burning ghat and what do you know? Bankrupt. Not a paisa. Every last stick of furniture gone as surety. Twenty forty-seven, and still an educated woman can be turned out on to the streets. At least she hasn’t had to go to, you know. The “O” people. Has anyone heard from recently? Must look her up. Girls need to stick together. Solidarity, all that. Can’t trust men.
Musicians take up positions in their pandal, tuning, striking notes off each other. Shaheen Badoor Khan will make his getaway when Mumtaz Huq comes on. There is a tree near the gate, he can hide in it’s shadows and when the applause starts, slip out and call a taxi. Another has seen the opportunity, a man in a rumpled, civil servant’s suit holding a full flute of Omar Khayyam. His hands around the glass are quite refined, as are his features, but he carries a heavy five o’clock shadow. He has great dark, animal eyes, with animal fear in them, in the way that animals instinctively first fear everything.
“Do you not fancy the music?” Shaheen Badoor Khan says.
“I prefer classical,” the man says. He has an English-educated voice.
“I’ve always thought Indira Shankar very underrated myself.”
“No, I mean Classical; Western Classical. Renaissance, Baroque.”
“I’m aware of it but I don’t really have the taste for it. I’m afraid it all sounds like hysteria to me.”
“That’s the Romantics,” says the man with a private smile but he has decided Shaheen Badoor Khan shares some kindred feeling with him. “So, what line are you in yourself?”
“I am a civil servant,” Shaheen Badoor Khan says. The man gives his answer consideration.
“So am I,” he says. “Might I ask what area?”
“Information management,” Shaheen Badoor Khan says.
“Pest control,” the man says. “Congratulations then to our hosts.” He raises his glass and Shaheen Badoor Khan observes that the man’s suit is smudged with dust and smoke. “Yes, indeed,” Shaheen Badoor Khan says. “A fortunate child indeed.” The man grimaces.
“I cannot agree with you there, sir. I have considerable issues with geneline therapy.”
“Why so?”
“It is a recipe for revolution.”
Shaheen Badoor Khan starts at the vehemence in the man’s voice. He continues, “The last thing Bharat needs is another caste. They may call themselves Brahmins, but in fact they are the true Untouchables.” He remembers himself. “Forgive me, I know nothing about you, for all I know.”
“Two sons,” Shaheen Badoor Khan says. “The old way. Safely at university, God be praised, where no doubt they’re at things like this every night, prowling for wedding material.”
“We are a deformed society,” the man says.
Shaheen Badoor Khan wonders if this man is a djinn sent to to test him for everything he speaks is in Shaheen’s own heart. He was remembering a young married couple, their careers dazzling, their path luminous, the parents so proud, so delighted for their children. And, of course, the grandchildren, the grandsons. Everything you have, save this one thing, a son. A son and spare. Then the appointments with the doctors they had not asked to see, and the families poring over the results. Then the bitter little pills, and the bloody times. Shaheen Badoor Khan cannot count how many daughters he flushed away. His hands have twisted the limbs of Bharati society.
He would talk more with the man, but his attention is turned to the party. Shaheen follows his direction: the woman Bilquis had derided, the good-looking country woman, makes her way through the excited crowd. The arrival of the diva is imminent.
“My own wife,” the man says. “I am summoned. Do excuse me. A pleasure to have met you.” He sets his champagne down on the ground and goes to her. Applause as Mumtaz Huq arrives on the stage. She smiles and smiles and smiles to her audience. Her first song tonight will be a tribute to the generous hosts and a hope for joy, long life, and prosperity for their graced child. The players strike up. Shaheen Badoor Khan leaves.
Shaheen Badoor Khan’s raised hand fails to stop any of the infrequent taxis in this private-mobility suburb. A phatphat drums past, turn at a gap in the concrete central reserve, and pulls over to the verge. Shaheen Badoor Khan starts towards it but the driver twists the throttle and surges away. Shaheen Badoor Khan glimpses a shadowed figure in swathes of voluminous clothing beneath the plastic canopy. The phatphat again crosses the median strip, rattles towards Shaheen Badoor Khan. A face peeks out from the bubble, a face elegant, alien, fey. Cheekbones cast shadows. Light glints from the hairless, mica-dusted scalp.
“You are welcome to share my ride.”
Shaheen Badoor Khan reels back as if a djinn has called the secret name of his soul. “Not here, not here,” he whispers.
The nute blinks yts eyes, a slow kiss. The engine races, the little phatphat pulls into the night traffic. Streetlight catches on silver around the nute’s neck, a Siva trishul.
“No,” Shaheen Badoor Khan pleads. “No.”
He is a man of responsibilities. His sons have grown and left, his wife is all but a stranger to him these years but he has a war, a drought, a nation to care for. Yet the directions he gives to the Maruti driver who finally stops for him are not to the Khan haveli. They are to another place, a special place. A place he hoped he would never need go to again. Frail hope. The special place is down a gali too narrow for vehicles, overhung by intricately worked wooden jharokas and derelict air-conditioning units. Shaheen Badoor Khan opens the cab door and steps out into another world. His breath is tight and shallow and fluttering. There. In the brief light of a door’s opening and closing, two silhouettes, too slim, too elegant, too fey for mundane humanity.
“Oh,” he cries softly. “Oh.”
14: TAL
Tal runs. A voice calls yts name from the cab. Yt does not look. Yt does not stop. Yt runs, shawl pluming out behind it in a blue of ultra-blue paisleys. Horns blare, sudden looming faces yell abuse; sweat and teeth. Tal reels back from a near miss with a small fast Ford; music thud-thud-thuds. Yt spins, dodges the shocking blare of truck horns, slips between a rural pickup and a bus pulling out from a halt. Tal halts a moment on the median strip for a glance back. The bubble cab still purrs on the footpath. A figure stands there, glimpsed through the headlight glare. Tal plunges into the steel river.