Tal says, “Nanakji, you mustn’t trouble yourself. It’s nothing to do with us. We’ve Stepped Away.” Yt feels Nanak stiffen against yts touch.
“But we haven’t, baba. No one can. There are no noncombatants in this. We have our beautiful lives and out crushing little things of the heart, but we are humans. We are part of it. Only now it is us divided against ourselves. We will be at each other’s throats for our children’s futures. All the middle classes have learned from the Lost Women decades is how easy it is to create a new caste, and how we love that, especially when the bindi is in your DNA. It will rule us for a thousand years, this genetic Raj.”
It is full dark now. Tal feels cool air from an unexpected quarter on yts skin. Yt shivers, a small thing on a huge continent, sensing a future with no place for yt, Stepped Away, genetically noncombatant. An Australian accent calls up from below.
“Good evening to you up there, Nanakji! Rain in Hyderabad, I’ve just heard.”
Nanak lifts ytself half out of the scented water but the caller in the night cannot be seen.
“Good news indeed!” yt replies. “We shall certainly celebrate that!”
“I’ll drink to that!”
There is a soft sound from the hatch to the main bridge. The bathers turn. A nute stands there, wrapped in a crisp blue yukata, arms wrapped round itself.
“I heard. I thought, could I?”
“All are welcome,” Nanak says, fishing in the ice bucket for a Kingfisher.
“Is it true, is the rain really coming?” the nute asks as yt slips out of yts blue cotton robe. Tal experiences a cold shock at the narrow shoulders, the broad child-giving hips, the hormone-injection flattened breast buds, the sacred triangle of the shaven yoni. Pre-op. The shy one, the one Nanak had said might bolt. Yt tries to remember the three years yt had lived as a pre-op, trying to save the deposit on a berth on the Fugazi. Like a memory of a nightmare it is a series of disjointed impressions. The three-a-day hormone jabs. The constant shaving. The endless roll of mantras to stop thinking like a gendered, be a nute.
“Yes, I believe it’s coming at last,” Nanak says as the nute steps down into the water beside yt and all sexual identity is erased. They move together through the blood-warm water, touching, as nutes do. Tal sleeps that night by Nanak’s side, curled up and deep, touching, as nutes do, as friends who sometimes sleep together.
“Take care in that Varanasi,” Nanak calls to Tal as yt climbs down the scabbed side of Fugazi to the waiting Riva, skipping on the filthy water.
“I’ll try,” Tal calls back, “but it’s a crushing little thing of the heart.”
Looking out of the window as the hydrofoil pulls away from the astonishing sweep of the Bund waterfront, Tal sees a plane of churned grey cloud spread into the south and east further than yt can see. ROMANCE AND ADVENTURE MIX booms in yts inner ears.
As Tal had hoped, yt wows Varanasi. More specifically, yt wows Indiapendent Productions, Meta-Soap Design Department. Precisely, yt wows Neeta on the desk, who claps her hands and tells yt yt looks faaaabulous and yt obviously had a good time in horrid Patna and oh I almost forgot there’s a letter for you, special delivery and all.
The Special Delivery wears a plastic wallet with priority and hand deliver and lightning flash seals and tricky little strings to pull here that released tabs there which in turn enable you to rip a perforated strip and then draw out the inner IMPORTANT DOCUMENT liner on its quick release thumb-pull and tear open the sealed plastic along the marked perforations and only then do you get the message. A single sheet of paper. Handwritten; these words. Must see you again. Can you come tonight, August 12? The club, whenever. Please. Thank you. And a single looping initial at the bottom.
“It’s like Town and Country, but real!” Neeta declares.
Tal reads the letter a dozen times in the phatphat to the White Fort. As yt tarts up the look for the big night (if there’s anyone else in the club with the look, yt’ll have their eyes) the television news is all war bores and the entertainment channels are all full of smiling people dancing in echelon and for the first time yt can’t watch any of it. Nothing for it. Yt grabs yts bag and dashes. Mama Bharat is out on the landing leaving out trash.
“Can’t stop, can’t stop, hot hot date,” Tal shouts. Mama Bharat namastes, then yt’s down the stairs, squeezing past a couple of men in suits who stare just those few seconds too long. Yt watches them pass yts door and up the next flight. Down in the pillared sublevel the cab is waiting and tonight tonight tonight the kids can shout what they like and call names and make animal and sucking noises and they just fall around Tal like marigold petals. On yts system this night of nights are STRANGE CLUB, FUGAZI FLOAT TANK and, dare yt dare yt dare yt? FUCK MIX.
At the entry to the alley of the Banana Club Tal slides up yts sleeve and programmes in blissfullfloatyanticipationsmoulder. The protein chips kick in as the grey wood door opens. The blind bird-woman in the crimson sari is there, head tilted back slightly, fingers filled with dwarf bananas. She might not have moved since Tal’s last visit.
“Welcome back, welcome back, lovely thing! Here, help, have.” She offers her fruit. Tal gently curls her fingers on the bananas.
“No, not tonight.” Tal hesitates, shy to ask, “Is there.”
The blind woman points to the topmost gallery. No one’s in tonight, though it’s early in the month. Rumours of war and rain. Down in the central courtyard a nute in a long swirling skin performs a kathak with a grace beyond classical. The second level is deserted but for two couples talking on the divans. The third level is leather club armchairs and low tables. Brass table lanterns shed a glow-worm ambience. The chill zone. There is only one guest up here tonight. Khan sits in the chair at the end of the gallery, hands resting symmetrically on the armrests in that way that Tal has always thought timelessly classy. Very English. Eyes meet. Tal blinks a blessing. Khan is so sweet, he doesn’t know the language. Tal trails yts hand along the wooden rail. Sandalwood has been used in the construction, the handrail leaves a pheromone imprint on Tal’s palm.
“Oh, you,” Tal says as yt curls ytself into a chair at right angles to Khan. Yt waits for a smile, a kiss, any greeting. Khan starts edgily with a small grunt. There is a white envelope on the low fat-legged table. Tal takes out yts own letter, neatly quartered and sets it beside the envelope. Yt crosses yts smooth thighs.