A Bad Character (24 page)

The men, they’re all at one table, the men and me, talking about business, the latest expensive watches, which airline has the finest first-class service, which politicians are favourable to use. The wives are at another table, they talk about the new Chanel store that is going to open here soon, discuss whether they will summer in a Swiss chalet this year or London again. They don’t talk to me, don’t like to acknowledge I exist. I don’t ever sit with them. I don’t care. These women are driven home early in the night. Because of the children, because of their parents, because of their reputation. Because, because, because.

Then the whisky comes out, the deals are made. This is where the real pleasure begins.

I step away from this near the end and go up to the roof to see the morning arrive. I walk out the door and slowly to the edge, high above the city, stand up on the wall and look down on the construction sites that are below. Vast construction, building the future city, the cranes and the sun all together as one. I flick my cigarette over the edge. Watch idly to see if it will hit anyone. Think briefly about stepping off myself.

All the workers’ faces appear to me, caught between the pale sunrise and the artificial light, men, women, children, slaves to Laxmi, getting the job done. I think for a moment I can see his face among them.

The strangest emptiness here.

The most deafening emptiness here.

The knowledge that I don’t belong.

But I still visited Aunty from time to time. We met on good terms, she asked my opinion on certain things. I sat in the living rooms of those chattering women to hear them talk. About this scandal and that, about servants and marriage and divorce. And they talk about 9/11 too,
about the imminent Muslim threat. One woman says that Pakistan is behind it all, and another replies, At least now America will know our true worth.

And Aunty, she talks about us Hindus. She says, Us Hindus never hurt anyone in this world, we’re the most peace-loving people on earth. If anything, we’re too kind. We only defend ourselves when we’re provoked, and we’re always being provoked. But what can we do? It’s our fate to be abused.

A year later, from sunset to rising sun, when all the dust has settled, I drop acid again in the Himalayas, where the stars are in the sky with Shiva, and Parvati is in her valley with me. Shiva and Parvati, the two of them sailing across the night in chariots big as join-the-dot stars.

From this high up in the mountains you can picture a great flood sweeping across India, from the southern ocean up through the jungles and the plains. But I’m
not looking down on India tonight, only up at the constellations and the snow-capped mountains and the glaciers that are glinting in gunmetal grey with the smell of apple orchards in their wake.

In a simple concrete room built on the hillside far away, the second movement of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto plays. Then the usual psytrance that marks this place. But in the orchard the noise doesn’t rise above a whisper and this is where the acid holds sway.

That familiar ache, the glimmering skull. There is nothing like this valley, where Shiva dances through the mountaintops with serpents around his head, leaving trails and cosmic explosions, the whole night echoing conciliatory sounds, the constellations rippling as if a rock has been thrown into the sky. Everything has a pulse and a heart to beat here, I see them with my open eyes. Shiva and Parvati too, flitting like a pair of hummingbirds. I watch this dance for hours.

But when the first tendrils of light creep in, it’s time to say goodbye. Coiling round one another, they vanish from me for ever. I wave at them as they go, poke my tongue out and skip around the orchards like a loon before collapsing on the ground.

In this new and empty world to which I belong, goats trot along chalk paths, men kindle fires on the slopes, women build them in their houses under blackened pots, smoke seeping through the roof tiles. Music meanders from temples on the morning wind, dipping in and out, suddenly louder, quieter again, and all the purple flowers of the valley are set ablaze, the sun burning up the mountainside.

The haze dissolves to a deep and lasting blue and the moon like a pelvis sinks to the Ganga’s base. I put my hands in the grass, feel the earth beneath my feet, see the eagles soar above, hear the insects down below. And lying on my back just like the girl I’ve always been, I watch the clouds drift and glow across the roof of the world, becoming newspaper headlines that tell the story of my life, the last one saying, Fuck you, I survive.

I never find out about his fiancée, I never see his parents again, I never discover what happens to them, I never learn the reasons why he lied. I never know if his actions were planned or out of his hands. I let the question live with me a long time. But I’m beyond that; it makes no difference to me now. These words are his cremation, I’ve already watched him burn.

What’s left is this: I went to the dhaba one night to see for myself, Ali told me where it was. I set off alone at 3 a.m. I drove slowly through the streets on to the highway. The silence was the kind felt at the end of a long journey, when all language has been exhausted and the mind is left alone with the things it has seen.

Around five in the morning I reached the place just as the sky was beginning to turn, pulling up alongside the trucks and the coaches and the flashing neon sign. I sat in my car for what seemed like an age, but in the end I didn’t go in. I watched the entrance instead, saw the men asleep on the charpoys outside, a few still drinking at the
tables within, who in the blue light of dawn looked so lonely and frail. Out in the desert where the sun should have been, the horizon was disfigured by the new cities. I drove off again.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Deepti Kapoor grew up in Northern India and attended university in New Delhi, where she worked for several years as a journalist.
A Bad Character
is her first novel. She lives in Goa.