A Cut-Like Wound (12 page)

‘Should I wait, sir?’ PC David asked, trying to hide his curiosity at the noise that boomed and spilled over into the front yard.

Gowda shook his head. ‘No, you can go back.’

Gowda fished out his key and stuck it into the keyhole. But the door was latched from within. He hammered on the door. There was no response.

Gowda walked around the house and peered through the window into Roshan’s room. The boy had brought the stereo into his room. And he was prancing around in his underwear, head banging!

He tapped on the window. Once. Twice. He felt his irritation compound into rage. He had to tap on the window several times before Roshan noticed his father staring at him.

Gowda didn’t know what triggered it off – the frustration he felt at not knowing what to do next on the manja thread case, the irritation at being locked out of his own house, annoyance at seeing that his Bullet had been used by the boy without even a cursory ‘if I may’, his blocked sinuses, his growling belly, the thought of yet another pointless evening stretching ahead, the emptiness of his bed, the tedium of an everyday that seemed relentless – all of it sent his blood pressure soaring and smashed the last vestige of control.

When Roshan opened the door, Gowda reached across and slapped him, snarling, ‘When are you going back?’

SUNDAY, 7 AUGUST

Gowda stared at the head of foam in his glass. He raised his eyes and looked across the table at Michael. ‘I can’t believe I said that to my son,’ he said despondently. ‘What kind of a father am I?’

Michael toyed with the coaster on which the beer mugs had been placed. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, Bob,’ he said quietly. ‘Our fathers said as much to us. If not the same words, something similar. We put it out of our minds, didn’t we?’

Gowda nodded. His father and he had a turbulent relationship. Nothing he did ever seemed to please his father. Basketball, his friends, the science forum, his plans to join the Indian Police Service. All through his student years he had felt the weight of his father’s disapproving gaze and once, the bite of his belt. His father wanted him to write a bank test and join the State Bank of India or Canara Bank. ‘You will have an organized life,’ he had said each time Gowda talked about his dreams for himself as an IPS officer.

Gowda enrolled for his postgraduate degree and prepared for the Civil Services exam. He failed his first attempt. He got as far as the interview in his second attempt but failed again.

In the end, Gowda succumbed to his father’s expectations for him. After his post-graduation, he never touched a basketball again. He wrote the bank test and passed.

Three years later, bank clerk Gowda had a rude awakening. A college mate walked into the bank and was surprised to see Gowda in the teller’s cage. ‘So they finally put you behind bars, Gowda.’ The girl giggled, running her fingers along the
mesh of the cage. ‘And I always thought you would be the one putting people behind bars!’

Gowda flushed. He counted out her money carefully, daubing his finger on the wet sponge.

That evening, Gowda went looking for a place to start basketball practice again. He didn’t tell anyone about his plans but when the next Karnataka state recruitment notifications were published, Gowda wrote the test.

Gowda announced his new avatar in life only after everything was in place. ‘I have joined the Karnataka police,’ he announced in the middle of dinner, tearing a piece of akki roti and dipping it into a small bowl of koli saaru. He was prepared to battle this through. It was his life, after all.

His father looked up from the spinach mossoppu he insisted on every night as an accompaniment to rice, roti or mudde and murmured, ‘You always wanted to be a policeman, didn’t you? But why did you leave it so late? You have lost out on so many years of service now.’

‘When do you start?’ his mother asked, placing an akki roti on his plate and ladling some more of the chicken curry into his bowl.

Gowda was baffled. He had expected fireworks and recrimination from his father; much hand wringing and crying from his mother. And here they were, calm as a firmly set pot of curd and as unruffled by his change of career.

‘You don’t mind?’ he asked, trying to make sense of his father’s quiet acceptance.

‘Why should I?’ His father’s eyebrows rose. ‘This is a government job too, with an assured pension. And you will have the kind of power no bank employee can even dream of. Besides, Nagendra is already in the SBI, so we can be sure of bank loans if we need any.’

His mother smiled. ‘You must take a photograph of yourself in full uniform … I want to send it to your aunt in Pune.’

Gowda shook his head. Three fucking years of his life wasted in a bloody bank and he had thought he had done it to make them happy. And they seemed just as pleased at the thought of a police officer son.

There was no knowing what parents really expected of you. He had told himself he wouldn’t be that sort of a father. One you had to make allowances for, be patient with, even forgive.

Gowda grimaced and drank deeply.

Michael smiled. ‘I hardly see my sons, you know, Borei. So enjoy your boy’s presence while he is at home. Once he leaves, he is gone…’

‘Your boys?’ Gowda asked.

Michael’s mouth tightened into a line. ‘One is in New Zealand. The other’s in Melbourne where I am. But he may as well be in New Zealand. I saw them last when Becky died.’

Gowda nodded. He searched his mind for something they could talk about without it touching a nerve, a still healing wound. This catching-up business wasn’t so easy. Too much time had lapsed. They were two different men whose lives had taken different trajectories.

‘Do you remember that place, Variety, on Residency road, where we used to go?’ Gowda asked suddenly, seizing on a subject that was guaranteed to trigger reminiscence and merriment.

Michael smiled. The cheapest beer in town. And rum that burnt a trail as it went down your throat and was guaranteed to get you drunk very quickly. It was the greatest lure for any student. Gowda, Michael and a few others had been
regulars. Weekend regulars, they would have been quick to clarify.

Life then had been structured around their haunts. Every hour and day had its own specific texture and rhythm. Gathering at noon at Mamu’s canteen, which was housed in a small tile-roofed shop beyond the men’s loo at St Joseph’s, and crunching on mutton samosas. Afternoons in Ayah Park at Rest House Crescent, dubbed as Ganja Park. Sitting in a giant cement pipe that was part of the park’s play space for kids and smoking grass.

Heading to Rex Theatre on Brigade Road to the slot machine games parlour between its two gates. Catching an English movie at Blue Diamond. And then ambling to Bascos, which had cabaret shows. Gaping at the black-and-white photographs of the dancers in the glass case – Ruby, Suzy, Lily…

‘Remember the one time we took Urmila to Bascos?’ Michael grinned.

Gowda’s face smoothened into an expressionless mask.

Urmila had demanded that she be taken along. And she had hated that Gowda gaped as much as the other boys. Her snide remarks had only made them laugh harder.

Michael frowned. ‘She said she tried calling you a few times. But you didn’t take the call.’

Gowda shrugged. ‘Did she? Sometimes I ignore numbers I don’t recognize. It is usually some bank or credit card company asking if I want a loan.’

Michael gulped down his beer and poured himself a glass from the pitcher. ‘Well, here’s her number,’ he said, pulling out a paper from his wallet.

Gowda took the scrap of paper and let it lie on the table.

‘Call her, Mudde. C’mon, call her. We were all friends
once, remember! What happened between the two of you is so far back…’

Gowda punched in the number with great reluctance. Something leaden sat in the pit of his stomach.

The phone at the other end rang six times before a woman’s voice murmured a ‘hello’.

Gowda’s heart stilled. She sounded the same after twenty-seven years.

‘Hello, who is this,’ she asked and then, ‘Borei, is that you? Do you know I have been trying to reach you for the last two days?’

‘Hello, Urmila,’ he said softly.

‘Ask her to join us,’ Michael mouthed from across the table.

‘Michael and I are at Pecos. Do you know the pub? It’s the one on Rest House Road…’

Gowda gestured to Michael. ‘She can’t come,’ he mouthed.

‘Sure, I understand. Tomorrow? I am not sure … Let me call you.’ Gowda clicked shut his phone. ‘There, satisfied?’ he asked Michael.

Michael peered into his beer mug gravely. ‘What’s the harm in meeting her? You were inseparable once.’

‘Once.’ Gowda’s face was grim. Once was the operative word.

It was almost half past one when Gowda rode into the two-storeyed family house on 7th Main, Jayanagar 5th Block.

As he parked his bike, he saw the two coconut trees were laden with coconuts ready for picking. He shrugged; it wasn’t his business any more. He had severed ties with this house and its demands. Now he could just be a guest here.

Gowda paused. Was this how Roshan felt when he was home? As if he no longer felt any ties to the place he had once called home? Gowda felt a physical jolt of pain at the thought.

When Roshan was a baby and even as a young toddler, Gowda would often cradle his sleeping son to his chest. And he would feel a fierce love, a great tenderness suffuse him. He would bend and nuzzle his son’s cheek and feel tears swell in his eyes at the milky sweet smell of his child’s skin. He would do anything to keep his son from harm’s way. Destroy anything that threatened his child. He would do everything he could for Roshan, he had sworn then. This was the child he had slapped. He flinched, thinking of how Roshan had reeled from the force of the slap.

‘What are you doing? Who are you frowning at?’ Nagendra asked from the doorway.

Gowda smiled at his brother. A thin watery smile as he sought to compose his emotions.

‘I thought I heard your bike,’ Nagendra said, looking at his brother carefully. ‘Are you all right?’

Gowda nodded.

‘The coconuts need to be plucked,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to send someone?’

Nagendra cocked his head ruefully. ‘It would be good if you did. Meena can’t seem to find anyone. As it is, she keeps threatening to chop the jackfruit tree down.’ He added, ‘It’s not the same without you at home, Borei.’

Gowda’s eyes flicked through the living room as he walked to the dining room. It was a little more than a month since he had visited. The TV and its cabinet had gone and instead there was a huge wall-mounted one. And there were new curtains.

Nagendra saw Gowda’s eyes settle on the TV. ‘The old one was giving trouble,’ he said. ‘There was a good exchange offer. And then Meena thought the old curtains needed to be changed. They were beginning to look tatty.’

Gowda smiled, trying hard to not show how unsettled he felt by the changes. ‘Good decision.’ He cocked his head. ‘I’ve been thinking of getting an LCD TV too, but with Mamtha and Roshan at Hassan, it seems pointless to invest so much money in a new TV.’

‘Aren’t you coming in for lunch?’ his sister-in-law called out.

‘You are late,’ his father grumbled as Gowda pulled a chair out and sat himself at the dining table. Lunch was in progress.

‘I thought you were not coming,’ his sister-in-law said, setting a plate before him.

Gowda said nothing but ladled the bisibele bath into his plate. His brother pushed a bowl of tomato and onion raita towards him. Gowda smiled gratefully and bit into a crisp.

‘How is Roshan?’ his father asked.

‘He is here. He arrived yesterday morning,’ Gowda said.

‘Why didn’t you bring him then?’ Meena asked.

‘Take it easy … the boy must have things to do on his own,’ his brother said. ‘He is not four years old to be dragged everywhere his parents go.’

Gowda shot his brother a grateful look. How could he tell them that through the night Roshan’s hurt face had kept slipping into his mind. He had skulked out of the house early, asking Shanthi to stay back to make sure Roshan had everything he needed.

‘I would like to have seen my grandson but it is all “take it easy” these days,’ their father growled. ‘That is the problem
with your generation. Everywhere you go, everyone is taking it easy. The clerk at the bank would rather stand out and smoke while we pensioners wait. The doctor at the hospital is talking on his mobile phone while checking my BP … when I protest, they tell me: Aja, take it easy! The world is going to the dogs all because of this “take it easy” policy. And the two of you aren’t any better. Look at the coconut tree outside! And the state of this house…’