JOHNNY GONE DOWN (28 page)

‘I didn’t join GE, you know. I couldn’t have faced myself if I had. I became a journalist for the
New York Times
in Asia instead, hoping, always hoping that somewhere I would discover some clue that led me to you. But after years of finding nothing, I gave you up for dead like everyone else had. No foreigner survived the Khmer Rouge years, not even one. You were either very lucky or very smart.’

I was neither, I thought, I was the idiot who kept chasing away his luck.

‘Tell me what happened,’ he said. He looked at me and began to cry softly again. ‘Did you lose your arm in Cambodia? You look so weak and unwell. When did you get out of there? Why didn’t I find you when I searched the length and breadth of the country?’

‘I don’t want to talk about the past,’ I said stiffly.

‘But I want to, Nick,’ he cried. ‘I’m living the life you were supposed to live. I’m crippled by guilt every time I remember the moment you thrust the
passport in my hand. Why did you do that if you want to run away on seeing me now?’

‘Bloody Hindi films,’ I said. ‘Everyone in this country is over the top.’

The car stopped in front of a palatial white marble house in a part of town I remembered as Lutyens Delhi, the playground of diplomats, ambassadors and the uber-rich.

A guard opened the imposing gates and we entered a long cemented driveway. Sam rolled down the car windows and the air filled with the familiar fragrances of my childhood.

A familiar sense of loss and regret began to creep over me as we stepped out of the car and walked through the manicured garden onto the front porch - when an angelic, curly-haired boy, about five or six years old, came running out of the house.

‘Nikhil, meet Nikhil,’ said Sam as he hugged his son. ‘This is the uncle after whom you were named.’

I shook his son’s hand awkwardly, feeling uncomfortable and protective at the same time. At least he would never be under pressure to live up to his name, I thought.

‘You’re back early. I just tucked Nikita into bed,’ said a woman, presumably Sam’s wife, as she stepped onto the porch.

‘Nikhil. Nikhil Arya,’ she gasped.

She looked like a model, but not in a glamorous, sexy way; more in an intelligent, news anchorish way.
Dusky, with sharp features and long black hair, she wasn’t the kind of person one could forget - which was why I was surprised that I didn’t remember her from school or anywhere else.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Err…’

Alisa,’ she said slowly. ‘You don’t know me, but I know you well. I don’t know what to say. We have pictures of you all over the house.’

‘He knows, Liz,’ said Sam. ‘He knows we think he is dead. Come, let’s go in.’

We walked into an elaborately designed hall with a fountain in the centre.

‘You were blind to beauty,’ I said. ‘When did you develop such taste?’

He pointed to Alisa. ‘I never did. Pearls before a swine.’

‘In more ways than one.’ I smiled at her.

‘You are alive,’ she said, still looking stunned. ‘I’m sorry, I mean…’

‘Don’t worry, I have to keep reminding myself as well,’ I told her. ‘Most days, I don’t even feel alive.’

‘I’m sure you guys have a lot to catch up on,’ she said, looking meaningfully at Sam and me. ‘I don’t want to bother you tonight. I’ll go tuck Nikhil in bed - the other Nikhil, I mean.’

‘The boy, not the ghost, you mean,’ I said.

‘We are all ghosts,’ said Sam sagely. ‘Ephemeral and transitory; here today, gone tomorrow.’

‘Bravo!’ I said. ‘The years haven’t taken a toll
on your gift for spewing meaningful sounding bullshit.’

I watched as Alisa walked up the stairs.

‘You overachieved,’ I said to Sam and we laughed like old times.

What!’… ‘No way.’… ‘Really?’… ‘But why?’… ‘Are you serious?’

‘We’d move faster if you stopped peppering everything with buts and whys,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why I did what I did. It just felt right at that point, though it all turned out wrong later.’

I held nothing back. I wanted to share it all with Sam, but I also wanted to hear myself talk. I wanted to explain my decisions to myself and understand why I had made all the wrong choices I made.

The hours ticked by. Midnight turned to dawn as Sam’s expression changed from bewilderment to pity to occasional laughter to grief. We sat on a couch with a bottle of whiskey untouched in front of us as I talked feverishly, arranging the pieces together in my head, trying to find a pattern in the events.

‘The funny thing is that I don’t know what I would do differently. I would change everything, yet I would change nothing. What if I hadn’t lost my arm in Cambodia, for instance? Would I have joined the monastery then - and would I have met
Lara on the flight? You don’t know her, but trust me when I say that any man would gladly give both his arms to be with her. See, that’s what confounds me. My happiest moments are linked inextricably to the saddest, and my worst choices are connected to my best. I know that forty-year-old MIT graduates aren’t usually broke, crippled, homeless, separated from their family, and on the run from police and mafia dons, but I don’t know what I would do differently. Except that whole Another Life fiasco of course - but then I wouldn’t have met you.’

When I finished, Sam had tears streaming down his face.

‘As my friend Marco would say, don’t be a faggot,’ I told him.

He didn’t smile. Instead, he came and shook my hand.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘You have suffered, but you are a hero,’ he said. ‘I always knew you were meant for greatness. You were different, you were special, but this is beyond incredible.’

‘Some hero,’ I said bitterly. ‘The only clothes I have, except my underwear, were stolen from you. Forty years, and I have built nothing, achieved nothing.’

‘You are a hero,’ Sam repeated.

‘Can you stop calling me that?’ I said. ‘Or should I curse you alternately in Hindi, Khmer, Thai,
Spanish, Portuguese, English, and even Java to get the message across?’

‘Everywhere you went, you touched people’s lives.’

‘Everyone touches someone’s life.’

‘You didn’t just touch them, you fundamentally changed them. Marco and I will never find a better friend than you, the monk a better student, Philip a better employee, and Daya a better opponent. And if you were so good to us, I can’t even imagine what kind of husband you were to Lara,’ he said. ‘If I was even half the person you are, I would die a happy man.’

‘If you were half the person I am, you would be without either arm and wouldn’t even have your own underwear.’

‘Don’t keep talking about being poor, for heaven’s sake,’ he said. ‘My blood boils, as Dharam paaji would say. Everything I have is because of you. Take everything. I need nothing now that I have found you.’

‘Is it a requirement for the CEO of a media corporation to be so filmy?’ I asked. ‘Anyway, money is the least of my concerns. I can make it again if I want to, I know that.’

I also knew that it wouldn’t stick. In my life, loss was as inevitable as breathing. That was why money, beyond what was required for the basics, had never meant much.

The doorbell rang just then. I stiffened. Had they tracked me down already?

‘Oops, my squash partner!’ said Sam.

I relaxed.

‘You are into sports now?’ I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Remember how I used to nag you to get yourself into shape - but you never listened. Why now?’

‘Even this is because of you,’ he said simply. ‘You let me get out of Cambodia because you thought I wasn’t fit, didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t think, I knew,’ I said with a smile.

‘I didn’t miss a day of exercise after that. In fact, everything that happened afterwards was because of you. I went into journalism instead of GE, that’s how I got to know of cable television before the others; one thing led to another and the film studio happened. In between, I met Alisa, who was a news anchor on one of my TV channels,’ he said. ‘I should be based in Bombay for my work but I run things from Delhi because of all the memories from the past.’

The doorbell rang again.

‘Well, don’t miss today’s exercise then,’ I said, touched by Sam’s generosity.

‘Are you sure you are going to be all right?’ he asked.

‘Yes, big sahibji. If I could survive Phnom Penh and Rio, I can get by quite well in your palace, don’t you think?’

Sam got up to open the door. ‘By the way, don’t tell this guy your real name. Unless you want to spend the rest of the morning explaining how a ghost came back to life. Everyone has heard of you here.’

The door opened and a short, lean guy with a busy air entered the house. He walked with quick, short steps and with his angular face and slightly curved posture, he looked like, well, a lizard. I chided myself for the thought. Who was I to judge him? For all I knew, my missing arm made me look like a kangaroo.

‘What’s happening? You aren’t even ready yet,’ he told Sam.

Then he noticed me and stared curiously.

‘This is Nick, a friend from MIT,’ said Sam. ‘And Nick, this is Ram.’

‘Ram Lal,’ said the man, shaking my hand. ‘Partner and Managing Director at MSG Consulting.’

Sam laughed.

‘I’m going to change into my gear. You two keep each other company.’ He winked at me. ‘You have a lot in common.’

‘What do you do?’ Ram asked as soon as Sam left, his tongue darting in and out of his mouth.

I was silent for a second.

‘I am between jobs,’ I said finally.

He looked at me with the expected disdain. In his eyes - and mine as well - I was a loser in a
poorly fitting suit who had just spent the night on his friend’s couch.

‘You should have hired better lawyers,’ he said.

I looked at him quizzically.

‘You’ve just been through a divorce, haven’t you?’ he said.

‘Not exactly,’ I replied. ‘I just kind of ran into Sam last night.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Did you lose your job?’

I thought about this for a moment and nodded.

He looked at me triumphantly.

‘Solving problems is what I do for a living,’ he said. ‘What work did you do?’

Waiting, running, scrounging, meditating, drug-trafficking, sharp shooting, money laundering, computer porn - you name it, I’ve done it.

‘Last, I was in software,’ I said.

‘Ah, technology,’ he said, as if it explained everything that had gone wrong in my life. A Cambodian rebel army and a Brazilian drug cartel be damned, the root of all my problems was technology. ‘It’s a bummer, but I always knew the bubble would burst. What do you plan to do next?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

Never was a truer word spoken. I didn’t even know what I would be doing a minute from now.

‘Have you thought of management consulting?’

‘Not really.’

‘I work for MSG Consulting,’ he said proudly. ‘I run the India office, as a matter of fact.’

‘Okay,’ I said.

‘You know MSG, right?’

‘Vaguely,’ I said - which was true. The name did sound familiar, but his eyes popped out at my response.

‘I’ve been out of the business world for a while,’ I said, more to console him than to cover my ignorance.

His eyes continued to bulge.

I felt so bad for him that I almost told him that I hadn’t done a decent day’s work in twenty-five years, when Sam entered the living room.

‘Has he told you yet that he pulled ten million last year in M-fucking-SG?’ said Sam.

‘We didn’t get to that point,’ said Ram haughtily.

‘I told you. You have a lot in common.’ Sam laughed again.

An army of people descended on me as soon as Sam left. A motherly housekeeper gave me sweet, milky tea; another made piping hot paranthas; a third poured me a bath; Alisa fawned on me; the kids spoke shyly to me, probably at their mother’s insistence; a male servant escorted me to another palatial room while another turned down the bed for me. I was comfortably tucked in when Sam walked into the room, hot, sweaty and in remarkably good humour.

‘You live like a feudal lord,’ I said. ‘I counted at least ten housekeepers, and Alisa said the day is just starting.’

‘Generating employment, my friend.’ He laughed. ‘It’s my moral duty, just like your moral duty is to give up your life for your friends. By the way, you made quite an impression on Ram. He thought you had a great sense of humour.’

‘Bastard, you knew what would happen,’ I said. ‘How the hell was I supposed to know what MSG is?’

He doubled up with laughter. ‘There are many things you don’t know, my friend. I have another special guest for you to meet tonight.’

‘Fuck off. I am not meeting any more of your corporate types,’ I said. ‘I crashed off that path a long time back.’

‘No, no, he isn’t a corporate type at all. I’ll ask Alisa to prime you. Why don’t you get some sleep now?’