Noon (4 page)

The subject of the flat was dropped for the moment.

*   *   *

The rains were the worst Delhi had seen in a decade. They sent children dancing through puddles, they brought out black umbrellas and bicycles, they flooded underpasses; the
Suzuki was stranded; Rehan floated paper boats in protest outside the house and tortured earthworms. He had apologized to his mother, but he still refused to move to the flat.

He had also become obsessed with the newspaper’s coverage of the twins’ grandmother’s murder. He could only read slowly; and, eventually, tiring of the story’s text, he
would focus on the grainy, black and white images of the apartment block the old lady had lived in.
The Times of India
printed the image of the narrow, four-storey building – not unlike
the one Udaya had shown Rehan – over and over again. The sight of it in bright sunlight, its entrances and windows black, never failed to chill him. He began to have terrible dreams.

One night, his mother was a mad Medusa with floating hair riding in the back of a jeep with a strange man. In another she was the girlfriend of the man in the leather jacket, plotting the old
woman’s murder. Rehan would wake up in the bed next to her, crying and gasping, recounting his dream as quickly as possible so that she could defuse it.

Udaya, watching him in this state, caught between nightmares and fixations, became convinced that his fears had other depths. In Delhi, in those days, on the cusp of change, child psychiatry was
a rare thing, and it carried a stigma. But the dreams became so violent, the obsessions so unrelenting, that she began asking around.

*   *   *

Rehan had gone to the birthday party of his friend Karim Javeri. The Javeris were a rich Muslim family with a large house in Malcha Marg. When Udaya drove up to pick him up, she
was met at the gate by Mrs Javeri, dressed in an embroidered cream kurta. Rehan was still playing inside and Mrs Javeri asked Udaya if she might have a word in private.

‘Mrs Tabassum, I hope you don’t mind . . .’

‘Just Udaya is fine.’

‘Udaya, I hope you don’t mind my talking to you about this. It’s a very small thing, but I thought you should know.’

‘Not at all. Please go ahead, Mrs Javeri.’

‘Naseem is fine.’

‘Naseem.’

‘Well, the thing is that we were all sitting, us adults, my husband, Sahil, and a few of our friends, inside the drawing room a moment ago. The cake had been cut; the children had finished
their games, passing the parcel and what not; some were taking rides on the eli, others opening return presents, when your boy, Rehan – a sweet boy; one of Karim’s very dear friends
– came up to where we were sitting. He didn’t say anything, or do anything . . .’ Here, Mrs Javeri became flustered. ‘I mean, he wasn’t rude. He just stood there for a
few seconds, quietly, till one of us took notice of him. And then he said, straight out of the blue, to my husband: “You are not, by any chance . . .” These were his exact words –
“Sahil, my father?”

‘That was it. Nothing else. Nothing untoward. Just this. And when my husband, a little surprised naturally, said, “No, son, I’m not,” he turned around and walked away. A
small thing, Udaya, you know, but still, I felt if I was the mother, I should like to be informed. I hope you don’t mind my . . .’

‘No, no, Mrs Javeri, not at all. Thank you for telling me,’ Udaya said, trying her best to appear calm. But, inside, she felt a kind of wonder at the changes taking place in her son,
at the inscrutable logic of his fear.

On the way home, Udaya and Rehan hardly spoke. The light, after months of haze, had acquired sharpness and length. A cool, faintly scented wind was blowing. It was nearly Dussehra.

Gently Udaya mentioned what had occurred at the birthday party. ‘You didn’t really believe he was your father, did you?’

‘No,’ Rehan replied, and became quiet.

‘Would you like to meet him, your father?’ Udaya asked.

Rehan was silent for a moment, then said: ‘Maybe, but not now.’

‘I can write to him, you know. But, baba, I can’t guarantee he will respond as you want him to.’

Rehan nodded.

‘Baba, tell me: are you still scared?’

‘No,’ Rehan replied.

‘What did you think, that just because she didn’t have a man protecting her, something would happen to your mama?’

Rehan did not reply.

‘I have you,’ she said, ‘and I’m a tough old thing myself. We’ll be fine, believe me.’

They had crossed the flyover, and the Delhi that lay about them now was a city in which the fading afternoon, with colonial police stations and Muslim tombs in its fold, brought a kind of peace
upon the passengers of the green Suzuki.

Rehan said, as if seeing a line of reason to its end, ‘You think I’ll ever meet him?’

‘I’m sure you will,’ his mother said, her strong and natural voice returning, ‘and maybe you’ll like him; or, as with Nani and me, maybe you’ll want to meet
him and move on. But whatever the case, give him a kick from your old mummy when you do.’

Rehan chuckled. ‘Why, Ma?’

‘Because,’ she said, ‘he was not very generous with either you or me.’

‘He didn’t give us anything? No car, no house?’

‘Not a tissue to wipe my nose on.’

That was all that was said. It gave Rehan a great feeling of comfort, as if he had been made a partner in the life his mother had cobbled together for them. And though, in some
important way, the fear of the last many months had already evaporated, what might have taken weeks or months to bear fruit was speeded to its conclusion by the scene they returned to that evening
at the little house.

They arrived to find that a large blue and white board had gone up on its boundary wall. It read: Kailash Nath Sons and Associates. And just behind it, in the garden, a great commotion was
underway. A gang of barefoot men in checked lungis and fraying vests tore up the lawn. The grass was gone; so were the flower beds and dahlias; all that remained standing, like a single tree over a
fallow field, was the gardenia. Udaya and Rehan watched from inside the car as two men caught hold of its branches with a rope, pulling the canopy to the ground, while two others hacked away at the
trunk, making white gashes. The tree seemed startled by the violence applied to it. The gashes multiplied and it fell within minutes, not with a crash but a swoon, still holding aloft its many
flowers. And there it lay, on the garden’s muddy floor, the curve of its trunk just a hump now; its destroyed beauty produced, even in the faces of its hired executioners, a kind of
wonder.

Only Rehan’s grandmother, looking, not at the tree, but at the light striking its fleshy stump, was triumphant.

‘No rakshasa there, Nani!’ Rehan cried out.

She gave him a bitter look. His mother pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose, seeming to suppress tears.

Rehan glanced over at her and breathed out. ‘OK, let’s do it.’

‘The flat? Really?’ she asked, wiping her eyes, surprised at his adult timing.

He looked sadly at her, compacted his lips, and nodded.

*   *   *

Some days later, at the maidan, the effigies awaited their end. Udaya and Rehan, late in arriving, had to watch from the flyover. Here, too, the crowd grew large. Policemen in
olive-green uniforms prodded them with canes but when they became too many, they gave up. Rehan, on one rung of the flyover’s parapet where a sheet of hoarding, rusted and threatening, had
been bent away, felt them press against his legs. He looked urgently down at his mother, already anxious.

‘Come down, baba. It’s not safe,’ she said, feeling his dismay.

‘I can’t see anything.’

‘Nothing has begun yet.’

But it was in snatches that Rehan saw white explosions riddle the first effigy – Ravana’s son – and flames climb wildly up the hollow of his body. Then the gaps in the crowd
closed. He knew from the roar that rose off the maidan that the burning was over. When he next glimpsed the skeletal frame alight and collapsing, limb by limb, he had to hide his great
disappointment. Udaya saw this and felt terrible. It was their first Dussehra and Diwali alone, in the new flat, and everything was significant.

For the second burning she tried carrying him piggy-back but couldn’t keep him up. His weight slid down her back, his arms pulled against her neck and hair. At last it was Rehan who said,
‘Don’t worry, Ma, I can see.’ And when the second roar came, he roared louder than the rest.

It was now Ravana’s turn. Rehan was preparing to go through the motions again, when from nowhere two powerful arms gripped him by the legs and lifted him out of the crowd. His
mother’s hand steadied him, and when he looked down, he found himself sitting on the shoulders of a man he had never met before. Ahead, he had a clear view of the demon-king.

His mother’s voice, carrying up from the thick crowd below, said: ‘Baba, say thank you . . . Amit Uncle.’

‘Just Amit is fine,’ the man said.

Rehan, though he said a loud thank you, could not make out his face; just the greying hair and spectacles.

Night fell over the maidan. Moths and insects swarmed in the light of naked bulbs and flares. And over the tense and seething mass, bunches of pink balloons and candy-floss bobbed lightly by.
Rehan Tabassum’s face burned brightly with the fire of the dying Ravana.

(1985–2002)

‘To awaken to history was to cease to live instinctively. It was to begin to see oneself and one’s group the way the outside world saw one; and it was to know a
kind of rage. India was now full of this rage. There had been a general awakening.’

In those days not even French table wine was available on the open market. Nor was foie gras nor penne. Air conditioners were confined to one room,
usually the bedroom. Power cuts were frequent. The majority of foreign cars were second hand. And it was a testament to Amit Sethia’s great wealth that on the night of the dinner party he had
split-unit air conditioners running freely in all the rooms of his Delhi house, a brand-new Toyota Crown stood in the drive and in the distance the comforting growl of a 40KVA generator was
audible. But he was not a magician: for the penne, pâté and wine, he had had to ask a favour of the ambassadors of Italy and France respectively, both countries with which his company
had collaborated. They didn’t mind; it was part of their diplomatic stock; and besides, they were pleased to be invited to the dinner for the Rajamata.

Amit Sethia didn’t chase after royals. ‘What royalty?’ he liked to say to his wife. ‘An occupying power comes to your country and appoints some local chieftain the king,
and two hundred years afterwards, once the power has left, we’re still saying, “Hukum this, hukum that.” Hukum and fuck ’em, I say. Number one frauds. Not one of these
people fought both the Mughal and the British; their very survival is proof of their betrayal. I don’t believe in any such royalty.’

‘So why did you ask her?’ his wife replied, settling a wedge of foie gras onto a creased bed of lettuce, and adding, ‘Just like the ones we had at Les Deux Magots in
Paris.’

Sethia resented his wife’s easy French pronunciation; and, as the person who introduced her to the cafe in question, he did not like her overfamiliarity with the place. ‘
Café
Deux Magots,’ he stressed, then further corrected her: ‘besides, we didn’t have it there; we had it at Maxim’s.’ But since this was not the true source of his
irritation, he steered the conversation back to where it began: ‘You think I invited the old lady because she’s the Rajamata of some long forgotten desert kingdom, is it? Not a chance.
You and your toady family might feel that way; I certainly don’t.’

Sumitra Sethia, though she tolerated a great deal of personal abuse from her husband, could not stand one word said against her family. ‘So what then? For charity purposes,
you’re calling the old lady? “Come one and all to Amit Sethia’s langar. You will have pâté, pasta and French wine.” ’ She laughed happily at her joke, and
having prepared her first course, she pushed the small ivory plates to one side and began making a dressing. Amit fell into a moody silence. A moment later, he reached past her and picked a
canapé of ham and asparagus off a silver tray.

‘Amit, don’t! Look what you’ve done? You’ve ruined the arrangement.’ Sumitra readjusted the spacing between the little toasted pieces. ‘Bharat Singh!’
she yelled. ‘Take this tray from here. Or saab will eat them all.’ A bearer in white appeared, and smiling mildly, vanished with the tray.

Saab returned to the topic at hand.

‘Let me tell you, if they had not honoured me with that Captain of Commerce award, the old lady would never be coming here tonight. But when someone puts forward the cup of friendship,
it’s not right to spit in it, no matter how bogus the wine might be.’

‘Oh-oh, that’s it, is it?’ his wife replied. But in truth she was won over by this rhetorical effort and her husband could see she was. He smiled pityingly at her reluctance to
accept defeat. Then, knowing the admiration she had for him, her willingness always to see things as he saw them, especially in this one regard, he added, ‘Yes, and perhaps the old lady gave
me something of the glad eye too. You know, she was a famous beauty. Celebrated in Europe and dressed by . . .’

‘Yes, yes, by Mainbocher, I know, everyone knows. But not for a long time. Go then. No one’s stopping you. You can be her Prince Philip. I give it six months. By then you won’t
be in the bed, you’ll be under it with a bedpan. Then we’ll see how sweet the wine tastes.’

Amit Sethia laughed, feeling that this was as good an admission of defeat as any.

‘Now you mention it,’ he said, walking over to the far end of the kitchen, ‘let’s see what Jérôme, the Jeroboam, has sent us.’ He knew very well what
the ambassador had sent; he had told Bharat Singh that morning to put the wine out to settle. ‘Saint Julien Ducru-Beaucaillou.’ He read the tangerine label while slowly turning the
bottle in his hand. ‘Very grand,’ Sethia muttered, ‘very grand. Even the Rajamata is not likely to have drunk anything as good as this.’ Then his face soured. ‘Bharat
Singh! Why have you not put the others out to settle?’