Riot (25 page)

And Navjyot, I asked, but feebly, because he had won me already. And because I realized I had wanted him to.

Because of Navjyot, he replied without hesitation. Because that should never have happened, and because you have a share of the responsibility to ensure that it never happens again.

He turned me to the photograph of Navjyot that stood on the dresser, a picture of an innocent little face, tender parted lips, shining eyes that had not yet seen the horror that would shut them forever. “That boy will always live in my heart,” he said softly. “But somewhere in India there is another grandfather like me whose only hope for the safety of his grandson lies in the trust that he places in you and the policemen under your command. Do not, Gurinder, do not ever betray that trust.”

And so I stayed. And that's why I'm still a cop: because a sad, quiet, neatly dressed man in a white beard, my blessed father, had more fucking faith in me than I had in myself. And because, for all the corruption and venality and inefficiency that assails this bloody profession, it is still the last bastion of civility and order in our racked and torn society. And because I want to ensure that, as far as I can help it, no other family has to endure what my sister had to.

And because I am haunted by the face of a little ten-year-old boy enveloped in flames, a boy who loved cricket and called me Uncle.

I want to save that boy. I want to save other children like him. I want to put out the fires.

 

letter from Priscilla Hart to Cindy Valeriani

August 15, 1989

Cindy dear, it's Independence Day today. India's. I'm sitting at my desk in my loosest cotton shift as my rickety fan totters on its pedestal and blows hot air into my face. August is murderous in Zalilgarh, but it's not as bad as May or June, before the monsoon, when you step into the street and think you've walked into an oven. It'll start cooling down in October, but as it gets colder you'll have the pollution to cope with — the smoke from hundreds of charcoal braziers on the sidewalks, thousands of buses and cars and autorickshaws, and God knows how many factories, all rising to be trapped under the winter mist rising from the river. Gurinder said the other day that just breathing Zalilgarh's air is the equivalent of smoking a pack of Charminars a day. And he picked an unfiltered brand to make his point!

I'm alone at home today, the office is closed, Lucky's probably officiating at some flag-raising ceremony this morning, surrounded by self-important functionaries. I imagine him stiff in his safari suit, saluting a foreign flag, a flag without stars or stripes — heck, I don't even know if they salute the flag at these things — and I tell myself, he's a
foreigner
. But Cin, the word doesn't mean anything to me anymore when I think of him. I know him so well — the strength of his long arms around me, the two crooked front teeth when he smiles, the slightly spicy smell of his sweat when we've made love, the little tilt at the corner of his mouth when I lie on his chest and look up at his face. He's no foreigner. He's more familiar to me, more intimate to me, than any American I've ever known.

Here I am, on Independence Day, wanting to give up my independence for him, knowing he has to win his own independence first. I can't believe he's even hesitating to leave a loveless marriage he hates for the woman he says he loves. It's when he talks about his conflicted feelings, his obligations, that I begin to believe he really is a foreigner after all. …

Anyway, speaking of foreigners, I've just had another reminder that I'm one. I went to the bazaar on the weekend, just to see what I could pick up to bring home, you know? It's crazy, these places, stores spilling out on the sidewalks, the shopkeepers openly importuning you to come and buy their wares, the flies buzzing about, the heat so oppressive that you think of going to the nearest Bollywood movie just for the air-conditioning. Anyway, I spotted a couple of embroidered cushion covers I thought you'd like. How much? I asked. “Two hundred each, but for you, three hundred the pair,” said the greasy man in the shop. Now, I've been here long enough to know about bargaining, so I promptly said, “No, two hundred for the pair.” I was appalled at the alacrity with which he accepted my offer. Sure enough, I show the cushion covers to the wretched Kadambari, and she says, “How much did you pay? Sixty?” Even making allowances for her bitchy nastiness, it's clear I've been ripped off again. I guess it's part of the price you've got to pay for being a foreigner in India. But why must I, of all people, have to pay that price? I'm not some tourist in a five-star hotel — I'm me! And that ought to count for
something
. …

 

from Lakshman's journal

August 19, 1989

Can't sleep, so am up at 3 a.m. writing this. Geetha is sleeping soundly as usual, her face swollen in unwitting complacency. I can't bear to see that face every time I wake up, and I always wake up before she does. How the hell did I like that face enough to agree to marry her?

Despite myself, I looked in on Rekha in her room. I didn't switch on the light but the moon was bright enough for me to see her angelic face, calm in repose on the oversized pillow. I gently brushed away a curling strand of hair that had fallen over one eye. In her sleep, she smiled at me.

It's Rekha, of course, that I think about all the time now. Priscilla's supposed to leave Zalilgarh in less than two months, and she thinks it's decision time. Do I want to go with her? She has to return to the States, at least for now, and the prospect of escaping with her has its temptations. She showed me, only half jokingly, an ad in an American magazine: “Unemployment is lower in Switzerland. Owning a home is easier in Australia. Going to college is more likely in Canada. Vacations are longer in Denmark. And crime rates are lower in England. But more dreams come true in America.”

An alluring prospect, if I had those dreams. But do I, really? Is it freedom I want, or Priscilla? I know I could get her to change her plans and stay on in India, for me. She'll do it — but only on one condition. Only if I tell her I'm leaving my wife for her. That's what she wants. And she wants it now. I can understand her impatience, but I'm not sure I'm ready for anything quite so … cataclysmic. How can I explain to her that I'm not even sure I have the right to do that to Geetha, to abdicate my husbandhood? I didn't choose to start my marriage in the first place; how can I choose to end it? My role as a husband and father is central to who I am; it concerns my rootedness in the world; it is inextricably bound up with my sense of my place in the cosmos. I have been brought up to believe that such things — marriage, family — are beyond individual will, that they transcend an individual's freedom of action. Priscilla'll never understand that.

And what about little Rekha, who did not ask to be born into my life but who is there, whose world is circumscribed by the pairing of Geetha and me? How can I ever explain what she means to me to Priscilla? “What's the matter, Lucky?” Priscilla asked me this evening.

 

You ask, my love, what the matter is.
Why do I sound fatigued? stressed? torn?
The matter is that I am as I sound.
I, who have accepted your soul's gift of love,
Am a soul in torment, fearing as I love.
I give you, my darling, the best part of myself:
The part that feels most profoundly as a man,
That knows the warm rush of passion
At every sight of your smiling body,
That rejoices in your warm embrace,
And belongs to you in total surrender.
That part is yours, my love, forever:
It can never know again the exaltation,
The exultation, the poignant sweetness of
Such flooding love as I bear for you.

 

That part is yours; but it is a part,
For I am, in rendering it, rent;
Having your love, yet not having it;
Giving my love, yet not parting with it;
Withholding, as I give, for a prior creditor.
I have, as you know, an earlier love,
One for a little soul, first glimpsed
Tadpole-like in a nurse's arms,
Pink, precious, and premature:
The child I had prayed for, who did not seek
To be mine, but is, and whose life
Ennobles mine. I have loved her
Without reservation, without selfishness,
Without condition, as I could never
Love a woman. Even you.

 

Now I look at her each day,
Wake her in the morning, give her breakfast,
Do homework with her, take her to the library
And the movies, and I know I fear nothing more
Than I fear not being there for her.
When she cries out, “Daddy, am I as tall
As you were when you were six?”
I am there in the evening to confirm it;
When she tells me of news from school,
Or asks about God, or geography,
I am there as the question occurs to her.
I teach her Tamil songs, passing on a heritage
She traces in her genes; I trim her hair,
Cut her nails, quiz her over breakfast
On the oceans of the world.

 

Now I look at her and I ask myself,
Can I deny her that?
Can I deprive myself of her?
Can I absent myself from the rest of her childhood?
When she first meets a boy whose easy charm
Starts flutters in her heart,
Will Daddy be the one she tells of her confusions?
Can I ever be happy knowing that I
Have pulled from under the secure carapace of her life
The struts that held her up?
But can I be happy either,
Knowing that you are no longer mine,
That you have returned to America,
That I have shut my eyes to the one true glimpse of happiness
I have ever had as a man?

 

You ask, my love, what the matter is.
And I can only say, everything is the matter.

 

Deep emotion and lack of sleep make for unconvincing poetry. Fifteen lines a stanza: is there such a form anywhere in the canon? I know I should thrust it aside; in an hour now dawn will break across my torment like a twig. But this is what I feel, and it's at a level quite different from what Guru was trying to make me feel. Truth, Wilde wrote, is just “ones last mood.” Is this mood of tormented despair the one truth that counts now? How will Priscilla understand that my agonizing is not about her, not about us? But if she loves me, mustn't I help her understand? Perhaps I ought to give her this poem. I'd title it “The Heart of the Matter.” Or perhaps “A Matter of the Heart.” Or, more originally, both?

I'm too tired to think. And too full of thoughts to sleep.

 

Rudyard Hart to Mohammed Sarwar

October 14, 1989

You know, I stopped at a cold-drink place this morning. Guess what they're selling? Pepsi. Bloody Pepsi. Except that they call it Lehar Pepsi here. Some Indian rule against foreign brand names.

Despite myself, I bought it. Took a swig. And tasted defeat. Pepsi didn't exist in the Indian market when I was here last. Now they're here and we're not. We could have been ten years ahead of them if we'd played our cards right.

You know, when we see a population without Coke we see an untapped market for the finest beverage invented by man. Not being here is an indescribable waste all around. Indians are being deprived of a wonderful product, and we're being deprived of a chance to lead in this country too, as we do in so many countries.

We've got to come back to India. And we will. It's the way the world is going. You'll have American products, American ideas, American values all spreading throughout the land. And you'll have to have Coke.

I'll tell you what your problem is in India. You have too much history. Far more than you can use peacefully. So you end up wielding history like a battleaxe, against each other. Whereas we at Coke don't care about history. We'll sell you our drinks whatever your history is. We don't worry too much about the past. It's your future we want to be a part of.

My daughter believed in your future too. You know, I went through hell asking God why she had to be killed in a quarrel she had no part of. But now I realize it was her choice to be caught up in this country's passions. She wanted to change India for the better. She was working for the future when she was struck down by the past.

It's something I've been thinking about a lot. Can't say it makes me feel a whole lot better, though. But I now think I'll ask Coke to send me back to India. Give it another try. I think Priscilla would have wanted me to.

 

note from Priscilla Hart to Lakshman

August 21, 1989

I've read the poem you asked Mitha Mohammed to bring to me at the office. I don't know why you sent it to me, except to make me see our relationship in a different light. Maybe you too need to see things differently, Lucky.

You haven't taken a risk in this relationship. At all. But I have. It was my risk to take, to fall in love with a married man, and I did, and I take full responsibility for it. I'm sorry about that ink splotch; I'm crying as I write this. But I don't want you to feel sorry for me. I want your love, not your pity.

Your poem reduced me to a “smiling body” and a “warm embrace.” I thought I was more than that to you, Lucky. When you're dealing with someone else's life, you have to be a lot more careful with your words than that.

I love you with all my heart and soul, but I don't want a relationship with a man who doesn't feel the same way as I do. I want a man who loves me, and a relationship where I can rely on the fact that he loves
me
. Not my body, not my embrace, ME.

You write of your daughter needing you to be there. I need you to be there for me, too, Lucky. But you don't see that, do you?

You're so good at understanding everyone else's claims on you — your family's, your daughter's, your job's. Do I have no claims on you, Lucky? Am I just a convenient outlet for your passion, your escape from humdrum reality? I know where I am in this relationship. You don't really know where you are, do you?

On Saturday night, I felt such pain for you, looking at your sad and confused face. I believe in us completely, but I don't know what to do. I don't want anything from you that you don't want to give me. And I can't show my needs to you if you don't know how to respond, or if you believe you can't respond because of your “prior creditor.”