Authors: Aatish Taseer
That second temple, given to Aakash’s family by the old Nawab of Jhajjar, was no more than a house. It faced a Jhajjar backstreet split down the middle by an open drain in which black bead-like bubbles rose in even intervals. Still, strong sunlight fell on an afternoon scene composed of a fly-covered dog, half in sun, half in shade, the street’s blue doors and shutters, and a man on a stool, reading the paper behind half-filled toffee jars. The one sound was the jingling of a passing woman, in black, silver and red; the one smell, as powerful as the sunlight, as pervasive as the languor of the street, the stench of the drain. It eased its way past a PCO booth, through the blue grille gate and into the temple’s cemented sanctum.
But no one held their nose, the ladies did not worry about their saris getting dirty, no one minded taking off their shoes some metres before the temple’s freshly washed floors. We tumbled into its courtyard, fifteen of us, opening shutters and unlocking doors as if returning to a house that had been closed up for a season. Everyone headed straight for the sanctum and lay down, men, women and children, on an old carpet on the floor. Just ahead, half-buried in garlands of plastic flowers,were a black, beady-eyed Krishna and a white Radha in gold clothes.
Aakash took me aside and pointed to the painting of a sage in a glass case. In slow, broken English, he said, ‘He is my great-grandfather.’
Mr Sharma already stood next to the glass case, leaning lightly against its orange frame. The statue inside was of a large man with a paunch showing through his saffron robes. There were three turmeric streaks across his pale forehead; and his fierce, jowly face, in permanent afternoon shadow, bore a distinct expression of irritation.
‘I used to massage his legs,’ Aakash’s father said. ‘He was a great man. If not for him, faith in this part of the country might have disappeared altogether.’ Then an unexpressed sorrow, like that of the red rose against the black background in his flat, passed over his face.
I sat down on a low stool, despite the family’s appeals to join them on the carpet. I realized now that it was not so much the smallness of the Sharma flat or the smell but its communal quality that had unsettled me. And Aakash, as if responding to that, as if reaffirming that he didn’t want to live that way either, that he had meant what he had said about the peacefulness and privacy of my mother’s flat, got up after a few minutes and came to sit next to me, his head resting against my knees. The undeclared power I had had over him until now, gained in part from his being my trainer and in part from Holi, dwindled. I felt that there had been a reversal.
The toothless country cousin was taking orders, hardly an hour after lunch, for tea and samosas.
‘I don’t have the courage for a samosa,’ Aakash’s sister-in-law said from the place where she sprawled on the floor.
Aakash looked at her, then up at me with a contemptuous smile.
‘Kachori?’ the old woman asked with a smack of her lips.
‘No,’ Aakash’s sister-in-law moaned, rubbing her broad, dark stomach.
‘Then khir?’ the old woman shot back.
‘Yes, khir would be lovely!’ Aakash’s sister-in-law smiled, feigning childlike mischief.
‘Khir would be lovely,’ Aakash imitated and guffawed, looking up again at me for approval.
‘What?’ the sister-in-law snapped. ‘What’s wrong with khir? I can’t be like you, eating boiled food, boiled vegetables and protein milkshakes.’
‘That’s fine, but then don’t come running to me: “Aakash, make me thin; Aakash, tell me what to eat; Aakash, your body…” ’
‘Let her eat, yaar. What is it to you?’ Aakash’s elder brother, her husband, intervened.
His remark made me wonder about the tensions between them.
Aakash said to me in English, ‘See what I told you? She is very sharp.’
Then turning back to the family, he said, ‘Why don’t you stop thinking about eating for a second and pay attention to your son, who’s become a sweeper?’
The entire family, as if in an abs class, rose six inches to see what the child was doing. He was at the far end of the little courtyard, brandishing a short broom made of fine sticks.
‘Come here, you little jamadar,’ Aakash yelled.
The word he used was a caste word no longer in politically correct usage for cleaners and sweepers. A ripple of laughter went through the family of reposing Brahmins. The child, seeing he had the attention of his family, began splashing water in a metal bucket no bigger than him.
‘That water is dirty,’ Aakash said pointedly to his sister-in-law and walked across the courtyard to recover the boy.
‘Chee,’ he said, as he picked him up, ‘he’s smelling.’
His mother, now clearly humiliated in front of the family, rose with irritation. ‘It doesn’t matter. He’s wearing a nappy. We’ll deal with it when we get back.’
Aakash shrugged his shoulders and handed her the child. But as soon as he did, the child slipped away and clung to Aakash’s leg. He began touching his feet, saying, ‘Tey,’ every time he did. ‘He’s saying, “Jai”,’ Aakash said with delight.
Aakash’s father looked up at me and said, ‘See, unlike the Sikhs and the Muslims, we don’t have to teach them the religion. They learn on their own. For instance, no one taught him to say Jai. He just heard us saying it when we pray and picked it up.’
The boy, now in Aakash’s arms, was pointing unsteadily at the Nandi near the Shiva linga and saying, ‘Tawoo. Tawoo.’
‘He’s calling Nandi “Tawoo”,’ Aakash laughed, then, addressing the boy, said, ‘Not cow; “Nandi”.’
Tea and samosas arrived, along with a bowl of khir. Aakash put the boy down and rejoined the others.
We had all barely had a few sips of tea, Aakash’s sister-in-law had not touched her khir, when cries of ‘Chee, chee’, ‘Look what’s he’s doing’, ‘The little sweeper’ rose from the sanctum.
I had been facing the idols and turned round to see that the boy had removed his shorts, and now holding on to a tap as high as his arms could reach, was taking a happy pistachio-green shit in the courtyard.
‘His T-shirt will be ruined!’ Aakash yelled.
‘Let it be ruined,’ the boy’s father said with hollow aggression.
Within seconds, the family’s women, his mother and the old cousin, had pounced on him, while his grandmother looked on with a bitter smile. He eluded his mother and ran to Aakash, leaving a green trail behind him for his mother to clean up. Aakash grabbed him under the arms, swung him stomach down on to his lap and cleaned his bottom without any sign of squeamishness. Then along with his mother he inspected the child’s bottom closely.
‘Hai, look!’ Aakash’s mother said. ‘He’s got these big red dots there.’
‘Not cleaning him properly,’ her younger sister added slyly. ‘Have to put Soframycin.’
‘Have you seen the spots in his privates,’ Aakash exploded at the child’s mother, who was still sweeping up the mess.
She looked up, haggard. ‘I’m just coming,’ she managed.
Her husband, who had now taken the boy, was betraying her to the group. ‘I’ve told her time and time again that she’s not paying enough attention.’
Then Anil produced a wooden drum from within the sanctum. He started beating on it, and hearing this, the little bald child, who had been face down all this time, rose furiously and began to dance, shaking a small, angry foot unsteadily into the circle.
‘Put your right foot in, put your left foot…’ his grandmother sang, and the little boy danced as the group clapped and his mother swept away the last of the green trail.
We went home through flat land dotted with smoking minarets. The sky that had been pale in the morning was a pinkish brown on the way back. The thin, bumpy road that led past high, spiked walls, the ‘16 Base Repair Depot’ and keekar trees, as malevolent in the evening haze as in the dawn mist, finished at a sky-blue metal gate.
‘You know what’s behind that gate?’ Aakash said, putting his hand lightly on my shoulder.
‘No.’
‘The airport. We used to go there at night as children and see the planes and lights. It’s better than take-off point. You’re literally right there in the grass when the planes go by. Mind-blowing.’
I thought of my own arrival there a few months before on the Jet Airways flight. Then I thought of Aakash and his childhood memory of the airport. And even though a mood of inadequacy hung over the day’s outing, with this thought my great tenderness for him flooded back.
10
Aakash insisted the day needed its ‘super set’. I said, thinking of his bald nephew in the temple, that I was sure it had already had one. Then he wanted to know when and I had no answer for him. He searched my face for a moment and turned back to the task at hand. He was looking for a ‘pardy’ shirt. We stood in his mattress-covered room with its pink walls and fetid air. A green metal cupboard was open; many unsuitable options lay strewn on the mattress below. Presently he found it, a black shirt with silver pinstripes. Its thick shiny material glowed in the white light.
A few minutes later, we were on his bike, driving through the smoky Delhi night. It was my first time riding pillion on a motorbike and I felt exposed, embarrassed to be gripping on so tightly. We drove through areas I didn’t know existed. Broken, keekar-lined roads, open fields and a hyacinth-choked canal, with the red lights of a power station reflected in its dark water, appeared on our way.
‘Where are we?’ I yelled.
‘What?’
‘Where are we?’
‘In Sectorpur,’ Aakash yelled back, ‘just across the Jhaatkebaal border.’
We came some minutes later to an arrangement of tall four-square buildings surrounded by flat agricultural land. Though the buildings were new, marks of decay had already begun to appear on them. Pan spittle festooned their chalky-white walls, metal slats along their side had begun to rust and sacks of cement, plastic buckets and brooms cluttered their corridors. A white wooden bathroom door was open and from the grey marble interior toilet smells filled the lobby. We waited for the lift. Outside, a group of young boys chased a squirrel with an air gun. It ran up a tree and the boys stood below, firing aimlessly into the street-lit canopy.
‘Fucking it,’ Aakash said, when after many minutes the fat red number indicating which floor the lift was on didn’t move. ‘Let’s take the stairs.’
‘Listen, Aakash, are you going to tell me now who this friend of yours is?’
His eyes gleamed. ‘What, man? Don’t trust me, man? I told you, this is my very old friend. The Begum of Sectorpur. Now, come on.’
We ran up seven flights of stairs. The banister shook; there were broken panes on every landing, with sharp points of glass clinging on; below, rejoicing boys carried away the body of a squirrel; the land around was bare and dark, streaked with amber stretches of empty road. Halfway up, we were met by a thin young man with glassy eyes. He wore pedal pushers and a black vest. His small, dense armpits were exposed and emitted a wet, poisonous smell. He was overjoyed to see Aakash, and showing blackened teeth, kept monotonously asking how long it had been. Though Aakash paid him no attention, he jogged up alongside us, laughing and slurring. At every landing he looked back at me, his glassy eyes catching the light, and said, ‘Any friend of Aakash’s is a friend of mine.’
When we reached the eighth floor, Aakash slipped his arm around the man’s wiry frame, and whispering purposefully, took him into the gloom at one end of the corridor. They were still talking when the front door nearest to me swung open. A woman in a pale green kaftan stood behind a black metal gate. She was a warm brown colour, with straight waxy hair and slightly jowly cheeks; her smooth hairless skin and raised eyes made me think she was north-eastern or Nepalese. The outline of her large, full body was visible through the fine cotton she was wearing. She clutched the gate with one hand and under the white tips of her French manicure she had tiger-print nails.
She smiled broadly at me and laughed girlishly when she saw Aakash.
‘Suitors, Begum saab!’ the thin man sneered before vanishing down the stairs.
She snapped abuse at him. When it was returned with a wayward cackle, lost in the darkness, she looked back at us and was gracious once again.
The gate opened and we entered a clean brightly lit flat with tiled floors. The begum shut and bolted an iron front door behind us. Apart from the main lock, there were some five or six other locks crudely welded on. A tile of Ganesh near the door read: ‘May he bless every corner of this house.’
An Alsatian with cataract-clouded eyes bounded up to greet us.
‘Stop it, stop it, Zabar,’ the begum said, pushing aside the dog’s snout and showing us into a drawing room, which contained a glass dining table, white leather chairs and sofas under plastic covers. A partially drunk bottle of Diet Coke and a glass-cleaning spray, half-full of blue liquid, stood on the dining table.
Within moments of our sitting down, the begum had rushed off into the kitchen and reappeared with glasses, ice and a bottle of Seagram’s Indian whisky. Aakash looked at me and winked as she poured the whisky. The begum spoke rapidly, complaining about security, then about how Aakash never came to see her any more.
‘At one point,’ she said, looking over her shoulder at me, ‘it was all, “Begum this”, “Begum that” – “Begum, my friends will protect you”, “Begum, can I give you a lift somewhere on my bike?” but now, since he’s on his way to bigger things, since –’
‘Ah, ah, ah,’ Aakash said firmly.
The begum shut up, then a moment later looked mournfully back at me and said, ‘Begum’s been forgotten.’
When she brought us our whiskies Aakash took his, and quoting an Urdu poet, said, ‘An age has passed, and your memory has not come to me, but that I have forgotten you – it is not that way either.’
The begum melted. ‘Oh-ho-ho,’ she said. ‘Quoting back to me the couplets I taught you? How easily they come off your tongue.’
Aakash laughed and grabbed her through her cotton kaftan as she gave me my whisky, nearly causing her to fall over on to the sofa.
She moaned and recovered herself.
We drank two or three more whiskies. The begum spoke continuously. She made light flirtatious conversation; she complained about what a burden the Alsatian had become – ‘A blind guard dog! That’s all the begum’s left with’; she lashed out at women more debased than herself but protected by the false sanctities of marriage; she complimented Aakash on his physique; she said her son, who was ‘a carbon copy’ of Aakash, was working as a chowkidar in some rich industrialist’s house, couldn’t Aakash help him get a job in fitness? This request caused friction between them. Aakash cautioned her with a cold stare and her tune changed. She became maternal even as she trailed her tiger nail down his cheek: ‘How good and strong my little boy has grown up to be. I still remember when he was sixteen and –’
‘Begum.’
‘OK, OK, I won’t say.’
Aakash affected a macho silence, the whisky and the begum’s chatter seeming to relax him. But for the pinstripe ‘pardy’ shirt, he was like a man who’d just come home from a hard day at the office. To see him twice in the same day, and in such different ways, a hero among the people he grew up with, made me feel again the power of his position. His versatility was like a confirmation of how authentic and robust his world was. His Delhi was a city of temples and gyms, of rich and poor people, of Bentleys and bicycles, of government flats and mansions, of hookers and heiresses, and he asserted his nativity by moving freely between its varied lives. He made it seem like no less his right than taking one of the new green buses, riding the metro, seeing the sound and light show at the Red Fort or renting a pedal boat at India Gate and floating over the reflections of dark trees and pale sky in its sandstone water tanks.
He seemed to read my admiration, and perhaps helped by the whisky to see himself as I saw him, as many men to many people, here rubbing a baby’s face against his to comfort it, there performing the ancient rites of his caste, he suddenly made a grab for the begum’s breasts through her pale green kaftan, his mud-coloured eyes fixed on me. The begum wriggled joyfully, shrugging off her maternal instincts and becoming what she was. She had been sitting in his lap, but now she rose slightly and pushed her thighs and rear towards him. Her jowly face moved closer to mine while Aakash pulled hard at her breasts. She was inches from me, wiggling and gyrating, making a drama of her arousal. Aakash’s eyes followed mine, his arched lips taut with amusement. My first reaction was anger, feeling this could only be some kind of sexual intimidation. But when he squeezed the begum’s fat thighs and slapped her bottom, causing her to fall forward, her tiger nails clawing my thigh, a smile must have crept into my face. Aakash laughed loudly at seeing it. The begum tried looking behind her to see what was so funny, but Aakash turned her face back towards me, and taking her left hand from my thigh, pressed it into my crotch. It had no effect; I shrank with embarrassment.
Then Aakash lifted up the begum’s kaftan and began to roll it back. He did it with mock assiduity, just as when he had prepared the towel as a neck rest during the squats. It formed a neat band just over her hips. I could see the outline of her exposed thighs and bottom. Aakash, making a face like a laboratory assistant or vet, raised two fingers in the air. When he was sure I had seen the gesture, he inserted them into her with the ease of a man sawing off a piece of wood. The begum groaned.
‘Not here, not here. Come on, to the bedroom.’
Aakash pushed her head down roughly. The Alsatian, who had been watching everything with its cataract-filled eyes, saw this action and jumped up, at once barking and wagging his tail. Aakash looked at the dog, then at me, and feigning confusion, offered the begum’s exposed bottom to the dog with a sweep of his arm.
The begum saw and her face filled with anger. She lurched up, pushing out Aakash’s fingers in the process and slapped her palm against his chest. Aakash nearly fell back.
‘Motherfucker. Bastard. Wretch. Limp dick.’
Aakash folded his hands and begged forgiveness. The begum stormed round the room, sipping her whisky, staring at blank spaces, swinging round to glare at us. The back of her kaftan fell down and hung like a pleated blind. We sat unmoving next to each other on the sofa.
‘Begum, please, forget it now, no? It was just a joke.’
‘Just a joke? You dare humiliate me in front of your rich friends! Me? Who has known you since you were sixteen. I know everything about you. I could destroy you with a click of my fingers.’
Her tiger nails snapped in the air.
Her anger didn’t seem real, but whatever threat she tormented him with had its effect. Aakash, prone to theatrical anger himself, looked around him for his phone and his bike keys, and rose to leave. He gestured to me to get up, and without looking at the begum, made for the door. The begum became hysterical. She clutched Aakash’s arm, which he pulled away. She shook and pulled at her hair. She grabbed Zabar, the Alsatian, and dragged him along until she was at our feet, weeping, imploring Aakash not to go, holding up the dog’s face, with its moonstone eyes, to hers.
I don’t think I believed her exaggerated show of female emotions; I just didn’t feel like leaving. I liked the flat’s anonymity, the whiskies coming easily; I liked seeing Aakash play the role of the Sectorpur boy who’d grown up and gone away. I was also curious about what the begum had said about destroying Aakash with a click of her fingers. Destroy what? How? And for all these reasons, I tapped Aakash on the arm and said, ‘Let’s stay.’
He scanned my face, seemed quickly to make a decision, then turning to the begum, said, ‘Ey, ey, listen, Begum. My friend here wants to stay. So out of respect to him we’re going to stay. But you try anything crooked again…’
The begum sprang to her feet, kicking aside the dog. It was as if we were arriving for the first time. She straightened her hair as she slipped past us to pour two more whiskies.
Aakash chuckled at her good nature. ‘Now she’s set. Should we get down to it?’
‘Down to what?’
He pressed what I thought was a packet of pan masala into my palm. When I felt its evasive hoop slide between my fingers I said, ‘You’re not serious? She’s quite old and not very pretty.’
‘She was my first.’
‘Maybe, but…’
‘It’s for us, man. It’s one of those things you have to do with your best friend.’
Before I could answer, he opened a bedroom door on our right and pushed me in. I was surprised at how domestic the room was, really like someone’s home. It had glass, almond-shaped wall lights, a single plywood bed with a white lace bedcover and bedside tables. A stand in one corner contained what looked like broken ostrich eggs but were in fact the begum’s foamy bras.
Aakash came in with her a few moments later. Her waxy hair was tied up with a pink scrunchy and instead of her kaftan she wore a satiny tiger-print slip. Aakash, seeing my alarm, began gently massaging the back of my neck. The begum walked towards the plywood bed, the dimples on her thighs forming new patterns with every step. There was something inoffensive to the point of attraction about her soft, hairless body. It seemed as though, once some original hesitation had been overcome, it would be possible to fuck her five times a night, in a way that would be less possible with more beautiful girls.
Aakash led me over to her by the neck, undoing his black pinstripe shirt as he walked. The begum had pulled out two pillows from under the lace bedcover. She rested her palms on one and her knees on the other. Her vagina was black, the hair around shaved clean, the thighs faintly powdered. As Aakash approached, she began to massage herself with her tiger-painted nails, and I noticed that on their yellowish-brown surface, interspersed between the black stripes, were also strands of red. I felt these details make too strong an impression. I knew that they would kill any possibility of sexual arousal.
Aakash at that moment had not only undone his own slate-grey jeans but was about to undo mine when I stopped him. I wasn’t erect and the sight of his small, pencil-thin penis pushing sharply against his underwear intimidated me. His ease, his hedonistic ease, even as I had thought myself out of my body, intimidated me. I knew all along that this would be a problem. Seeming to read my mind, he pressed my crotch casually, and finding it soft, looked urgently at me, as if to say, ‘Come on, man. Thirdeen, fordeen, we’ll do it slowly…’
The begum sensed a disturbance behind her and looked back, perhaps thinking we were making fun of her again. Aakash was forced to act quickly. He pulled down his underwear, slipped his penis into the white latex he held in his fingers, and rising to the balls of his feet, pushed himself into the begum. Once he was inside her, he turned his attention back to me, draping one arm lightly over my shoulders for balance. He was no different from a man giving blood or urinating, and I stood next to him as though there for moral support. We made light conversation. I noticed a picture on the begum’s bedside of a young man in a silver frame. He was dark-skinned and fine-featured, with amber Nepalese eyes and a cruel smile.