Excerpt: The Persecution of Madhav Tripathi

Madhav Tripathi, an elite, successful government servant, has become aware that an unknown group of assassins is on his heels. Who are they and why do they want to kill him? The story develops at a party full of his contemporaries...

(Read it on Anti-Serious)

A song had struck up in a corner of the party. Rise and shine, someone was chanting, Fly Fly Fly, Ever so Hiiigh. Madhav did not recognize the music, but it was pleasant enough and right for his mood.

‘What a racket’, he grinned, ‘God, these people... Som Bakshi! The ubiquitous Bakshi! How did I miss him before!’

There he was, when was he not? Fat and sleek, in a three piece suit, with his coiffured hair, the drink that was always attached to his hand, the head thrown back in laughter, fawning on Jonathan Carry. Bakshi, who had been born to the bright lights, and had learned nothing since, except the patient art of never stepping out of them. Bakshi, who had made a career out of attending parties and massaging egos and providing sound-bites on the English news channels.

‘Does he never see himself?’ Madhav wondered, ‘I mean, everybody networks, but this guy...’

‘Yes,’ said the Secretary. ‘But at this moment, in this battle, he too is an ally.’

‘Not him!’ Madhav protested.

‘You are light-headed,’ said the Secretary. ‘You are happy, that is good. Finish your drink and you will feel even better. But the enemy is stalking you all the while. Do not mock even the meanest foot-soldier of your own army. Even a fool like Bakshi will fight against tyranny.’

‘He’ll fight like a fool,’ said Madhav.

‘And still,’ said the Secretary, ‘he will be of use.’

Then the Secretary drained his glass and rose six inches into the air. Madhav now saw that all about the lawns, as though at some intuited signal, the guests were doing the same. Not everyone, of course, was equally successful. Pradhan was floating comfortably; the young Danesh was doing very well, rising almost as quickly as the Secretary himself. So was Krishnan- but Krishnan did not care to fly; Krishnan was leaving. Then there was Bakshi; floundering for all he was worth, barely off the grass, laughing racuously in a transparent attempt at concealing his shame. Madhav drank off what remained in his glass and shot up to join the fun.

Everyone was more at ease off the ground; everyone nicer and more tolerable in the throes of their common ecstasy. Conversation flew light and casual; the laughs were knowing, the jokes too private and glib to even need to be completed.

‘How about this new Shah Rukh ‘blockbuster’?’

‘So, did you read Anand’s essay in EPW?’

‘Apparently she once taught English... In an actual University...’

‘I hear that baba is doing another fast-unto-death. I hope this time they let him succeed.’

‘Madhav! When are you going back to the boondocks to save our suffering farmers?’

Madhav laughed heartily. There was no need, of course, to reply, especially since his questioner had already drifted away into the night.

He caught sight of Shivani, wading through the air towards him, hips swaying determinedly and sensually. Little droplets of water still clung to her cheeks; her hair was not quite dry either, but she was cooling off quickly high above the ground. She came to him, her face glowing with achievement, her nerves- he knew- waiting to be soothed.

Madhav took her hand. For a while, he felt that it was just the two of them, far above the dark and fetid forest; separate, also, from the glittering guests; free from drudgery and sophistication alike. Utterly free!

‘You’re having a good time?’ said Madhav.

‘Yes.’

‘You danced?’

‘I did.’

‘You look beautiful.’

She nodded and looked away. He felt a sharp pinch of annoyance.

‘Yeah, you really showed them, didn’t you?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You made quite a spec-’

But she wasn’t listening. Her eyes were scanning the floating crowd. They paused and narrowed as she spotted her target. Then she did a little shimmy, a manoeuvre specially gossamer in mid-air, to compose herself down the length of her body, before the smile came bounding to her lips, where it stayed.

‘Let’s go talk to Carry. I need to talk to him.’

Madhav, sullen, resisted her tugging hand.

‘If you just want to flirt some more-’

‘Don’t be silly! He’s on the organizing committee of the Arts Festival next month, in New York. You’re the one who keeps telling me to be more savvy about these things!’

They glided on the air, hand in hand. Madhav felt the flickering eyes of many hovering guests, passing over them in admiration or jealousy. He had the further satisfaction of stepping over Som Bakshi, who was snatching from a waiter’s tray glass after glass of the blue liquor (if indeed it was liquor). But for all he consumed, he remained nearly grounded. Clearly, the drink could only stimulate one’s innate ability to soar.

The Persecution of Madhav Tripathi

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The Vision- A Fairy Tale

A fairy tale I wrote a few months ago, published in the latest issue of The Dhauli Review...

Her eyes, always dreamy, always misted over with innocence, were dark wracked voids like the night. The storm was raging madly. It pounded and rattled the bedroom windows, but she lay still in awful quiet, her clear, smooth face unnaturally becalmed, her white legs stretched stiffly like the plastic legs of a doll. No delighted gaze took in the lightning, no step strained to run into the rain. The top right corner of a painted wall appeared to absorb her completely. Below and beside it stood the door, ajar, letting in a bright line of light and the subdued murmuring of her family.

The man on the chair settled deeper into the shadows.

'Would you like me to tell you a story?'

'It's not a fairy tale', he added hurriedly, 'If I had to give it a name, I'd call it a vision.'

'A vision', he explained, 'is when you see something, and that changes everything.'

The little girl's gaze shifted from the corner of the wall to the middle of it. Her legs drew up a fraction to her body.

'Very well', said the man, and he began to talk, in his soft, precise tones. The girl resolved not to listen. Gradually, she knew, his words would sink into the general chaos like the wind and the thunder and the rain outside.

But the solid blue wall was dissolving in front of her eyes, into a transparent and shimmering film. Through it she could see, not her mother and her father, her aunt and her cousins, cramped together in the familiar flat, but a vast and beautiful room, resplendent with all manner of luxury, whose wide windows overlooked a brilliant blue sea. Perched before those windows, with her arms wrapped around her knees, and her knees pulled up to her chest, was a girl no older than herself.

***

The sea was a complex and arresting sight. It was dark near the horizon and bright near the shore, shadowed by clouds and winking in the sun. But though the girl's gaze was cast over it, she was looking at something else.

Half-way across the visible waters, the figure of a woman hovered in the air. Her face itself was indistinct but the girl was sure that she was smiling and she could see that she was beautiful. She was dressed in purple, with a white, soft stole about her throat, and a sparkling tiara that rested on hair flowing so light and ethereal, it could not be said where the woman ended and the clouds began. With one slender arm she wielded a sceptre- or perhaps it was a wand- and her gesture was one of beckoning.

Some time later, the girl's father entered the room to tell his daughter that breakfast was ready. At first he did not spot her- then, seeing her little form so happily absorbed at the window, he swelled with loving pride. On soft steps he came up behind her and in low, smiling tones ventured to comment.

'Isn't it beautiful?'

But she only cried out.

'Papa! What did you do!?'

For the vision had vanished as soon as he spoke.

'I only said it was a beautiful view, my sweets.' The hapless man was taken aback.

'Oh damn the view!', said the girl, ' It's always the same old thing!', and she jumped off the window-sill and out of the room, dashing over the bric-a-brac on the mantelpiece as she went.

From that moment on- even less than before- nothing could please her. They pressed on her her favourite foods and desserts, and though she did not quite turn them away, she ate with irritation, and declared herself unsatisfied. Her closet was bursting with dresses and shoes, but one evening she piled them all onto the floor and ringing for the servants bade them take them away and give them to the poor- 'if they don't mind ugly things'. School was out for the summer so she didn't have to study, she couldn't stand her toys, she wouldn't sleep at night, and she wouldn't wake in the day.

When the doctor, who was wise, though young, saw that she was perfectly healthy, he took her father aside and spoke to him quite plainly.

'Your daughter is rather spoilt.'

'Maithili has had no mother', said the father woefully, 'And I am so often travelling.'

'My advice would be to send her to some summer training school- in theatre perhaps. But anything will do that will take her out of herself.'

'Send her away? But I'm going to Morocco in July- now is the only time I can be with her!'

He did not realize how far she already was from him and everybody else, in everything but her physical presence.

Then one night, after neglecting most of a dinner that she had summoned to her bedroom, Maithili stood in front of the full-length mirror behind her bedroom door. She was tired and restless. As she did everyday now, she had spent several hours staring hopefully at the sea. But there had been been no repetition of her vision, on this or any other day. Now she looked sullenly at the girl in the glass. She watched the sullen-ness looking back.

Lately, she had started to watch herself a great deal in this way. It was as though she possessed a third, secret, and superior eye that was always fixed on herself. And whether sitting with her knees up at the sea-side window, or making a face at a plate of food, she was always really looking at how she looked.

For the young doctor had been wiser than he knew, when he recommended for her a course in the theatre. Maithili's talent for self-awareness would have been a fine thing if made to serve her artistically. Then she would have looked at herself the better to look at the world. Now her talent was her tyrant, and she looked at herself just because she could.

Suddenly her mouth parted in delight. She swivelled sharply and then heard herself commanded.

'If you look here and there, you will never see me again!'

'Alright! Only don't go- please!'

In the mirror the woman smiled. Her allure increased manifold.

''Where are you?, cried Maithili, for she had had a glimpse of the empty room behind her, 'You are so beautiful!', she exclaimed.

'There's no need to look behind you, my dear. Everything is much more beautiful ahead.'

It was true. Her boring bedroom was transformed in the mirror. Every surface was twinkling with light. There were wisps of gold hanging in the air. And then, for the second time in the space of seconds, Maithili caught her breath. For the wide windows at the far end did not look out at the sea. It was a forest she spied in the glass, a bright green, sun-splashed forest with the hint of a stream sparkling in the distance.

'Come along Maithili!' The Fairy Queen (what else could she be?) was laughing as she went, gliding towards the forest. 'Let go of the ugly things and come to the beautiful!'

Deciding in an instant, she reached her hand to the mirror. The glass gave like jelly. For a moment Maithili shuddered, for this sensation was cold and slimy, and as she moved forward through the mirror she had an awful sense of slugs and lizards crawling all over her body. Then she was into Fairyland.

***

'You said this wasn't a fairytale.'

The little girl was now crouched horizontally beneath the blankets, her unfathomable eyes fixed on the storyteller.

'Perhaps I spoke wrong', the man admitted. 'But it's really not the kind of fairytale you were thinking of. You see, this story has fairies, but it's not about fairies. It's about real things.'

She said nothing, only stared straight at him a decisive moment longer. When she looked again at the wall, he understood he may continue.

***

What a wonderful world it was! It was like putting on magic spectacles- everything was brighter and sharper in Fairyland- and a lot more besides. Maithili took great deep gulps of the air and it was heady like the wine she had once drunk from her father's cabinet- only much nicer. She felt ticklish the first few steps on the forest floor, because the grass here had a way of kissing her feet every time they made contact. Soon she simply took off her slippers and walked barefoot, caressed all the way.

They reached a clearing in the forest where the trees gave way to the sky. Maithili gasped in amazement. In dollops and tendrils of colour, blue, purple, red, white, orange, the clouds moved like paint over canvas. How dull and empty was the most blazing sunset compared to this display! And then she noticed something that made her stare at the Fairy Queen, in disbelieving delight.

Among the flourishes and curlicues was distinctly visible the letter 'M', drawn in her favourite magenta.

'We've been waiting for you', the Queen nodded, 'That's what it means.'

As from nowhere, a thought came to her and she shivered and her heart beat hard.

'Who am I?', Maithili whispered.

But even before she could wait for an answer, she felt the shifting of the shapes in the sky. The clouds were swooping down and all about her, whirling her up in revolutions of colour. She was borne up on cushions of fairy air. She found that there was no necessity to decide anything, for she was moving without trying, propelled on the wind towards the many-storeyed, many-coloured castle shining far above the ground. And that was not a painting like the clouds, but a thing of light and magic like the Aurora Borealis.

'My daughter.' Right beside her, the Queen bent to whisper in her ear. 'Welcome home.'

***

She was found by the maid, curled up in front of the bedroom mirror, her breathing slow and rhythmic, just as in the deepest sleep, a constant smile about her lips suggesting the happiest dreams. But it was her eyes that chilled them all. They spoke to her, shook her, moved her, but neither her mind nor her body seemed to respond. Then they laid Maithili onto the bed, still curled up, with her bounteous blankets, and her fixed and fascinated stare.

***

In the castle, all time was as though compressed into one everlasting moment. From entering to walls and floors splashed thoroughly with colour, and corridors lined with ecstatic fountains, to passing through a high hall filled with dancing figures, each wearing the mask of a different wild animal, to tripping through an open courtyard studded with baffling sculptures of triangles and rectangles, and finding herself at the dining table, with the Queen opposite her and shocks of nodding flowers sprouting from every seat, she had scarcely drawn a breath, or so it seemed to her.

'Everything moves so fast here!', Maithili exclaimed.

'That's why nothing here is boring.' The Queen beamed., 'Won't you eat?'

A bowl of clear soup had appeared on her plate. When she had taken three most delicious sips, it disappeared and various tiny cakes and snacks appeared before her instead. Each was less than a bite-size, as light as air, and when they were swallowed, she had a slice of pizza, which crumbled to nothing in her mouth, two mouthfuls of something that tasted like chicken, then more bite-cakes, a quarter roti and a spoonful of gravy, and a shot-glass of liquid chocolate. Then she was thirsty. From a crystal glass discovered in her hand she poured down her throat the sweetest, clearest elixir she had ever tasted. Then it was gone.

She stared in wonder at the Queen, who was watching her with a little smile.

'It's more delicious than anything I've ever eaten! But the portions are so funny.'

'We don't like large and oppressive meals', the Queen replied, 'It's so much better to take a bite out of everything, isn't it?'

'Oh I agree!'
At this point a song began, and although Maithili still felt very hungry, she was too astonished to do anything but listen. All about the table, the flowers were swaying their heads, and singing in a lisping, whispering chorus, like nothing she had ever heard before. After a while, she thought she could make out some of the words.

'Change change change', the flowers sang.
'Let nothing stay the same,
No dull things
Only beginnings
No ugly bores
We are pretty little birds'

So they were. True to their tune, they had changed. Mynahs, parrots, sparrows, robins and other beautiful and colorful species she couldn't name, were trilling all together.

'We are pretty little birds,
No ugly bores,
Chasing our stars,
Spreading our wings
Change change change
No ugly things.'

On it went in this vein, and sometimes the birds flew up to the ceiling and sometimes they turned back to flowers, as they sang. Then something happened which was startling, not just because it was unexpected, for everything in Fairyland was unexpected, but because it was distinctly out of key. Maithili knew at once that this thing did not belong.

A shudder shook the floor. The dining plates clattered and the birds ceased singing. In the space of their sudden silence, there entered gradually a noise. A groaning, hoarse and shaking, the sound of a living thing in deep and uncommunicable anguish, rose louder and louder, till it resounded about the room. Maithili's stomach churned. Her face crumpled and her breath turned ragged.

She did not notice the rows of beady eyes that fixed her with glinting accusation, or how the beaks of the beautiful birds were arrayed like so many swords.

At its highest, the groan died in a series of stricken gasps, that were like pain visited upon pain. Then the Fairy Queen's wand touched her heaving shoulder.


***

The little girl was wide awake. She heard distinctly the thundering outside and the constant swell of the rain. She lay on the bed just as before, but there was a new note in her eyes when they turned upon the bedside figure. And his voice softened as he saw.

'Yes', said the man, 'That's the sound that Maithili heard. And then-'

***

They were flying over Fairyland. Deep blue lakes like embedded sapphires, rolling hills, now verdant, now silver with snow, sudden tracts of soft green meadow-land, endless mysterious forests, all passed below the play of the magic clouds. The landscape unfolded with such a sense of plenitude and perfection, that after a while, overwhelmed, she turned her gaze away.

The Queen's face was close to hers. She looked at it- and suddenly she realized this was the very first time she was looking at it. Perhaps the wonder of her new world had distracted her before, but now, alone among the clouds, Maithili took in distinctly the slanted eyes, the mouth curved and imperious, the high cheekbones about which stretched taut the pale and perfect skin. The Queen was beautiful- she saw that at once. Then her gaze returned to the eyes, as the light flashed over them, and two black and glinting hollows bored into her.

'Is not our country lovely?'

She nodded. Simultaneously she recalled the secret she had learned- who she really was- the Fairy Queen's daughter, the daughter of this land!- and the thought made her shudder with pride.

'But it wasn't always so', the Queen went on, 'Once upon a time, our country was no different from other countries. We too had sorrow and poverty, war and unrest, dirt and disease. They disfigured our fair land and robbed us of our happiness. Our freedom lay trapped in their fetters.'

She had never experienced poverty or war, but oddly, as the Queen spoke, Maithili felt that she understood exactly what she meant. A burst of anger went exploding through her, strong and intense, like something long-simmering set suddenly to boil, and strangely, the face of her father came bobbing before her mind's eye.

'Like dust', she said suddenly, 'It's like a layer of dust on a surface that ought to be sparkling. It spoils everything!'

'So we cleansed ourselves', said the Queen, 'That is how we fought the tragedy of our world. We overcame it by overcoming ourselves, by changing and evolving into something truly beautiful. You see Maithili my dear, once upon a time, I was not a fairy at all. I was like you.'

The cloud-cover had thickened and hidden the view of the land. The Queen was smiling. She looked more beautiful than ever, but there were many strange meanings in her gaze, and Maithili's heart pounded with unexpected panic.

'You are not yet one of us', said the Queen, 'You saw that in the castle.'

'But I didn't do anything!', Maithili exclaimed, 'There was that awful noise!' But though she protested the charge, though, in truth, she did not even comprehend it, yet she knew that she was guilty.

'It has never been heard since Fairyland became Fairyland', said the Queen, 'Such noises do not belong here, and we do not hear them.'

As she spoke, she extended her slender arm, and taking Maithili's hand in hers, led her down through pink and swirling mists.

Below them lay a land like no other Maithili had seen. Pure-white as paper was the colour of the earth, and flat as an empty canvas it stretched, as far as the eye could see, infinite in all directions.

The white land was still; undisturbed even by a breath of breeze; meanwhile, the sky turned constantly with shapes and colours, and in the juxtaposition of the two Maithili sensed both a meaning and a command. Then once more she felt the Queen's wand on her shoulder and swivelled to attention.

How majestic the Queen looked! How powerful were her words, that now chastised and humiliated her!

'You have brought evil to our land', said the Fairy Queen. Her eyes glinted coldly and dispassionately. 'You are the conduit through which pain and suffering, have intruded upon our beauty. You are not ready to be here.'

'I'm sorry', cried Maithili, 'I didn't know what I was doing. But I want to be just like you! You did say- you did say I'm your daughter!'

There was a plea in her voice; a wheedling cadence that she hated even as she employed. So it thrilled her to see the Queen's mouth twist in thin contempt.

'Do not be dramatic', said the Queen, 'That is one thing we simply loathe.'

Inwardly, Maithili nodded, eagerly and gratefully. Did she not loathe it herself when she heard it from her father?- from whom, of course, she had picked it up unwittingly- this terrible show of subjection, this shameful docility before every mere obstacle. The way he sighed when stuck in traffic, his anxiety when she caught a cold- but her real parent had no need to plead. For she was a monarch; she made her own rules, lived by her own lights, controlled the forces that controlled the weak.

'To create a world filled with goodness, where no pain is heard, where no ugliness is seen, where only truth, love and beauty reign, that is what we accomplished, to become who we are. If you would be one of us, so must you.'

'Wait!', cried Maithili, for before her gaze the figure of the Queen was shimmering like a mirage.

'The bad will come in many forms.' Her wand was enchanting the air around her, transporting her to some ethereal realm. 'But most of all, it will prey on your Fear and on your Guilt. Defeat those two monsters and you shall succeed.'

'But what must I do?', said Maithili.

'Create!', commanded the Queen.

A moment later, she was alone in the white country, with only that word filling her mind.

Create.

She closed her eyes. She concentrated hard.

When she looked again, she literally laughed in delight. A purple mountain covered in flowers rose tall on the horizon, just as she had pictured it. She closed her eyes again, imagined a whole range of flower-decked hills- and there was the range! She thought then to test the limits of her power. She wished for a waterfall, flowing upwards into the sky. And what was impossible in the ordinary world was happening before her eyes.

Maithili lay down on the smooth white ground, hardly noticing even the texture of it. The sky above was like a palette, waiting for the brush-strokes of her fancy...
Afterwards, much later, she was resting on soft grass, softer than velvet, among gardens and lakes and magic groves of ancient trees, and rivers and mountains and beautiful birds, and doe-eye deer and unicorns and great big butterflies with bright green wings. It was raining drops of light from the sky.

She felt drowsy and sated. She drifted into sleep.

In her dream she woke to the very world she had created. The realization thrilled her; and she felt, for the first time, an equivalence between what was and what ought to be.

She was eager to explore, for it was cool and pleasant in her paradisiacal garden. She had both the safety of being at home, among her own creations, and the desire to exult in them.

Yet no sooner had her eyes travelled to the first inscrutable lake, the first dark gap between the far trees, than a feeling came upon her, which was not of her choosing.

Fear rose from her heart and swarmed through her body, paralyzing her. Every sound was different in her dream; the bird-song, the water, the rustle of the leaves; they were whispering dark and mutinous secrets.

Her gaze was drawn continually to a certain turn in a cobble-stoned path, that disappeared behind a clump of fir trees. Inexorably she was drawn towards it. It led to a pavilion- as far as she knew. But well before she had breasted the turn, that terrible noise returned.

Unmistakably, it was the same noise as from the castle, the same groaning of a suffering creature. But it was louder than before, more aggressive, more dangerous.

She closed her eyes and wished it gone. She told herself that it was not of her making, it had come from elsewhere. It was an intruder. What was more, it was foul and ugly. It made her afraid, and that was wrong.

There was silence when she opened her eyes, and emboldened, she turned the corner.

On the steps of the pavilion, in the shade of the trees, lay a little grey dog.

***

It was raining still, though perhaps the rain had slowed. The storyteller's head was bowed before the little girl's. His eyes sought hers with quiet urgency. His voice dropped specially. The dog was in pain (said the storyteller softly)-

***

- and Maithili paused. Her instinct was to go to the animal, but a warning sounded over her instinct. She had not created this, she reminded herself. It could not be trusted.

Soft, broken noises yet tugged her towards them. She told herself that it was all only a dream. The dog did not even truly exist- not like the rest of the world, which she had made and approved herself. It was only from curiosity, therefore, that she came close, peering.

Then she recoiled. It was sick and diseased. It had no hair, only grey and wrinkled skin. Its face was covered with hideous sores.
Again she shut her eyes and enured herself to everything the aberration threw at her. She heard low growls, and howls of anger, snarls, whining, and an almost human entreaty, but she held fast to her resolve, until finally, once more, silence descended...

When she opened her eyes she did not know any longer if she was dreaming or awake. She was sitting up straight in the empty white land. Every particle of her own creation had vanished, like a dream dissolved.

In its aftermath, disoriented, she saw her surroundings anew. The infinite canvas was dizzying, and the dizziness was horrifying. Round and round she turned, desperate for her bearings, while the sickness rose to her throat. She had nowhere to begin and nowhere to end, no place to rest and nothing to lean on, and no one to hold her hand.

Then she spied the whining dog, hobbling towards her across the awful emptiness. The sight of it stopped and steadied her. Simultaneously the sky churned fast with its myriad colours and the thought crossed her mind that she could build again her beautiful Fairyland, and be worthy again of her Queen. There were two ways to banish her loneliness, and one promised a world of beauty, and one was mangy and diseased. But that one was coming to her, and something broke within her, and sobbing, she ran to embrace it.


***

Maithili blinked. Her father, who at that moment was adjusting the blankets about her body, pretended he had not noticed. Only he knew, how many times, in the months that had passed, he had imagined such things, how many hours he had stared in futile waiting, how many false alarms had battered his heart with hope. So he went on tucking her in, until she turned all the way towards him and reached out with her arms.

***

The bedside figure rose quietly to his feet. He went through the doorway, closing it behind him, and faced a strained room full of light and people.

'Well?', said the girl's mother. 'Did you tell her a nice story?'

'She's trying to sleep now.'

'Such a happy, cheerful child!' The mother exclaimed. 'And then one day she comes home from the market, and now three days and nothing can even make her smile! And what happened? We still don't know. She won't tell me or Rakesh. She won't tell Madhur.' She looked towards her sister, a well-dressed, well-spoken lady, who nodded pityingly over her coffee cup, and then asked the man suddenly.

'Did she tell you?'

He shook his head. The aunt looked displeased. He was not a close relative to begin with. He was only passing through the city.

'We may need to call a doctor', she said sombrely, 'As for fairytales- I believe it's the fairytales that scare them in the first place. I don't know what this story you told Anita was about, but if she didn't even tell you what it was, that came out of nowhere and hurt her, then I don't see how it could have helped her.'

The woman stared fixedly at him. Beyond the walls, the rain persisted.

'It was about how things come out of nowhere', he said quietly, 'How they come out of nowhere and hurt you.'

His face was tired in the harsh light. They all noticed suddenly how young he really was.

A few moments later, the girl's mother got up, and went quickly into the bedroom.

Review: The Scatter Here is Too Great

This was published here in Jan 2014 in the North East Review

The Strange Case of Arun Joshi

This essay was published in the March 2013 Hindu Literary Review

Is the greatest Indian English novelist all but out of print? This much is certain: Arun Joshi deserves better. The author of five novels, written mainly during the 1970s, who won the Sahitya Akademi award for his penultimate book, The Last Labyrinth, barely registers as a name today. At least two of his books are out of print, none are easily available. Yet his themes are the most vitally contemporary of all our early English novelists, his characters vividly like us- English-speaking, urban, wracked with confusion- and the quality of his art and thought are both first-rate and arguably far superior to (say) Rushdie (to whom Indian English writing is said to owe a great debt). But if all this is so, what explains his obscurity?

Part of the answer may be, the man's personality. According to some accounts, Joshi was reclusive and publicity-shy. He certainly didn't climb the publishing ladder like his contemporaries did. Along with most other writers of the time who wrote in English but lived in India (Joshi headed the Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations in Delhi), he published locally- with Orient Paperbacks. But even through the 1980s and beyond, post-Rushdie, when Anita Desai, Khushwant Singh and others had moved to foreign or multinational brands, and Penguin India had set up shop, and publishing was starting to become the big-ticket affair it is today, Joshi was still with Orient. (He remained there till his death in 1993, nor, to date, has anybody else published his novels.) It is not the case that his merits were unknown in his lifetime. He had won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1981. Did he not push his wares hard enough?

This could be; we don't know. But we know a general truth, which I suggest applies squarely to the case of Arun Joshi: that it is the man with his finger on the pulse who risks being dashed aside, not the glib talker at the safe distance. That a writer can be ignored, precisely for being too relevant. In exploring seriously and unapologetically the psyche of his very own 'set'- the privileged and the upwardly mobile, who read, wrote, talked and thought in English- Joshi was breaking ground that has never afterwards been mined- that has in fact been guiltily filled up again, in the years since he published. As a result, his themes, that leap from the page from sheer relevance, lie buried today in a kind of ashamed but aggressive silence.

Consider his best-known book, The Strange Case of Billy Biswas, published in 1971. It is the story of the son of a Supreme Court judge, educated in New York, who leaves his comfortable Delhi life, his marriage and his friends, to become a tribal healer in the Maikala Hills of Chhattisgarh. It is a 'sensational' plot; Joshi was habitually guilty of slight excesses in that regard. It is also exciting, wise, beautifully constructed, and one of the best English novels written anywhere in the world. Billy's conversations with the narrator, his old college friend, now a conventional but thoughtful bureaucrat, delineate Joshi's concerns. 'What got me', Billy confides, years after his transformation, 'was the superficiality...I don't think all city societies are as shallow as ours. I am, of course, talking mainly of the so-called upper classes.. I don't think I have ever met a more pompous, a more mixed-up lot of people.' 'Well', answers the narrator, 'you know why they are mixed up, don't you? Centuries of foreign rule, the period of transition, economic insecurity and so on'. 'I can understand that', says Billy, 'but for God's sake they have at least got to think about it. If they don't, the period of transition, as you call it, is going to last forever and ever.'

This excerpt may suggest, at first, a certain cynicism- the familiar breast-beating of our present-day literary elite- but Joshi is simply too good for that. The shallowness of middle class society is not for him a point of rhetoric, intended to show off his own enlightened superiority, but a theme to be explored with actual concern. He never mocks the men and women whom he critiques. That is why they come to life. Here is Leela Sabnis, from The Last Labyrinth: 'M.A. and PhD. from Michigan, something else from London, short, shapely, small-breasted, skinny, trained in philosophy, emancipator of women, married and divorced, believer in free love, harbinger of a new order of things, reformer of the body and a mechanic of the spirit, a good lover...Leela Sabnis was a muddled creature. As muddled as me. Muddled by her ancestry, by marriage, by divorce, by too many books.' This extract condenses the character, but I hope conveys something of the sheer reality of Joshi's material. Leela Sabnis is a woman one recognizes.

So is her 'muddle.' And Joshi explores the muddle of our English-speaking elite, up and down through his first four novels. He knows that it is the wellspring of a great deal of violence, of 'the blind blundering vengeance' that stalks Billy Biswas, and the sham and hypocrisy that creep over The Apprentice. That, Joshi's third and perhaps greatest novel, is a searing account of a young governmant servant's descent into careerism and corruption. Published almost four decades ago, no novel could be more acutely relevant to our times. There are lines like prophecy. 'We are defeated and we celebrate victory! God exists and does not mind graft! We sink and think we are swimming. Strange... We are a very strange nation.' But perhaps no bookshop stocks it.

This is both tragic and not surprising at all. When the general consensus among our critics is that privileged Indian English novelists cannot possibly have any great themes of their own to grapple with, that all the meaty material lies in 'other' Indias or in other languages, that non-fiction may as well take over from fiction- when such idiocies (the right word) abound- then the last thing one knows how to place is the absolute seriousness and unabashed introspection of an Arun Joshi. When I mention that it is the spiritual starvation of the elite, their unattended need for faith and God, that is his ultimate theme, you will see the gap between his thought and the prevailing thought. Nevertheless, it is worth considering, that even as we celebrate writers from the world over, we may have forgotten the best of our own.

The Cover Up

(Review of The Monk, The Moor and Moses Ben Jalloun, by Saeed Mirza (Harper Collins, Fourth Estate, 2012)

This was published in the March 2012 edition of the Hindu Literary Review.



Saeed Mirza's second book is not easy to categorize. Although dressed in the garb of a novel, it is not in substance a novel. Although full of information, it is not a substantial work of scholarship. But it is a personal, emotional and yet controlled polemic, that serves a definite purpose.

Mirza's idea is to attack what he considers a deliberate and wrongful cover-up, wherein the immense contribution of Arab learning to almost every aspect of Western civilization has been either denied or sidelined. For many people, this central thesis will indeed be revelatory. That Europe only emerged from its dark ages on the shoulders of the Islamic world is not the conventional wisdom. More general, perhaps, even among those familiar with the subject, is the sort of view Betrand Russell takes in his magnum opus on the history of Western philosophy- namely, that while “admirable in the arts and in many technical ways”, “Mohammedan civilization.... showed no capacity for independent speculation in theoretical matters”, “is not important as original thought”, and was important to Europe only “as a transmitter”- of existing Greek and Latin learning.

In Mirza's eyes, this is a condescending and untruthful view- a consequence of the mind-set of superiority engendered by Western political dominance post the nineteenth century, and promoted relentlessly thereafter, unto the present day- when the casting of Obama as an 'Arab' during the 2008 election campaign, can be treated not just as an error of fact, but as an actual pejorative.

With this state of affairs as the spur to its anger, The Monk, the Moor and Moses Ben Jalloun tells the story of four students at Berkeley College, who hold weekly meetings to investigate the true contributions of the Islamic Golden Age. This 'novelistic' framework is not particularly plausible on its own terms, but it doesn't need to be. Its purpose is to enable Mirza to make his points in a direct and personal way, without having to sift through arguments for and against, as a more academic approach would necessitate. As far as it goes, it is a successful method. The book is full of interesting content- historical figures and relationships not generally known. We are told of a host of Arab scientists, physicians, historians, musicians and poets whose works, translated into Latin and made accessible to Europe's renaissance and pre-renaissance men, might have influenced them far more deeply than is generally admitted. Leonardo Da Vinci, Dante, Copernicus, William IX (the first of the troubadours) and many others, are all suggested to have benefited- and in some cases simply plagiarized- from Islamic pioneers.

Now, Mirza's aim is to assert and provoke, not to perform a thorough analysis of the facts. His book is, therefore, self-indulgent, but always candidly and more or less gently so. It is not a rant, and it knows its place. Mirza is aware that he personally is not putting forth the winning arguments, which is why one recurring and crucial theme in his book is an appeal to the scholars to do their job right. Via the imagined re-telling of episodes from the life of the 11th Century scholar, Abu Rehan al-Biruni, Mirza reminds us of certain ethics of scholarship: an openness to learning from anyone, even one's political or religious enemies, an acknowledgment of one's intellectual debts, and an acceptance of the facts, whether one likes them or not. These, he indicates, are values that the Arab world possessed during its Golden Age, but, for all the lip service it pays them, they are not the values of the modern West. It is an accusation that deserves pondering over, especially in light of the sheer clout of the Western intellectual establishment, to which we are all subject.

In closing, a deficiency in this book, which should be mentioned, is the absence of either an index or a bibliography. Since Mirza's stated desire is that the reader should undertake his own journey of inquiry, such assistance would have very useful.

Short Story: The Fork in the Road

This was published in Himal's January 2012 issue- but with some mistaken proof-reading- so it's better read here.

After the unremitting crush of the station, it was a relief to be out on the street. Here too, the crowd was about us, the wretched commuters in their dishevelled clothes, the hawkers hawking tirelessly, the beggars lying decrepit, the autos wending their way through the lot, but at least we had the use of our limbs. I turned to ask Tara if she felt like walking on.

She was staring hard at a point in the distance. I could see only the usual, sullied road, fringed with shacks, filled with poverty. Then I saw that she wasn't really looking at anything. She was staring into space. A moment's consternation seemed to seize her, it parted her lips, but she said nothing.

'The park', I said, 'is down the road. It's maybe another kilometre from here.'

'We can walk', said Tara, 'Let's just walk.'

It was good weather for walking. It had rained hard the previous night, but the slush and the puddles had dried through the morning. The monsoon mugginess still lay on the air, but with an intervening layer of fragile cold. We walked between the traffic and the hawkers, our shoes crunching the road's loose rubble.

Tara walked briskly. I was surprised. As far ago as I could remember, she was the kind of girl, that if she wasn't running, then she strolled. Now she walked straight with narrowed eyes that looked not left nor right.

'Slow down', I said, 'You'll tire yourself out.'

'I'm alright.'

'You'll tire me out.'

She paused with a sigh.

'Why do you want to dawdle? To take in the atmosphere? When we're moving at least it doesn't smell so much.'

I knew what she meant. Everywhere, the air was fetid, every square kilometer suffused with the odour of thirty thousand unlooked-after bodies and everything they got up to. This was Tara's second visit to the city, and she was beginning to loathe it. I didn't blame her. However-

'You may as well get used to it', I said, 'Especially if you're going to be visiting often.'

She shot me a look. I ignored it, but perhaps she was right; perhaps, though I didn't intend it, a certain something had crept into my tone. I changed the subject then; I tried to interest her in the skyline beyond the slums. A range of ugly high-rises looked over that tattered sea.

'Bombay has scale', I said, 'It's a phenomenon, even if it's a tragedy.'

'It's shitty.'

My heart knocked suddenly, unexpectedly. Hastily I muffled the mood, but it was disorienting all the same. Her diamond eyes, her pithy speech. Sharper now than I ever could remember. Did one never grow indifferent?


Only when we were well inside the park, did Tara relax her pace. The traffic noises had faded now; the snarl under the flyover which had taken us, even on foot, a full ten minutes to negotiate, was out of sight. Teak and peepul flourished on either side of the shaded road. Other trees too, that I couldn't name, and in amongst them tall grasses, shrubs in flower, all the lushness of the forest floor.

'A national park', I announced with approval, 'A whole forest ten minutes from the station! I can't understand why more people don't visit here.'

'Small mercies,' said Tara, 'You hungry?'

'Already?'

We were carrying water, juice and sandwiches bought from a coffee shop in Andheri. The plan was to eat after we were good and tired exploring the park. But now I realized she was right.

'Well?'

'I guess we can buy more later', I said. Then I laughed. 'We must be getting old.'


A signboard up ahead pointed the way to a lion and tiger safari trail, a Jain temple, a 'Viewing Point' from where, it was said, the whole city was laid out, and a set of ancient Buddhist caves. I felt no particular curiosity for any of them. Closer at hand was the sound of splashing water; an intuition of space. We followed a grassy lane that broke from the main road, and took us through a patch of wilderness. Soon the wind picked up, and then it was on its way to us, all the way down the forested slopes and across the breadth of the lake.

I could see us then; Tara and I; close and familiar; stumbling to rest by the water-side; the wind in our hair. At intervals further down the bank, on rocky outcrops and ragged grass, other couples sat two by two. The small-town boys with their over-slick hair, the girls in their gaudy jeans, but it was I who was wrong to notice. They shunned scrutiny in their quiet knots, creatures of Nature at home in her lap, drinking deep of each other.

Meanwhile, we looked at the trees, and the sky, and the shimmering colours in the flat of the lake. We sat side by side, munching our sandwiches in a silence that seemed important. After a while, she said:

'So you feel it too?'

'Feel what?'

'Old. Do you feel old too? Because I do.'

'Oh that', I said, 'I was only joking about that. Come on- we're twenty six.'

She looked at me with a kind of disappointment.

'Don't you feel any- any nostalgia now... for the past? For how things used to be?'

'Well, I mean...' And then suddenly, looking away from those earnest eyes, I decided to be candid. 'Well... ok. I guess, I do sometimes think back- to college... first year college, second year...Yeah, it was different...'

It had come to me just the previous night, woken inside me as I struggled to sleep. Just a stray memory of a long time ago. A muggy night in a telephone booth, on a run-down street wet with rain. Tara a thousand miles away, talking excitedly of a friend I'd never seen, and a book I'd never heard of. But nourishing me, as I clutched the receiver, gladdening my essence with just the music of her voice, as the rain does the earth. And then, as I lay there remembering, a whole era had seemed to open out, like a chapter in a history book; days spent in gratitude, nights soaked in enchantment, when pleasure and pain were constant and indistinguishable, but that each was a blessing I never doubted, because I knew, the way you know things- deep in your bones- that my star was shining, the world would be mine, the girl would be mine. And never once the possibility entertained that-

I touched the grass. It was rough and bristling. The breeze passed with a pungent sigh. Something shuddered through me.

Tara's face, gold in the sunlight, was soft with remembrance.

'Remember Penang', she was saying.

'Penang?' I was surprised.

'I don't know how we managed to meet there! Remember? A foreign country and no cell-phones!'

'Yeah', I said, 'Yeah, that was something.'

'And nowadays people call and call and re-confirm until you're right there looking at each other.'

'Yeah, most rendezvous' seem to begin like that now. Both parties in the same place talking to each other on the phone.'

I laughed, and she laughed too. But she laughed a lot harder than I thought the thought merited. That confused me. The onset of the cell-phone revolution was not the stuff of my nostalgia. I had thought she wanted to really talk; now I waited impatiently to resume the proper tone. The soonest I could, I interjected-

'See, I think we just felt a lot more invincible then. We felt things would turn out right for us no matter what. But now, we know we're not special any longer. We know that anything can happen to anybody, there are no guaranteed rewards.'

Tara was listening, but I couldn't read her expression. There was a frown and then there was nothing. She looked out over the lake.

'For example', I hesitated, 'With love, for example.'

But now her laugh was quite manufactured. Smarting suddenly, I turned my tone safely dry and cynical.

'I mean, you certainly screwed me over.'

'Haha', she laughed, 'Haha, yeah that was it.'

Her gaze stayed on the hilly forest, that overlooked the banks beyond. I thought of the snuggling couples, so perfectly harmonious (or so I imagined) and the two of us, whom any passer-by would take for the same. But the difference wasn't just that we weren't in love. That I had known for five years. That was alright by me. The occasional pang was not unwelcome- it was proof of the past. There was something else...

'Seriously, though', I tried again, 'Dreams really take a beating, don't they?'- but before I could finish the thought she interrupted with finality.

'God!', Tara exclaimed. Her eyes were alive with outrage. 'God, just look at that!'

I stared a moment at the grass and the water, until suddenly I spied the offending plastic bag. It was held down by a rock, half-immersed in the lake, fluttering futilely. It looked as though it was drowning. And alongside the bag, offensively cheerful, lay the rest of the litter; multi-coloured wrappers, a soft drink can and a packet of chips.

'Garbage even here...' Her voice grew faint with disgust. 'Inside a fucking national park!'

'It is awful', I agreed.

'It's fucking ridiculous! Doesn't anybody care?'

I jerked my head towards the pockets of lovers.

'Not them anyway.'

'God!', Tara got up swiftly, 'This sort of thing is so... let's go!'

'Go where?'

'I don't know, anywhere.'

'You want to see the tiger museum?', I suggested.

'Anything, anything.'


The tiger museum was a little gallery near the starting lines of the tiger safari. It was a good idea to visit there. It meant a short walk through a strong breeze, and then the quiet gloom of a mostly empty interior; palliatives for her temper and antidotes for my nerves. We wandered past cheerfully illustrated, well-written displays. We both loved animals- and that love is prelapsarian. The half-hour we spent in the museum seemed snatched straight from each of our childhoods.

'Did you know', I read aloud, 'that tiger stripes are like fingerprints? Every piece unique.'

'Did you know', she retorted with pleasure, 'tigers can leap thirty feet at a time?'

'Well check this out- from the mouth of the tiger- if humans fought fair, they'd be the endangered ones.'

'Aww', she came over, 'he looks so cute!'

'He looks like a Lolcat.'

'You're right!'

'And when did those become such a craze? I don't remember them in our hey-day.'

'Our hey-day?'


Later, while the bus was loading passengers for the safari, we bought cups of hot, sugary tea from a kerb-side stall, and took them to a parapet under a tree. Someone asked if we were getting on too, but Tara shook her head. I was glad. We sat and sipped the tea and watched the crowd leave, and when the ache of the engine had died on the air, I looked at her.

'It's great seeing you again', I said, 'It really is.'

'You should have been more in touch', she answered calmly.

'I know', I said, 'I know, I should have. I really don't know why I wasn't... But... I'm really glad you found time for today. And you know, I was thinking, it's so great we've been able to be friends for so long... through all the different phases. I mean- that's a rare thing.'

I watched her smile- that private smile, half-blush, half-smug, as though she'd just had a compliment. I knew it well. And I was happy then. Happy the way I had expected to be, seeing Tara again after so many months, happy the way people should be, when Love has been buried, and its ghost exorcised, and their mutual caring, enriched by their history, can have its untrammeled say.

'Tara', I told her, 'I've been depressed. I don't know how to explain it, but I think you'll understand. I think it's what you said, about feeling old.'

'You said that.'

'Yeah, I said that, but you noticed it- and I tried to play it down. But it's true. I was feeling it just the other night...as though enthusiasm itself has become a thing of the past. And now only endurance remains. Endurance until the crack of doom! And the soundtrack of life has suddenly changed from Beautiful Day to- I don't know- Fade to Black.'

She laughed. We both did.

'You know me', I went on gratefully, 'I always try to put a brave face on things. But this city- it does get you down. And India- India!'

'I know.'

'India is an ordeal... I mean, it's alright if you're happy in your ivory tower- and you talk about India Shining or whatever- and maybe it's ok if you just dive into the thick of things and don't give a damn, but if not...if you look around you, if you pause to think... It makes you doubt if anything you're doing has any point whatsoever. I mean, maybe a tiny section of the very elite are interested- or pretending to be, I think they're mostly just pretending to be- but other than that, who cares? Everybody's either stepping on somebody else, or trying to avoid being stepped on. Everything's so degraded and hand to mouth. The newspapers-'

'I don't read them', Tara said firmly.

'Yeah... I mean, the crime, the corruption...'

'I don't read them.' She was shaking her head.

'And the chaos', I said, 'The country is a cacophony. And instead of finding out how to stop the noise, and change it into music, everybody's basically looking for ear-plugs. Anyway... you know what I mean... It all...'

'It all adds up', she said, 'to something quite depressing.'

Her voice was clear and unflinching.

'Exactly', I said.

I laughed then, bitterly again- but I wasn't feeling bitter. No, I was feeling calm, almost heroic, like a soldier sizing up a battle-field, the war-zone that might destroy him but can no longer overcome him, because he has already made his peace with it. I was feeling protected.

Around us, the light was changing. The leaves were going from green to gold, glimmering gently as they turned in the breeze. A premonition of dusk had entered the late afternoon and struck it through with beauty. Or perhaps not, perhaps the beauty was in my way of seeing. Any environment is beautiful when once it is background; and with Tara beside me the wider world seemed to fall into place- turn dreamy and unintrusive. I tasted the warm tea. I felt like putting my arm around her.

'How was New York?', I asked her suddenly, 'You never really told me.'

'Oh New York', she said, 'Yeah, New York was great. We partied a straight 72 hours.'

'Wow! So it's everything it's cracked up to be?'

'I guess. Maybe. I couldn't live there though.'

'No?'

'I couldn't live in America at all.'


I nodded. We had talked about this before. America, the land of work and achievement and climbing ladders to golden prizes, and freedom and sex and great portions of greasy food; America that knew only one way, which was forward, and one speed, as fast as possible; whose attractions and exhortations had shaped our generation in so many fundamental ways; was yet a foreign country. Tara had felt that just months into her course- felt it so strongly she had called me up one night to tell me.

So here she was now- back home, to face the music.

'Well', I said, 'I'm proud of you.'

She beamed at me, stretched her back, gazed around her with appraising eyes.

'Do you want some more tea?', I asked.

'No.' A sudden discontentment creased Tara's brow. 'Let's go.'

'Where to?', I was surprised, 'It's quite nice sitting here.'

'Well, we can't stay forever. Anyway I need to find a loo.'


On the road again, she talked about her work. It was difficult, she told me, it was frustrating. I thought that was inevitable. I could imagine Tara, with her urbane tastes, her earnest ideals, her great expectations, floundering in the around-the clock- politics and feudal culture of a Delhi set-up.

'They spend all day talking', she said, 'and drinking tea- and when I want to leave at six, they look at me like I'm a shirker! Even though I've actually been getting things done. But just because I don't stay till midnight with the boss- oh, and they're all so scared of the boss. It's pathetic.'

'But what's he like?', I asked her, 'The boss.'

'Oh he's nice, he's fine... But I have to work with the others, right.'

'Yeah, but he doesn't discourage these pointless late hours?

'No... he's very laissez-faire that way.'

'I guess he enjoys the power then.'

'Maybe... I don't know... at least he cares about the work. Most of the others don't, you know. Once we were talking over lunch and one of them was like, haan, so the hospitals are over-crowded and unclean and unequipped, but then it's a big city with so many people, so what can you do? And everyone was nodding, and I was thinking, there are big cities all over the world! We are supposed to be thinking of ways to improve things! We're supposed to be this important 'think-tank'!'

Her voice, so warm and ebullient when she was happy, was peaking with indignation. I looked at her, striding past the still gulmohars, hot with anger, bathed in shade. And then, as I looked, it seemed to me that all of Nature was rushing to her side; the breeze fanning her crumpled brow; the leaves in the trees rustling their sympathy. The evergreen forest was receiving her rage, but her young heart still filled with disappointment, and my own heart went out to her, as it always would.

'Tara', I said, and my speech, as I heard it, was soft and wise, 'I think- what we have to do - is just accept our reality. We have our skills, our beliefs, and they're different from the majority's. They just are. You, for example, you believe in cities, you believe in building things that have scale, you believe in the possibilities of the individual, and maybe most of your office doesn't think that way, maybe their heart is somewhere in the country- the town or the village, I mean. Maybe they leave things to destiny... If we're the first fully urban generation, with all our liberal education, then maybe we have to be the fall-guys. We have to pit our wits against the way things are, and not expect any great rewards for ourselves- but just look for solutions. And we can do that, right? We can even have fun doing that... I think you just have to keep going... Because what you're doing is really great, it's really fundamental.'

As I talked, she walked beside me, not saying a word, with her head lowered and her eyes narrowed. It was the way she had walked from the station to the park. It was a new note in her persona, that I hadn't known in the days when I adored her. But perhaps this briskness, this hardness, was only on the surface; the strong exterior of a grown-up woman.

A little later, as I waited outside the park's toilets, I thought again of Tara and I. In the morning, going to see her, stalled in traffic with time to think, I had been apprehensive. It had been so long; we had fallen out of touch. What invisible strands had snapped between us; I didn't know. We couldn't be friends in the ordinary fashion; that had been clear for years. Two elements, unstable in proximity, must either unite or separate. We had to separate. But although we walked on parallel lines, never meeting, I was reminded now that our road was the same. We saw the world the same way; we hurt at the same things. We shared a community, be it of disappointment and broken dreams and the weight of a nation's failure, but a community no less.

I gladdened with that idea, and the still beauty of the forest seemed to swell and deepen too. It was pregnant with hope, as Tara came out to join me, her mouth pursed in grim disdain.

'Not good, hunh?', I smiled.

'Don't ask', she said.

'Well- maybe the animals use it too.'

'That's disgusting', she winced. 'Anyway', she went on smoothly, 'So this job has been a real pain. But it's ok, I'm quitting soon. I'm looking forward to that. I'd like to spend some time doing nothing at all.'

She was walking on ahead of me; I caught up to her.

'You're... quitting?'

'Ya, after I get married. I'll be moving here with Akash, so I'll have to quit anyway.'

She was still walking; in what direction I didn't know. It seemed to me the wind had ceased and the scufflings in the forest gone silent. I stared at her, but she neither caught my eye nor avoided it.

'Tara', I said, 'Tara, hold on.'

'What's the matter?'

'I didn't realize, you were getting married.'

'Oh I made up my mind a while back. It was just a question of when. I've been seeing him for two years now. You know that.'

Her speech seemed to fly by me, as brisk and removed as the rest of her. She turned to walk on, and in a stupor, I walked with her.

Soon I was aware of a great weight on my bones. I could hear my breathing, slow and strained. A bench by the road tugged at my vision, and I broke stride towards it. It was damp and gritty; covered in yellow leaves. I sat as best I could. I could feel Tara's gaze following my movements with incredulity. A part of me was incredulous too.

'What's the matter?', she said again. She was drawing closer. Her voice held an unfeigned astonishment.

'What's the matter?'

I shook my head.

'You're surprised? Why are you so surprised?'

I didn't know what to say.

'We talked about this two years ago!', said Tara, 'I told you even then I was going to marry him. Our parents are involved already.'

I tried to grin, but a sadness inside was choking me, all the harder because where had it come from?

'I thought', I said, 'that you were going to...'

'What?'

'Take a call on it.'

Tara threw her head back with sudden animation. Her lips parted in mirth.

'That was then! A long time ago! I made up my mind after that! But I don't understand why you're so surprised. I've been seeing him constantly. I've come to Bombay to see him now, haven't I?'

'I thought', I repeated, and I was talking to myself now; stunned into open introspection; trying to trace, through my speech, the roots of my reaction, 'you said, this wasn't it. I thought you were going to... wait... till you fell in love again.'

For a moment, she was angry. I braced myself for the easy and unanswerable lie. But something prevented that. Perhaps it was the honesty of my emotion, my unabashed bewilderment, my vulnerability, that made her candid.

She started to talk. She said she used to think that way when she was younger, but she wasn't twenty one any longer. She said she had learned to be sensible, to be wise, to take things as they came, and not always as she chose. She said, what was love, but making your peace. She spoke freely, not from the heart, but a nimbler, more persuasive, more dangerous place.

Years ago, when we had talked of Life and Love and what it all meant, we had talked like seekers after a common truth, who do not balk at argument. That wasn't her tone any more.

'I don't know about you', Tara said, 'but I know what my dreams are. And they're not wild or bizarre or unconventional. Maybe they aren't romantic. Maybe they aren't going to save the world- or the country- or anybody. I don't care. They're mine. A house to live, a space of my own, a companion I care for who cares for me, friends whom I know I can trust, just enough money that I don't have to worry about money. And that's it. That's all I want from life.'

'But that's all I want too!', I wanted to tell her, 'That's all I want too!'- I wanted to scream- but then how could I explain the distance between us? How could I justify why I sat, drowned in loneliness, while she stood not inches away, neither lover nor comrade, drawing further and further apart with every passionate sentence she spoke? I could be pompous and futile, or I could stay silent.

'You understand?', she was asking me, 'Do you understand?'

'I think so', I said.

We were quiet then. A great weariness seized me. I looked at the ancient trees, stirring gently all about the late afternoon. Maybe the signs had been there, and I had failed to read them. Maybe our road had been the same. But I had forgotten the fork in it.

'Aren't you going to get up?', Tara laughed, 'You're not actually old yet.'

'I feel old', I said.

'Let's go', she said. 'It's too late to see the sights here- let's go back.'

'You didn't enjoy coming here.' I looked at her.

'Oh I did', she said quickly, 'It's really beautiful- but I'm tired. And we have that awful commute still to come.'

No, she hadn't enjoyed it. Not the forest, not the lake, not the flowers in the trees. She had gotten brisk. She remembered the garbage and the dirt and the looming spectre of the broken city. A cold wind swooped down on us; it was bracing to me, but I saw Tara give a little, fearful shiver as it passed. Then suddenly it was easy to get to my feet, to almost put my arm around her. I didn't, but the thought of it played in my mind, healing me, tormenting me, as we walked back to the waiting streets.