RATISH CALLED AND officially invited me to the dinner on Friday night at the Ashoka Road compound. Disarmed by his insistence that I show up and not wanting to offend him or any Indian hosts, I couldn’t politely reject his invitation and, he pointed out, this was an opportunity to meet an “eclectic group of people.”
As eclectic as it was rarefied. The gathering included Preeya, Holika’s best friend, whom I wanted to meet because Holika spoke of her with such admiration. She was also a confidante and one who shared the same worldview. Preeya had divorced her first husband, whom she married when she very young in an arranged marriage. For a time, she was part of the Indian Diaspora and lived in the UK with her husband. When she left him she returned home, finished her education, got a law degree, and began working with Human Rights Watch and other organizations. If anyone knew about Holika and me, it was Preeya. Holika introduced us and I said a bland but genuine “Very glad to meet you.”
“Neil, are you nervous?” asked Holika.
“Feeling a little bit of pre-party paranoia. I didn’t know it showed.”
“Stick by me.” Preeya, a big-boned and stocky woman, with a gentle swish of her neck-length hair and a twist of her small nose ring, reassured me.
The other guests included Summit and his wife who ran a school for the street kids. Alvaro Benigno, a cool dude in dark glasses and full beard, and who, despite the romance of his name, was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. He owned an art gallery in New York but gave it up and opened a prestigious gallery in New Delhi. He lived a gay lifestyle with all of its multiple meanings. His newest artist protégé, Sonia Guptaphya, talked mainly to Begnino and P. K. Bahar. Bahar, the publisher of Delhi Today, fortyish with Bollywood good looks, a Cambridge education, a wife and three children, wanted little to do with Guptaphya and rather blatantly chatted up a tall, blond-haired, green-eyed Swedish graduate student doing her dissertation on Tantric ritual. Sharmilla, who worked for Vijay as the head of his charity organization, and her husband, who was a big shot in an Indian venture capital firm, seemed haughty until they started drinking, when they became almost goofy. Lastly, arriving together were Tracee, the anorexic food critic, and another woman. Tracee greeted me with a winsome smile and an airy shake of her delicate hand. Since I didn’t know who knew what about her, I didn’t ask how she was feeling. Still vastly underweight and pale, she seemed steadier on her feet. I decided to let her call the shots. She introduced me to Anita Gatore, who, like Tracee, knew Holika since childhood. The three of them spent two “wild” summers at a Swiss finishing school. Anita Gatore was the granddaughter of a renowned writer, who the whole country, from the poorest villager to the most renowned pedagogue, knew as “Gatore.” Anita too was called simply “Gatore” by her friends.
Vijay, as the others congregated around him in the vast, marbled interior of the immaculately clean and impeccably furnished living room, relaxed in a large red-cushioned arm chair, more like a throne, whiskey glass in hand, face pinkish-brown and blotchy, smile vaguely forlorn, eyelids droopy, already tipsy.
The servants brought us wine, soft drinks, pretzels, chips with salsa, all kinds of nuts, buffalo cheese, yogurts, and Indian-style crudités with tongue-burning spicy dips.
Tracee kept her distance from me, talking with Gatore. Preeya stood beside me and we made simple “How do you like Delhi?” small talk. I spoke in my social-situation bam-bam New York City nervous patter. “I love it. It feels at once so much like New York and at the same time the other side of the world. You have crazed rickshaw drivers. We have wacko bicycle messengers. We both have taxi drivers who’re color blind.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Cause none of ’em has ever seen a red light.” She smiled in agreement. “Really, I do think Delhi represents the future.”
“Is that good or bad?” Preeya asked, almost jestingly in a wisp of a voice.
“Not sure. Both, I guess.”
“How do you mean that?” Preeya had not been at Vijay’s shindig for Charlie. Not her style. I sensed her knowledge that much was rarely as it seemed, which bound her and Holika together as kindred spirits, and which allowed her probing questions to seem more curious than intrusive.
“Because of the population and lack of resources. I think that is a problem that the West is going to have to face soon too.”
“One hundred percent right.”
“I’m only discovering the multiple layers of Indian life, but the similarities are greater than the differences.”
A petite, gray-haired, elderly woman dressed in a plain off-white sari with her midriff showing, peeked into the crowded room from a doorway and then shuffled across the room and slipped out a door that led to a courtyard. She passed as if invisible. I assumed she was one of the servants. Preeya whispered in my ear, “Gertrude’s ghost.”
I tilted my head questioningly.
“Holika’s Aunt Deva. Vijay’s wife. She prefers to stay in her own little house on the other end of the grounds.”
“Got it.”
We were now in “The Pillai House,” because Vijay, not Holika’s father, was the power broker of the family. Both families hailed from the Brahmin caste but, I was told, a lower jati within that caste. Holika’s father was born into a long line of scholars and property owners who never held jobs. For years, the family survived on selling pieces of their properties and investments. With almost all of the fortune dissipated, Holika’s father married Vijay’s younger sister. Her father ostensibly worked in the Pillai family business, but mostly he displayed the meager talents of the dilettante in art and politics.
I’d gotten only a peek at the grounds as Chandon drove up the long gravel driveway. No one offered me a tour of the house or the compound, which took up almost an entire city block and was guarded by the usual high walls and stern-looking bodyguards. Besides this main house, other houses on the compound belonged to Holika’s parents. Three smaller private bungalows were for family use and huts housed the dozen or so servants who were always on duty.
Despite the high ceilings and spacious rooms, the house felt encumbered with a sullen sterility, and now I understood why. Ghosts of all sorts, some which could be seen and some which could not, patrolled the hallways. When I went to the bathroom, one of the servants eyed me as I passed a sitting room where Alka and a girlfriend watched American, not Indian, MTV on a wall-sized TV screen while simultaneously jabbering on cell phones.
I returned to the main room, hugged my glass of wine, and found a spot between Preeya and Tracee. I joined everyone who stood listening raptly to P.K. and Gatore face off in a fiery, but not rude, political discussion of Kashmir and the future of India. Each of the billion Indians, regardless of their education, religion, or social station, owned and voiced an opinion on the Kashmir “problem.”
Gatore, who wrapped her lissome frame in tan leather pants and a pleated and beaded orange blouse, possessed no shortage of spine or spleen. “No, P.K., India was never really a country. The British forced us into one country for their own selfishness, then two with the Partition, and tried to give us one language, their language, when we have the most beautiful languages in the world.” She referred to the English governing style and then the splitting of the subcontinent into India and then Pakistan and Bangladesh. “This should not be and will not be because we have too many states, languages, religions, and customs. The Ossirs have little in common with the Tamils in Chennai and the Moslems in Kashmir and the Communists in Kerala and the Punjabis, and the Christians in Goa … and on and on.”
P.K., fists clenched, answered with a repressed but obvious volatility, “We are a country. We can keep our distinct languages. But all, every child, must be taught his native tongue and English to keep up. We must outdo the Americans. Those who control language will control the information, and those who control information will rule the world. Our language can save us or it can doom us. Our peoples and our mutual cultures will adapt, must adapt or we will lose all of our best people.”
“Best people?” Preeya seemed to have little patience for those who left India with no intention to return. “Let them go. We must control our population growth.”
Vijay shook his right hand limply in the air that held an empty Scotch glass, which a servant instantly refilled. His head staunchly erect. “No, no. You are all confused.” Although he spoke heavily accented English with the pauses of someone uncomfortable in the language, in this company he didn’t need a translator for psychological reasons. “You do not understand. India will soon be the greatest power on earth and we will not have to speak English. So many times we have been invaded from every direction, from land and sea and no one has conquered us and been able to stay. We never invade anyone. Our inner self-reliance and our unwavering faith are our strengths. We need no one.” Vijay remained a firm believer in the post-Independence code of swadeshi, where India accepted no help from any outside country. “But the Americans are smart, since the Second World War whenever they send armies they lose, so the smart presidents do not always send armies, they are insidious with their power and promises and their culture.”
“No,” said Holika, who, I thought was the only one in the crowd with the temerity to disagree so vehemently with Vijay. “Uncle, nothing they do would matter without having more military men in more countries than any conquerors since Rome. More even than the British. That and their thousands of nuclear bombs is their power.”
Ratish stepped toward Holika and spit out his words. “And they mock us for being irresponsible for having seventy-five bombs, and entice us with their whores like Madonna and unholy foods like McDonald’s, so now we imitate them.”
While I debated entering this fray, Gatore answered with surety. “Yes, it is they, not us or the Pakistanis, who are the most feared and dangerous nation on earth, and when they send their children into battle against an enemy who fights back, they go wild if one hundred of them die, never thinking of the thousands upon thousands they have killed. That’s why they prefer to drop bombs on others while they shoot themselves at home. They are so violent with their guns.” Gatore expected agreement or snickers. Instead, her jibe elicited the heavy awkwardness of veered eyes, which said to me, “The others know.” I held my eyes closed for five seconds, no longer wishing to argue and wishing I’d stayed home. Holika, experienced in a life filled with gaping silences, deftly filled the void. “The food is ready in the next room.”
Before I followed the others into the dining room, Tracee spoke softly, “Neil,” I turned and was about to speak when we noticed Vijay motioning to me. Tracee nudged me with her elbow; one did not ignore a summons from Vijay. “You must go. If we don’t speak later, I will call you in your office.”
“Please do.”
I took the vacant, red-cushioned chair beside Pillai. He swirled the ice in his refilled Scotch glass, waiting purposefully as I squirmed, before he spoke.
“Dr. Downs, I am enchanted to make your acquaintance. Ambassador Bedrosian is most fond of you, as are Ratish and especially Holika,” he paused and lifted his left hand in the air shoulder height and dangled it there, “who so admire your skills.”
“They’ve been really helpful to me. I appreciate their kindness and openness.”
Vijay, keeping his spine straight, leaned slightly forward. He lowered this floundering left hand, with its long fingers and gently rested it on my right knee. I sat tensely, afraid to shake it off. His touch felt not so much sexual as creepy as he rubbed his hand ever so slowly in a circular motion.
“Please do not be offended by this political talk.”
“No big deal. I agree with some of what was said.”
“Another time, perhaps with Ambassador Bedrosian, we can exchange ideas.” He leaned back and lifted his hand off my knee while his yellowish eyes explored my face, my eyes, and my body language. His voice lost any sense of linguistic pondering. “You see, arguing and disorder in my house disturbs me. I demand civility and respect in my home and from the members of my family. Especially Holika, Ratish, and Alka.” He paused. He wiped the saliva cresting in the corners of his mouth with his tongue, which did a languorous dance-macabre before he spoke again. “Because of my situation,” he closed his eyes as if to communicate his unfulfilled completion of family duty, “they are my children and I spoil them because I want the best for them.” He shook his head slowly up and down making sure I understood.
I took my time, not wanting to sound too foolish, but not afraid to sound obsequious either. “I understand completely. I haven’t talked much with Alka, but it is obvious that Ratish and Holika idolize you.”
He bowed his head in thanks. “Tell me, how do you like India?”
“Because of my situation,” I paused and he shook his head and we found a mutual meeting point, “I have found tremendous comfort here. The people are so good-natured and warm. And like you, so generous and welcoming. I’m also fascinated and entranced by your culture, but it sometimes, and I don’t mean this in any negative way, baffles me.”
He leaned forward and touched my knee again, this time a bit less delicately. “Then you’ll be staying?”
“As long as I’m welcome, I’d certainly like to stay longer.” I leaned back and his hand slipped off my knee.
“I’m sure you’ll be welcome and you will come much more to understand and adjust to our ways—human nature does not change—although some things may always baffle you.” He smiled with pleasure at my vexation. “Many have come here troubled and left renewed. Others, well, it is a shame what happened to your predecessor.” His voice did not become threatening, but it beat with a certified assuredness about who had power here and it wasn’t me. He waited ten seconds and then spoke again. “I need to set a date to come to your office for my semiannual physical.”
“Just give me a call.” No need to worry that he needed Schlipssi’s approval.
“Have you gone over my records yet?”
I hadn’t even seen them on the computer or in the files. “No, but I will. Is there anything special that is bothering you or is this a general checkup?”
“At my age there are many ailments of life that bother me, but nothing that cannot wait and be dealt with in the next few weeks.”
“I’ll review your records on Monday and you can call and come in anytime after that.”
He nodded and those liverish eyes, with lids half-closed, dismissed me. He stood up from his chair, a bit shaky, shook my hand and strolled away, tugging at the bottom of his embroidered, burnt-red vest. I watched as he made his way to Holika, who stood in the hallway between the living and dining rooms. Dressed in red silk pants, a light brown cashmere sweater, and flat, three-buck red and gold shoes that she proudly announced she’d purchased at the Dilli Haat market—she could’ve told a fashion neophyte like me they cost a hundred bucks and I would’ve believed her—and her face lightly made up and hair braided tightly down her back, she appeared quite conservative. Vijay bent over, delicately placed his right hand on her left shoulder and talked in her ear and then disappeared into the recesses of his home. He was not dining with us.
Holika strode over to fetch me. We stood there alone; she touched my forearm with the tips of her polished red fingernails.
“I’m sorry.” She apologized almost as if it were her fault. “Gatore had no idea.”
“But the others do.”
She tilted her head in the mysterious thingamabob motion.
“I was kinda thinking of making an early exit.” Between Gatore’s and Vijay’s intimations, a book seemed a more inviting night’s activity.
“No, please, I want you to stay.”
“We need to talk before you leave.” Holika—maybe she was right about physics—had become my closest, perhaps only, confidante. We’d spoken briefly on the phone two nights before the dinner and I’d told her that I’d made the plan for the unveiling.
“Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.” I understood there were too many people around to expect any alone time. “You must come dancing. It will be fun, and I promise—no more embarrassments. I want you to talk to Summit about his school.”
Dancing had not been in my plans. I rearranged my plans.
We went into the dining room. Summit, who was short and bulky with tiny, pointed teeth and tiny hands, with top-heavy tufts of unkempt hair sat on his round head, and he sure loved to talk.
I asked about the possibility of helping out at his school. He didn’t jump at my offer. First, we talked for almost twenty minutes. He was Bengali originally from Calcutta, his wife Tamil from a small village outside of Chennai, formerly Madras. After multiple miscarriages, they resigned themselves to not having children. His wife was a Brahmin, he a Dalit who had risen through life through a strong will and education. When they began the adoption process they ran into roadblocks at every turn. He offended sensibilities with his nondeferential attitude. Although they had no preference, they were told the chances of getting a boy were nil. Summit got fed up with everyone and all the crap. He started taking the street kids to his home. Then it evolved into, not exactly an orphanage, but a home where the kids could land temporarily before finding a permanent home, or—and this happened all too often—running back to the streets. Summit said he didn’t “give a shit” what these people thought of him. What he needed from them, who were not really his friends, was money from Vijay and press from P.K. That night he had already arranged to have a benefit for his school in Begnino’s gallery. And Vijay pledged to give more money through his organization.
I told him that the situation didn’t seem so foreign to me, that the same hypocrisies plagued the U.S. That those who refuse to give money for sex education, birth control, or abortions, and who reduce budgets for orphanages while they drive big cars, hate paying taxes and wonder why we have so many young people in jail. Most don’t adopt either.
We kept at it until Alka and her friend came bouncing out for the dinner of chicken, minced lamb, chutney rice, dahl, stuffed bread, mustard-seed sauce and beans, stewed tomatoes, and a coconut concoction for dessert. They ran right to Tracee. They wanted to hear all about the new shops in SoHo and on Madison Avenue. Tracee pulled me away from Summit telling the girls that I was a native New Yorker, while she exaggeratedly bit into a chicken kabob. “Eating. See eating.”
The girls screwed up their faces in horror when I told them I knew zilch about shopping in New York and my favorite activity in India was strolling through Old Delhi.
“I’ve never been.” Alka spoke shamelessly. I looked astonished. “Holika hasn’t warned you how dangerous it is?”
“No,” I shook my head. I silently impugned her and thought of the immense divide in Indian society, when suddenly I smacked into my own ignorance: most of the people I knew in New York had seen Harlem only from the windows of their cars and could more easily locate Baghdad than Corona, Queens, on a map. Alka’s warning interrupted my thoughts.
“You make sure you look above and all around you.” Alka’s tone, unlike her usual frivolousness, sounded sinister.
“I visited the Red Fort once,” volunteered her friend proudly.
“Which is one more time than I’ve been to the Taj Mahal,” I said rather embarrassedly.
“That’s a scandal.” They gushed with laughter. “We should get Holika and take you. We own an apartment outside Agra.”
What could I answer to these two fabulously innocent and carefree young women? Sorry, I don’t sightsee because that is a family activity. You do that with your wife and child. Your son.
“Sure. Any time.”
After dinner, except for Summit and his wife, we caravanned in three cars to a disco located inside the Marriott Hotel, but with a separate entrance. Like in New York, where I hadn’t been out clubbing in years, a huge throng waited for the lucky call. P.K. arranged for us to be on the preferred list so they ushered us right inside. The interior design combined Studio 54 faux hipness, Punk Pogo sweatiness, and Las Vegas glitz. People jammed around a circular wooden bar in the front room, with would-be models, AKA waiters and waitresses dressed in Western garb. Past the bar, in the second, darkened room, guests nestled and inhaled forbidden substances in corner booths. TV monitors hung from the ceiling in the big room, playing either live cricket matches from South Africa or MTV Indian pop videos. An overhead light system modeled on Saturday Night Fever swirled colored lights over a dance floor packed with people bouncing and flouncing. The band with sartorial roots in grungeland Seattle and the Lower East Side of Manhattan, led by a skinheaded multi-earringed, tattoo-laden, motorcycle-booted, leather-clad and torn T-shirt rocker, played a pastiche of music: Stones to Donna Summer; ABBA to Iggy; Pearl Jam to techno pop and Tupac.
The primarily Indian crowd, extremely good-looking and adorned in très chic colorful silks and upscale Western “informal wear,” swarmed the dance floor and the surrounding tables. Cigarettes were ubiquitous.
By this time everyone, including me, had checked their sobriety at the door. The mood among us, and in the club, brimmed with joy.
Alka and her friend, cell phones in hand, hit the dance floor first. Everyone followed. With the exception of Sharmilla and her husband, no one danced specifically with anyone else. P.K. kept within hand-touching-shoulder distance of the Swedish woman. Ratish, sloshed, danced aggressively with women not in our party and who were with other men. A few times he had to be tugged away by P.K. or Holika. Alka and her friend flirted with many of the men around us. Two handsome Sikhs worked hard to get a one-on-one dance. They bought drinks, many drinks, but got nothing but a hangover for their troubles. Holika removed her sweater under which she wore only a white silk and lace sleeveless top. She reddened her lipstick, let down her hair, kicked off her shoes and shimmied and shook and slyly flashed wry, wet-lipped smiles in my direction. When the band played the chords of Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire,” Holika and I faced each other for seconds. She slithered her hips and shoulders. As she inched closer then away, her head tossed back in that triumph of hair—my dread of Castor’s unveiling, of facing Sarah, of my own duplicity faded away and for the moment I existed in my present and another possible future where I lived in Delhi with Holika and her friends and I emerged a new Neil Downs, engaged in serious talk about social issues with Summit and politics and poetry with Gatore and P.K., and about art with Benigno, who’d invited me to his next opening, and about life and death with Levi. And then, suddenly, the mood, the night, another possible future became blocked as Samaka, surrounded by two bodyguards, looking damn displeased and with the posture of the divine right billionaire, strode to the edge of the dance floor and glowered at Holika. Her eyes closed, her body undulated to the band’s cover of U2’s “Bad.” She ignored the commotion of his presence ten feet away. Preeya leaned over and whispered in her ear. Unfazed, Holika swayed to the song’s mesmerizing rhythm, her face stoic, showing neither exultation nor expectation. Under the dark blue light, arms flowing in syncopation, she appeared like a goddess dancing the Tandava. Lifting one leg at a time lightly off the dance floor, spinning in place, she refused to accept Samaka’s stare. Her head slowly drifted from side-to-side, denying him. He waited. When the song ended, she opened her eyes wide, giggled, almost skipped toward him and leapt at him for a hug. He caught her, falling back on his heals as his bodyguards kept his balance. He did not grin in ecstasy. He spoke into her ear and without turning back toward anyone, the two of them left the club.
All of us, none too sneakily, had watched the scene. Ratish stood erect holding a large beer stein in his left hand. His pupils whirred with the unfathomable disconnect that I’d seen in psychopathic patients or more frequently in those who had “flipped out” on drugs like Ecstasy or PCP. The sweat streamed down his forehead as he sidled up to me. He spit out the words, “You poor Shmuck.” He shifted his body and jutted his head toward the direction of the disappeared Samaka and Holika, “You would so be better off without her.”