Page 27 of All Our Evenings

On his face there was shock. As if I were bringing home news he hadn’t yet fully registered.

I should have stopped there. But I didn’t. And you? I said. What are you? A servant. A driver. Worse than a pickpocket, I said. At least pickpockets weren’t sold and bought. That’s what you are, I said. A tribal that was sold and bought. You have no position in society.

He looked livid. Rageful. The way he looked when he beat up that boy at the Exhibition.

He said something about my father. Something about my position in society, that I was the son of somebody who fucked a teacher while his son watched.

Then he spat on me.

I remember the wetness on my cheek, his spit. Something happened to me. We grappled. I can’t remember exactly what came next. Was there a point when we stopped grappling, and he stood and simply stared at me, and was that my opportunity, to push Ganesh off the third floor of the Red House? See his eyes widen in shock? I don’t know.

But no. I didn’t push him.

I picked up my cricket bat and bashed it against his head with all the force I could muster.

When I think back to that time, I wonder who that person―the boy―who was he? That Arjun, I don’t know him. He is utterly unrecognizable. He might have thought that seeing someone die; or even to see a simple dead body would be something extraordinary. Shocking. Approaching the fantastical. Frightening. Like darkness.

But it wasn’t. I know it wasn’t.

Someone is there and then they aren’t. Someone is alive. Then they aren’t. One might try to wake them up again. Scream, shout, say they’re sorry. They didn’t mean it. Beg them to wake up. One might even carry them downstairs because they said your name. Said, “Arjun, Arjun. What did you do? Arjun, Arjun. Don’t let anyone see.”

Then, after carrying them downstairs, they might stop speaking altogether. Then you may lay on top of them, cover their body with yours, ask them to wake up, forgive you. Kiss their lips and say you’re sorry. But looking closely, it needn’t even be a dead person, it could just be a drunk lying in the street, or behind the Red House, amongst the thornbushes where you left them when you ran home and called your father. Yes, a drunk. Simply a drunk in the thornbushes. And the sound, a thump, the crumpling of twigs and brambles underneath them, you didn’t hear it. You only heard the sudden silence afterward. And if it wasn’t that day, Ganesh would have died on another unremarkable day. The small white fleshy bits scattered all around his broken face needn’t be shattered teeth. The fluid pooling around his caved-in head needn’t be blood or brains. It could be something more pedestrian. Sap. Or something. What did his life matter? Who came asking after him? His death had no price. He had no position in society.

X

Slut

In the end, Ruhee and I decided on a registrar marriage.

“Marriage rituals needed all sorts of gestures,” Gita Miss said. “With mothers and fathers.”

It seemed like she was the only person who knew a way out of this quagmire. “It’s better this way,” she said. “And afterwards, make it a small reception. I will attend that. I’m sure I will be on time.” Which meant she’d arrive an hour before anyone important.

For the reception, we chose a small banquet hall at a hotel rather than a proper function hall. Neither of us had enough relatives that could attend anyway. Hers were all in Udupi. Mine didn’t want to come, though I shouldn’t tell Ruhee this―my mother insisted. Even Shital-atha hadn’t committed to coming. It would be embarrassing, my mother said. “Seventy or hundred people scattered across a function hall that can accommodate a thousand? They’d ask questions, wouldn’t they? It’s better we have a small hall that feels overcrowded.”

“She’s coming, isn’t she?”

“It won’t affect me one bit. You’ll see, Arjun. He will also see. I’m not a weak woman.”

The flower decoration fellow came the day before. A cheery, skull-capped Muslim man bearing photo albums full of past functions. He seemed, on the entirety, like the only person who resembled a wedding guest. The way normal people organized weddings, felt excited about them. I couldn’t explain it, but I felt such overwhelming affection for the man. I chose one of his most expensive designs; the entire backdrop of the stage would bear white and baby pink roses set closely together. “It is better if bride and groom wear clothes that match the background,” he advised. “Yellow or orange outfits won’t look good, for example.”

Priya had already made the clothes I was going to wear. She said she didn’t care, but she spent hours and hours on my outfit. A navy bandhgala suit with gold buttons and a blood-red pocket square. She made me try it on thrice. All three times I said it fit well, it was beautiful, she should take it easy, but she stood there and shook her head, a pin stuck in her mouth, a tape around her neck. She altered it again and again until she was satisfied.

“Will he come,” I asked. “Your boyfriend, the novelist?”

She smiled absently but didn’t say anything.

Ruhee said she hadn’t picked out her clothes yet.

“But the wedding is only a week away,” my mother protested. “Why is she leaving it so late. Shall we do the shopping for her?”

Though I said no, she and Priya went and bought her a ridiculously expensive pink and gold Kanjeevaram sari from a weaver Priya knew. “It can just be a gift if she doesn’t want to wear it,” my mother said, wrapping it in muslin and putting it back inside the box. “But it will be there if she needs it.”

Nowadays the house was empty quite a bit; my mother was out on errands or paying visits all day. But when I asked Ruhee if she wanted to come over, she said no every time. Since the day she asked me to marry her, we didn’t have sex. I couldn’t understand it. When she and her mother visited us, Ruhee would be quiet, not saying anything unless her mother asked her a pointed question. Now and again, when her mother threw a sharp glance at Ruhee, she’d say something, smiling forcefully. Of course, my mother noticed nothing.

Still, I went to Ruhee’s hospital to talk to her. I’d never been there before. It wasn’t a very large hospital. I simply went up to the uniformed nurse at the reception and asked for Dr. Ruhee. She asked who I was to the doctor, and I told her unhesitatingly that I was her fiancé. The change in her manner was instant. She took me to the doctors’ lounge, sent an orderly along with a cup of tea in a saucer, alongside a tray of orange cream biscuits laid in a semicircle.

I waited almost an hour. Doctors went in and out of the lounge but none of them asked me who I was. Chatting amongst themselves, they smiled and nodded my way.