He lives there alone, it’s just him. No family, no flatmates, no maid, no cook, no servant. No prying eyes. No sentiments to offend.
I’ve never met anyone who lives alone, not once in my life. It’s such a strange, alien thing, inconceivable in my world, where lives are piled on top of one another in a mass grave.
His apartment is being renovated now, he’s fixing everything, but it’ll be complete soon and then he’d like to show it to me.
He leans forward, offers another cigarette. And what about you? Tell me. He’s very curious, he wants to know. What was I doing in the café? What was that look on my face? Where had I come from? Where was I about to go? He was watching me a long time before I saw him there. He couldn’t help himself. There was something about me, something different, he knew it immediately, knew he had to speak to me, to know me somehow. I had a rare sort of power in me.
Embarrassed, I say I don’t know about that. I came from college, that’s all, I had nowhere else to go but home, and I didn’t want to go home.
Do you go there a lot, to that café? I say I do, no one bothers me there. Not usually at least. He smiles apologetically. Did I bother you? I’m sorry. Do people bother you a lot? I bet they do.
We fall quiet, he’s thinking about something. I say, Do you miss them? He looks at the table. Do I miss them, you mean my parents? He pauses, sketches a pattern quickly on the cloth. You know, when I heard they were dead it was evening in Manhattan. I was walking on Mulberry Street, north, through Little Italy, to Lafayette, up to Union Square, I had my set routes I liked to walk. There’s nothing like walking there, you never tire of it. I was just walking, it was very cold, damp, almost snowing, and all the Christmas decorations had started to be put up around the city. I could see my breath in the air, and the noise when someone opened the door of a bar or restaurant seemed to flood the street with light. I was walking up towards Union Square when someone called, a relative, my father’s cousin, I hadn’t spoken to him in years. I hadn’t spoken with my parents in a month. I kept walking as he spoke and then I stopped. He told me they were dead.
He stubs his cigarette out, lights another.
But listen, it wasn’t grief I felt when I heard they were dead. Nothing like that. It was the most incredible feeling of a weight being lifted. It was a feeling of being free. Of being beyond judgement. Of course I loved them, but I was afraid of them too. Love and fear equally. Fear more than love maybe.
What I knew right then was that I’d never be afraid of anything again, I’d never be embarrassed or ashamed, I’d never have to hide. I could live my life exactly as I wanted.
Our eyes meet, they hold awhile.
And now I’m here in this city that I love.
I look down. I say I hate this city. I hate it here. All I want to do is leave.
He’s surprised. He can’t understand it. It seems unreasonable to him, short-sighted. Go where? He says he wouldn’t trade it for anywhere else in the world. There’s only Delhi. It has everything you need.
I tell him, That’s easy for you to say. You went away, you came back, you saw the world first. You have money and you’re a man. You can do whatever you please.
He shrugs and sits back and watches me.
Silence again.
And suddenly serious, leaning forward with his elbows on the table, he says, Let me show you. Let me show you the city then. See how good it can be. I’ll be your guide. Make your mind up for yourself. Let’s make a deal. He holds his hand out.
It’s getting late. I say I have to go home, I’ll be in trouble. He pulls his hand back and watches me with a long, indulgent smile. He says OK, I understand. But just think about it, I don’t bite, and the offer still stands. He says he’s grateful for the evening regardless. I took a chance on him and that’s rare, he’s thankful for it, most girls would run away, boring, normal girls, but I’m different, he was right about me.
Calling for the cheque, crumpled banknotes fall from his pocket, with them a pack of tissues, a pen, his battered silver Zippo. He scoops the money into a pile on the table, starts to pick through it, gives up, doesn’t even count it properly, just sucks on his cigarette and throws money together into the mess in the middle. OK, he says, that should be more than enough. He stubs the cigarette out, drains his beer, puts the rest of his things away.
Outside it’s dead quiet. The liquor store is shut, the market is as pleasant as a ruin. The heat is finally bearable too. We stand for a moment facing one another in the yellowing light and only now do I realize how drunk I am, but also how alert to him. I want to say something. I can’t think of what it is. Instead he asks if I’m OK to drive. I say I’ll be all right. He nods and tells me to follow his car as far as Jor Bagh.
Lodhi Road, opposite Safdarjung’s Tomb, at the entrance to Jor Bagh, he pulls into the service lane at the side.
Nothing stirs beyond, inside the colony the gates of the small entry roads have been locked, the rich houses inside are packed up for the night, guards are in their cabins. A pack of stray dogs cross silently beyond us into Lodhi Gardens. We speak out of our windows. He says he wants to see me again.
When?
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow …
Tomorrow at noon, right here.
OK.
OK. He smiles. I’ll be waiting. It was good to meet you. Think about what I said.
It’s only when I’m free of him that I’m spinning out into space, racing back home as if I’m being chased in the fields, by the river with the barking dogs as the sun goes down, and my mother waiting for me inside.
I left Agra for Delhi in the middle of the monsoon, when the air was cool and sweet and teeming with life. Aunty sat with me in the train, outside we etched past the rubble bungalows of my childhood, past their fields of clothes lines with sheets already soaked by the sudden rain, falling in great drops, stinging when it hit, the noise it made on the blue tarp and tin of the slums drowning everything else. Rain on the grille, the cold air twisting through like a string of magician’s silk. A note of thunder rolling through the vault of cloud, the wind rattling water through the trees. And my mother, left behind in the river and on the wind.
Inside the train people shifted, chattered, gorged themselves on food. North towards Delhi we went, past the rotten towns of dhabas and trucks, towns of mud, brick and kilns, towns of dogs and cows shaped in half-light, dirt-road towns with names like Tundla, like the names of vegetables I didn’t want to eat. In each town God’s music grew louder, the music of horns and voices, loudspeakers and temple bells, like all the rivers coming together to pour into a chasm in the centre of the earth.
Now crows cry and dogs bark, the canopy of the day grows dim. Aunty is talking at me, telling me about her splendid college days.
She doesn’t tell me about her own daughter though, the one who was born the same year as I, who died when she was four years old from childhood leukaemia caught late. Aunty sitting with her through the radiation, holding her hand, the doctors trying to keep her out of the room. They can’t, she won’t leave, she gives them no choice. But it doesn’t matter because the treatment fails, and her hand is soon left on its own.
We entered the city late in the day, the train dragging along so slowly it seemed we were on the verge of a complete stop, where all the other passengers would just jump off and walk away. But we never stopped, we only crawled on.