“Those eyes were so terrifying, O.P.! They were just like the Führer’s.” In the dark, Rahul said, “it’s not a dream, it’s real.” His voice was shaking. “They’re still right here, in this room. Above my head.”
“You just seem scared, Rahul. Quiet down and go to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.” O.P. rolled over.
Rahul couldn’t sleep that night.
This was no insomnia, but rather the kind of fear that Jews the world over must have felt during the 1930s and ’40s. So, are they going to send people like me to the gas chamber now? Because, by chance, I have no ill will toward Shailendra George, Masood, and Shaligaram? Because I’m religious, a believer? Because I dearly love the splendor and variety of this country, and the fundamental promises inscribed in the constitution?
A film loop kept repeating in Rahul’s head, causing him deep anxiety. In this loop, all the faces — of VC Agnihotri, Department Head S. N. Mishra, the acharya, Dr. Loknath Tripathi, hostel warden Chandramani Upadhyay, Radharaman Chaturvedi, Dr. Dangwal, Dr. Pant, and Dr. Joshi — were jumbled together. As soon as the VC’s face came into focus, the face of Padmashree Tiwari would be superimposed. Earlier the coal-black caste-marked face of the acharya had appeared clearly, but as it rose to the surface, out came the familiar face of the prime minister. Suddenly, a cloud of smoke, and there was the fat, licentious Nikhlani, relaxing in the luxury cabin in a yacht or sprawled out in an island resort getting massaged by a team of Miss Third Worlds and fashion models from rich European countries, washing down pill after pill of Viagra with expensive scotch, immersed in unending pleasure and a boundless feast, and speaking into his cell phone, “Hello. . Hello! Get me to the PM! Nikhlani here! Sell, sell, sell! Everything must go! We’re buying everything. Privatize the Indian government, pandit! Privatize defense! The police, the army, the paramilitaries, we’ll buy ’em all, pandit! If someone gets in the way, shoot the motherfucker. They’re Naxalites, they’re Pakistani ISI agents! I’ve got high blood pressure. Pandit, be quick, hurry up, hurry up!”
Rahul thought he heard the sound of a jeep pulling up outside, followed by the sound of footsteps.
Now comes the knock on the door. Lacchu Guru will be there with his pistol. Not a pistol, an AK-47. Even the six-foot-three-inch ostrich will be killed along with Rahul. His own corpse will lie where Sapam’s lies, and where Chaitanya’s broken dholak and little cymbals lie. Beside the bespectacled eyes of Gandhi-ji.
It was a dark, frightening tunnel with no sleep inside. It was airless, filled with only fear and danger. It was suffocating. Dear god! How I wish that yellow butterfly would come and keep me safe under its wing.
You are my power and strength, Anjali. I love you really. Save me, please. However you can.
Rahul couldn’t remember when sleep came to him that night, if at all. When his eyes opened, the golden rays of sunrise were falling on his burning forehead. The morning sunlight and Rahul’s head both burned inside with some kind of fire.
“I have no clue what you were muttering about last night,” O.P. said. “Why are your eyes red? You’re not getting a fever, are you? What’s happened to you?” O.P. placed his hand on Rahul’s forehead.
Rahul closed his eyes. There was Anjali. Her eyes looked worried. Distressed. Anxious. She covered Rahul with her yellow parasol.
“You’re such a good friend, O.P.!” Rahul said. A tear fell from the corner of his eye onto the pillow.
O.P. went to the dispensary to get some paracetamol — there had been a recent rash of viral and dengue fever.
TWENTY-FIVE
It was a five-day bone-shattering fever. Yet Rahul still stood in front of the window gazing toward the field below. The bobbing yellow spot, the little butterfly fluttering up from the valley toward the university — Rahul didn’t see either during those five days, not once.
“Dehydration’s the real danger. Drink lots of water. With sugar and salt,” said Govind Nema, who lived in C. V. Raman Hostel and was doing research in pharmacology.
Pratap, Ataluri, Niketan, Kartikeya, Madhusudan, Parvez, Praveen, Masood — everyone came regularly to visit Rahul in his room. They’d play cards. Sing a few songs. Smoke beedis and cigarettes. They even held a meeting of the SMTF.
Shaligaram and Shailendra George from the Hindi department both came. Rana, Manmohan, and Raju too. Rahul was feeling so distressed he asked everyone about Anjali. How was she doing? What was she doing? Has she said anything? Why hasn’t he been seeing her from his window?
On the third day, Hemant Barua arrived, smiling, and placed Rahul’s hand around a little slip of paper. “Message from your bird. She gave this to me on my way to the department.”
The little slip of paper was light green, and in a scrawling, childlike handwriting was written in blue, “Get Well Soon.” And below, in blue letters, was her signature, A-N-J-I, “Anji.”
Hemant had learned that for the past few days Anjali had been coming to campus by car, with a driver. She was a bit distraught. Then Hemant added, laughing, “But don’t lose your head, Rahul. I happen to know she really loves you. From now on, I’m putting the two of you in a joint de facto file, which will be updated daily.”
So much sweat was pouring out of Rahul’s body that he had to constantly wipe himself off with a towel.
“See! I told you the kind of paracetamol that would really cure this bastard,” O.P. said. “I ran over to the dispensary for no reason. Now that he’s got his love note, his fever will go away.”
“Oh, so it’s not dengue!” Hemant exclaimed. “It’s that Nana Patekar disease.”
“Not malaria, but ‘love-aria,”’ the six-foot ostrich wailed.
“Shut up,” Rahul said, and started to cough.
Yet this period of time wasn’t so bright and happy. It wasn’t simply that drops of dew were falling on its leaves; the leaves were also being ravaged by fire and ice.
Two of the three students Rahul had been tutoring stopped coming. He found out someone told one of his students, the sales tax officer Jaiswal’s daughter, that he was an indecent character. Someone had informed M. L. Gupta, of Gupta Transport and Travel, that Rahul had once been caught in the act of teaching the Kama Sutra to a girl and, after a good beating, was run out of town. He would have lost his third tutee had Pratap not rescued him by saying something to his uncle, a policeman.
It all added up to this: the critters were on the move. They were the proprietors of the biggest rumor and falsehood factory in the history of India. If they wished to eradicate any individual or group, first they’d unite and, once together, they’d erect a heap of rumor and lies. The apprenticeship, passed through the centuries from generation to generation, came in very handy. Brahminical texts and all of the puranas lent proof to the lies. Just a few years back the Babri Masjid incident in Ayodhya gave all Hindi newspapers occasion to support the lies. VC Agnihotri, the students learned, had indicated at a meeting of the university’s governing body that he’d recently come into possession of information that certain Communists and Naxalites living in the hostels were fanning flames among the other students. The names of Kartikeya Kajle and Madhusudan were mentioned, both of whom had spotless academic records, and it was suggested they had criminal records in Maharashtra and Kerala.
Dr. Dangwal and Dr. Loknath Tripathi took the girls to the side and warned them, “Keep your distance from Rahul. He’s an indecent character.”
Rahul’s head was spinning. Why was this happening to him? Because he was a hardworking student? Because he didn’t kiss up to any of the teachers? Because he and the other members of the SMTF got together and stopped the goondas from robbing, beating, and acting savagely toward students who’d come from different regions, different states? Was it because he had the kind of body and face that could not be made corrupt?