BSC Seafood had a hangar-like plant on the pier next to the Fish Exchange. Inside lines of workers filleted, buttered, breaded, stuffed, packaged and wrapped sea creatures of every kind, slinging hundred-pound airfreight boxes of flatfish into waiting trucks and manhandling blocks of cod towards the machines which would saw them into sticks. Arjun was taken on a brief tour of the facility by the CFO, who told him they were starting up a line of roe products, needed some more fields in the inventory database and had chosen Arjun because your boss said you came cheap’. The job was so trivial that he had to use his imagination to stretch it out to two weeks. He took long breaks, locked in the bathroom with a UNIX manual or standing on a gangway peeking down at the factory floor, an underworld peopled by wraiths in rubber boots and overalls. After three weeks he had to admit to his supervisor that the project was finished. A week later he was back on the West Coast, on the bench.
From: arjunm@netulator.com
To: lovegod2000@singhshack.com
Subject: RE: small pants?
hello aamir thankyou for your message how are you yes i am all amer-ican now even eating beef pork products that is between you and me someone just gave bacon cheeseburger this is how it starts things ok here yes lots of girls wear short pants yes it is nice no have not spoken to many yet or seen p anderson or bv slayer busy got to go — arjunm
His first anniversary in the US found him sharing a ramshackle house in Daly City with a pair of indistinguishable Tamil Java programmers he privately nicknamed Ram and Shyam. The area was, if anything, lower income than the last. The lot backed on to an electricity substation with a giant humming transformer. His neighbours were a clan of enormous Samoans, who were coated in blue-black tattoos and spent their days fixing their cars and having loud explosive arguments. The Samoans had many enormous Samoan friends, who owned an indeterminate number of enormous dogs that lay slavering on the sidewalk outside his door in a litter of oily engine parts, forty-ounce beer bottles and shit.
No one ever messed with him, not even the dogs, but his over-stressed imagination produced scenes of unimaginable violence, like WWF wrestling filtered through the dark side of the National Geographic Channel. He was having trouble sleeping. He had developed eczema on his hands. He knew every plot line in The Young and the Restless and was becoming cynical about his employer’s business model. Databodies charged the companies he worked for twice, even three times what they paid him, and still deducted money from his pay for rent, legal and administrative fees. He had made no money, gained nothing at all since coming to America except a new and harder picture of the world.
So see the walking man, going to the store again. Instant coffee. Breakfast cereal. Plastic-wrapped bread, 10 per cent polystyrene, 90 per cent air. See the man trudge along the margin of a wide road, a man who suspects either that he is shrinking or that this landscape is actually expanding in front of him, stretching itself out ahead of his weary feet. He has worked for only three and a half months out of twelve. He has been given credit and had it withdrawn. He knows what lies above him, the sublime mobility of those who travel without ever touching the ground. He has glimpsed what lies below, the other mobility, the forced motion of the shopping-cart pushers, the collectors of cardboard boxes. At least in India the street people can lie down for a while before being moved on.
In honour of the balloon scene, the party planners had proposed the theme ‘floating on air’. Thousands of silver helium bubbles hovered in nets above the heads of the guests, who were served drinks and chaat by waiters dressed as ‘ethereal spirits’, a look heavily reliant on silver lamé. The DJ mixed the obvious songs (‘Up, Up and Away’, ‘Summer Breeze’) into selections from the film’s soundtrack, ignored by a crowd of Mumbai film people too intent on networking to do anything as socially unproductive as dance.
Leela Zahir, it was noted, arrived on the arm of Naveed Iqbal. The corpulent producer waved and made namaste to his acquaintances, apparently oblivious to the furious stares of the Thakkar camp. Kiss Me, Tickle Me was Manoj Thakkar’s film. Leela was supposed, for tonight at least, to be Thakkar’s star. Still, no one wished to cause a scene with Iqbal, not with the friends he had. Leela’s glamorous mother, Faiza, followed behind, escorted by Big Gun Number One himself, Rajiv Rana. Between them, the two women must have been wearing ten lakh rupees of jewellery. The new alignment of forces was hurriedly analysed by the party guests. What did it mean? What promises had been made?
Leela smiled her way into the room, and more than one person experienced a momentary suspension of their cynicism. She had something other-worldly about her, an unmannered, almost involuntary beauty that silenced catty remarks and deflected leering gazes chastely to the floor. She was India’s girl-next-door, and at the same time her newest goddess. In the background, unobserved, hotel staff were crowding the doorways, porters and doormen and gardeners and maids peering across the room, feasting on the crumbs of her presence like uniformed mice.
Leeladevi. Protect us, grant us a boon…
The lucky waiter who carried away her empty glass wrapped it carefully in a cloth and hid it in the kitchen. After his shift he sat on the bus, gripping the package on his lap, conscious of bringing home to his wife and children a treasure, a sliver of goodness to set against the evils of the world.
What does a walking man dream of?
OK, now turn the wheel. That’s right — no — other direction, you were OK the first time. There you go. Check for traffic. Mirror. Signal. Now move off slowly…
He dreams of powered motion.
As a gap opened up between kerb and rim, the wheels of Chris’s Honda Civic performed a single complete revolution, then a second. Driver and passenger sensed an infinitesimal gain in speed. As the car started to travel down the road under his control, the driver experienced a strong and unexpected set of emotions. Components: relief/fear/elation/melancholic recognition of past stasis. Result: a pang so strong he found himself fighting back tears.
Two minutes into his first driving lesson Arjun stamped on the brake (unwittingly executing his first emergency stop) and rubbed his knuckles roughly across his eyes.
Christine leaned over and pulled on the parking brake. The car gently stalled.
‘Arjun, honey, are you OK?’
‘Yes, yes. Of course.’ He hunched into the driver’s seat, gruff and embarrassed. Somehow when he was with Chris, these moments, these emotional moments, seemed to occur. They were very awkward. He tried to pull himself together, announcing like a commander encouraging his troops to go over the top, ‘We must start the engine again.’
‘It’s OK, Arjun. There’s no one coming.’
‘It’s OK?’
‘It’s OK.’
He grinned with relief, the sudden clouds-vanishing grin which Chris secretly thought was cute.
‘Ready to try again?’ she asked.
He nodded.
Only song lyrics have a purchase on such reversals of fortune. What a difference a day, etc. Lyrics also teach (joy/pain, sunshine/ rain) that you can only know how good up feels when you have tasted down.