Something in the Water

Who am I kidding? I knew I'd be coming back here. This two-bit city of yours. This smashed harlot. You're a local, aren't you? It's in the way you sit. The way you cradle that drink - gingerly but constantly, like somebody might try to yank it from you. Hell, it's in the way you smell. Delhi, Delhi, Delhi.

We keep coming back to her, don't we?

We come and sit in dives like this one and tell each other the city is caustic, and there's something in the water, buddy, better stick to beer.

Yes, I'll have another. Thank you.

There was this story my Grandfather used to tell me. About this place, except before the Infusion. A few thousand years before, actually.

We've all heard about the Ramayana somewhere or the other, right? Happy prince exiled, dead demons everywhere. And most of us know the misery starts when an old king accidentally kills an infirm old couple's only son.

The kid's a bloomin' saint, as it turns out, so the parents curse the king pretty nasty. And then history takes its course.
By which I mean a bunch of violent shit happens.

But coming back to this kid.
His name's Shravan Kumar, and he's the closest the epic gets to an ideal human being before clearing its throat and announcing the birth of Ram.

This Shravan Kumar, his parents are blind, see? So they quite obviously need his help getting around. At the time of this story he's carrying them around in these huge wicker baskets dangling from the ends of a wooden staff.

As the story goes, Shravan Kumar gets near the river Yamuna at the point where the modern Indraprastha stands, and takes a break to drink from the river.

This bit wasn't in the original story, but you can imagine a really young man standing next to a river, right? Add in a glade of deciduous trees stretching away behind him, the old couple perched on their twin wicker baskets under the nearest neem or peepal, taking in the crowded air of the plains, still only halfway through the transnational journey that is the chaar-dhaam pilgrimage.

Now imagine the young man looking down into the water as he drinks, seeing the muddied turmoil of alluvial silt beneath the surface, a few ripples in the reflected sky that mean nothing to him.

His own reflection, maybe, clear and sharp but somehow darker.

I'm beginning to ramble again, aren't I?

Shravan Kumar finishes drinking and turns to his parents.

"I feel tired, to be honest with you," he says. "I've been carrying you everywhere for ages. Shouldn't I get a chance to go out and explore whatever pleasures the world has to offer?"

"It's only fair," agrees his father. "Where are we right now?"

"The banks of the Yamuna." The shapes in the water jagged and angular, even though the city that will taint everything is still years and years in the future.

"We won't do too well in a forest after nightfall," the old man says. "Could you take us to the plains across the river, please? We'll ask someone for help there."

"It's the least I could do," Shravan Kumar reasons, and off they go.

Nobody speaks for a while.

"Are we on the other side yet?" The mother asks eventually.

"We crossed a while ago."

"Well, then," the father says, "Thank you, son. Leave us wherever you-"

"Of course I'm not leaving you," Shravan Kumar interjects. "It was a ghastly thought to begin with. I don't know what came over me. I'm sorry."

And onward they go through the gathering twilight, away from the place where brothers will eventually bay for each other's blood, farther and farther still from the monstrosity that will soon erupt over the darkening waters of the Yamuna.

This City we still can't let go of.

It's the darndest thing, to be honest. I come back to this story every time I've had a rough night in the city. I think of how close Shravan Kumar came to upsetting the entire course of history - what if he'd simply taken off? But he learnt that day that even the strongest and most resolute amongst us are allotted our second chances, even if we never use them.

Except a disease as virulent as the one he tasted on the water that day probably wouldn't need a second chance.

This bit wasn't in the original story, but you can imagine a young man carrying his parents across the plains, right? Add in the blackened water of the river they've just crossed, his farther silent but smiling, his mother dozing lightly.

The young man's in a hurry. They're halfway through a tour of the Chaar Dhaam, and he's just overcome a particularly messy personal crisis.

The young man being the nearest you'll get to an ideal person without having to return to the classics.

Now. Even if the young man knows there won't be a return trip - even if he knows death lies sleeping across his path, nestled in the quiver of an old king a couple of glades down the path - I don't think he'd look back at the river.

I can't possibly imagine why he'd want to.

Luckey Shirt

The boy was called Vedant. His actual name was Vedanta Desika Upadhyay with Vedanta Desika being his given name and Upadhyay his family name as was the custom. He was named after a Vaishnav saint of the same name (the same name being Vedanta Desika) and the Upadhyay meant he was descended from a long line of upper-class Brahmin teacher-priests. He was currently looking for the right clothes to wear on the occasion of making a booty call.

Damn Vedant said. A booty call is a meeting that has been decided beforehand to be of a purely carnal nature. Technically Vedant wasn’t actually headed to make a booty call but he was going to meet a girl he’d befriended online in the flesh (ha ha) for the first time and he’d decided that that was close enough. He had told his parents he was going to some friend’s birthday party and they had been nice enough not to cross-question him.

He finally decided upon a passable combination of jeans and shirt that passably traversed the thin line between casual chic and desperation. He whistled the tune to Lovely Head by Goldfrapp as he made his way from his room to the front door and onward to the gates of the apartment complex where he lived. Then he hummed the chorus of Suck it and See by Arctic Monkeys as he made his way from the gates of the apartment complex to the bus stop.

He had almost climbed into the first bus he saw when he realized there was a large stain underneath his front pocket.

The shirt did not have a name but Vedant called it his Luckey Shirt (the extra e being a reference to an obscure Stephen King short story). There was nothing particularly lucky (or even luckey) about that shirt: it was simply a shirt. It was white and had red and ochre stripes alternating over it. The overall effect was vaguely like looking at a sheet of wrapping paper with buttonholes and a collar creased into the appropriate place.

Vedant called it his luckey shirt because it was associated with some of the best times he’d ever had. He had only worn it on three previous occasions – 

a long-awaited date with a pretty girl the day he went halfway across the city so they’d give him a trophy and clap at him and finally the wedding of his favourite cousin who currently had a baby on the way and a happy marriage to top it off 

– but those three probably counted amongst his greatest moments of jubilation. Even the slightest amount of rumination would have revealed an unfortunate exchange between cause and effect but analysis had never been Vedant’s strong point and the shirt had been there through thick and thin and so his luckey shirt it was.

The stain on said shirt had come from a rusted zipper on the trousers hanging adjacent to it in his closet and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Vedant spared a lingering glance for the easy ride he was abandoning and began the long trudge back home. 

He did not whistle or hum this time.

The bus would probably have sympathized with his plight and stayed there for a while longer but it wasn’t sentient and its actions dictated by the driver so there was a rough clank of gears and off it went.

The bus was called Lilawati after the mother of the driver although on paper its name was I2BN-A34V. The I2BN indicated the specifications of the engine shipped from company headquarters in Sweden. The A was a marker for which factory the bus was assembled in. The 34V stood for the lot number of this particular specimen. The Lilawati represented a strong nostalgic yearning for a better place far away from the fungible reality of here and now.

The man at the wheel gunned the throttle and the bus rumbled onwards. They passed a couple of intersections but the number plastered across its forehead was GL-23 so there were no turns required. 

Under the next metro overpass another bus marked GL-23 suddenly appeared in the rearview.

Lilawati bore the other bus no animosity but the man at the wheel did not enjoy the sensation of being overtaken. He squeezed down on the accelerator again and did not ease up until they’d crossed the 60km/h mark. 

(Sample Problem:
The accepted speed limit for public transport vehicles in the National Capital Region is 40km/h. The bus trailing Lilawati is running at 55km/h. How does she maintain her lead? 

Answer:

The only way Lilawati can maintain her lead is by keeping her speed over the incline and ignoring the crowds milling forth at whatever stop has the misfortune of being next)

As they passed Karkardooma Crossing the other driver finally conceded the point and withdrew from both the race and the narrative. The driver of Lilawati watched him fall back in the rearview mirror and felt a large kernel of triumph settle in his innards like a mango pit.

Then he saw the man on the bike racing towards him and instinctively spun the wheel hard right.

The biker’s name was Tejwardhan Parashar and he did not have a nickname because he did not have that sort of friends. Tejwardhan’s friends were the sort of people you went to if the light in the hall wasn’t working or if you needed somebody to watch your kids while you went downstairs to go through the neighbours’ mail. Tejwardhan had chosen them precisely because they were like that – and by extension like him. He had been called a crashing bore by some acquaintances but he had never been late to work so it all balanced out (or so he reasoned).

Tejwardhan did not like driving his bike even remotely close to the speed limit. He always kept it hovering near the 40km/h mark although the law said he could go all the way up to 50.

That day however Tejwardhan had been thrown by an emergency roundup at the office in order to discuss the latest round of downsizing. He winced slightly as he cut into the opposite lane at the next intersection but he reckoned in a few more minutes he’d be pulling into the community center sprinting up the stairs to his office oblivious to the world once more.

The world had other plans. 

Too late he saw the parrot green behemoth bearing down on him he jerked the handle to the right but everything had slowed down now. The bike skidded to horizontal and then pinballed between the barriers on either side of the road.

What happened next was too horrific to describe but the prime-time news would try its best.

The first responder however was a representative of the local news called Shitikanth Parasher (no relation to the biker). Shitikanth had precisely the sort of friends who were good with nicknames but in his case they hadn't needed much effort. He had gone through school acquiring an ever-expanding knowledge of vernacular slang for fecal matter and a near-homicidal rage at the smart alecks who substituted simulations of flatulence for actual humour.

Even so his fondest wish at the moment was to give a brief and unobtrusive account and get off the scene before somebody from the old days saw him on live television and decided to congratulate him with a phonecall consisting exclusively of fart jokes.

T-this is Shitikanth Parasher of Delhi Now he began and was instantly aware of the misstep. Then he began to move towards the bus as he spoke and there was a literal misstep as he stumbled over something belonging to Tejwardhan Parashar (no relation to the reporter).

Don't panic Shitikanth told himself. Then he saw his cameraman's eyes widen and realized he'd said it out loud and into the microphone. 

This day couldn't get any worse he thought through clenched teeth. He glanced back at the object he'd stumbled over.

There followed a decisive moment of the sort that can transform an entire news career - the iconic sort of moment that surpasses context and rises to the level of self-sufficient tableau.

Is that some guy's foot? Shitikanth Parasher said with an expression that you have probably seen already if you are on familiar terms with the internet. 

Then he went down in local news history as the first reporter to regurgitate his lunch on live television. 

Vedant saw the video on his smartphone near the end of what was otherwise a wasted day.

The girl he'd gone to meet had not turned up at all and tried to lecture him about the real life applications of sarcasm when he called her. He'd hung up confused and disappointed.

The video on the other hand was promising. In fact Vedant was still chuckling when he finally got home. 

No dinner he said to his mom by way of greeting. No dinner he repeated to his father who was watching a different report of the same incident on television

Then he shut the door and turned on the light and came face-to-face with the man in his room.

The man in the room was sitting in Vedant's chair although he must've been roughly a hundred miles tall. He had white hair. He wore black clothes. His hands were the colour of moldy bread.

Finally said the man in the room. I thought you'd never come back.

Who? Vedant asked the man in the room who wasn't really a man and wasn't really in the room. What?

There's been a bit of a problem the man in the room said. And I have been sitting here all afternoon and all evening trying to figure it out. Care to help me out a little?

I don't understand Vedant explained. Part of his mind was telling him he should scream but he seemed to have forgotten how.

You were supposed to be on that bus the man in the room said. That's pretty easy to grasp isn't it? You were supposed to get on that bus. And you were supposed to go down with that bus.

I had to change my shirt.

Ah yes. The man in the room held up Vedant's shirt. Your luckey shirt. He stressed the 'e' rather sharply.

Vedant said nothing.

This isn't a game the man said. And you certainly don't get to cheat.

He brought the shirt near his face and sniffed. For a second or two that's all he really did - sniff - but then something changed. The man's nostrils flared wide. The shirt lost first the red stripes then the ochre ones and finally the crisp white backdrop.

When the man dropped it back on the bed the shirt was a diseased and tattered yellow. There was a slight hiss from the spot where it made contact.

I've got your scent the man grinned. We will settle this soon.

Vedant didn't say anything.

The man in the room got off the chair walked right up to the boy stood in front of him.

Soon he repeated 

breathing the word out into the boy's face 

turning his complexion the same yellow as the shirt 

his hair grey and then snowy white. 

The man's grin never faltered.

Don't try any funnier business he said in parting. We know where you live.

Then he opened the nearest drawer stepped into it and was gone.

Vedant continued to stand next to the light switch continued to stare at the exact same spot continued to say nothing.

And that is exactly how his mother found him five minutes later.

Baby Steps

Sharmajee wakes up with a dull pit of foreboding in the base of his stomach. Something is not right with the world, Sharmajee thinks. But what?

Maybe the newspaper will help.

The newspaper tells Sharmajee that another girl was raped in Noida last night. That's not it, Sharmajee thinks. This went down in Sector - 106. I live in 44. Besides, it was probably the girl's fault anyway.

He turns the page.
Charred body of woman found in Zafrabad, reads the next headline.
Don't these women have anything better to do? And where the fuck is Zafrabad anyway? Sharmajee is getting impatient. He flips through the rest of the paper, finds yet more of the same, puts it aside.

Maybe the television will be of more help.

Sure enough, there's a rerun of last night's debate on Times Now. Sharmajee sat through the whole thing live but he sits through the salient points once again. Chetan Bhagat cracks one at Asaram's expense. Arnab laughs. Sharmajee laughs. Everybody laughs.

A harried-looking activist with frazzled hair tries to talk about the AFSPA but is shouted down once again. Good call, Sharmajee thinks. If the armed forces aren't sacrosanct, well, what is?

The pit of foreboding doesn't go away, however.

Sharmajee wanders outside and runs into his next door neighbour, Vermajee.
Vermajee is in the midst of an animated conversation with his tenants.

Sharmajee tries to slink by without catching Vermajee's eye - the latter took in a couple of young men last year, ideal lodgers until they turned out to be-
Sharmajee shudders and cannot complete the thought.

Then he catches sight of all the luggage the young men seem to be hefting out and decides to stay for a bit, after all.

"What's the matter?"
"They brought back 377," Vermajee offers by way of explanation. "Don't want any more trouble."
"That ought to show those busybody NGOwallahs," Sharmajee concurs. Then, turning to the young men, "Why don't you settle down with some nice girls like everyone else? You need psychiatric help!"

The young men are wise enough not to react. A small phalanx of upstanding citizens is starting to gather downstairs, and they will have to cut straight through the crowd to reach the gate.
There is no one willing to side with them this time.

Sharmajee makes sure the luggage is all gone before he turns back to Vermajee.
"Glad that's over and done with," Sharmajee says. "I mean, if our morality is not sacrosanct, well, what is?"

Vermajee says nothing. That's another wholly acceptable way of being an upstanding citizen.

Sharmajee goes home with the pit of foreboding in his stomach considerably smaller.
All is not right with the world yet, but

Baby steps, Sharmajee thinks. Baby steps.