Omair Ahmad - Delhi Noir

Ramnivas took a rickshaw from the bus stop to Sanjay’s. He found Sushma joking around with the scooter mechanic, Santosh. This upset Ramnivas, but what really unnerved him was when Sushma said, “Enjoying a rickshaw ride today? Did you knock over a bank or something?” But then she added, “You said you were coming at 2:00, and it’s not even 1:00. How did you get out so early?”

Ramnivas laughed; maybe it was seeing Sushma. He relaxed, his worries slipping away.

“I ran as fast as I could!” Ramnivas said, looking at Sushma and chuckling. She too began to laugh. “Can I buy you guys a cup of chai?” Ramnivas then asked, turning to Sanjay and Santosh.

“What’s the special occasion? Did you get overtime?” Santosh replied, taken aback.

Sushma was also startled, since Ramnivas was known for being such a penny pincher. She never liked the way he’d come around Sanjay’s and try every trick in the book to convince someone to buy him a cup of chai. This day, however, Ramnivas didn’t just include Sanjay and Santosh in the round of chai, but also Devi Deen and Madan. And not just plain old chai, but the deluxe stuff — strong, with cardamom.

Sushma protested — why throw money down the drain like that? — but Ramnivas didn’t listen. He hired an autorick-shaw for the rest of the day and took Sushma on a whirlwind tour of the city. He fed her chaat-papri, splurged on bottles of Pepsi, bought her a handbag in Karol Bagh, and a five-hundred-rupee salwar outfit with matching chunni from Kolhapur Road in Kamala Nagar. Sushma felt indescribable happiness each time she touched, or even looked at, Ramnivas. The sad and worried little Ramnivas of yesterday (on many occasions Sushma had thought, Enough is enough ) had suddenly blossomed into an uncannily happy, Technicolor lover. Though his hair was unkempt, his stubble getting scraggly, and his bidi breath hard to take, whenever Ramnivas kissed Sushma in the little backseat of the rickshaw, for some unexplainable reason, she felt as if she were rolling around on a bed of flowers.

There’s no way Sushma could have known what accounted for Ramnivas’s surprising turnaround. She knew this much:

She’d done well by showing up at the bus stand that Tuesday morning, after having spent the whole night thinking, Do I show up? Do I not show up? It turned out she’d made the right decision. There is someone out there in the world who loves me!

Sushma thought, overflowing with joy. Even after Ramnivas had gotten her pregnant and then paid for her abortion at the Mittal Clinic in Naharpur, she’d remember the whirlwind trip that day two years before in the autorickshaw.

The roots of happiness lie hidden in money. From there, a tree of pleasure can grow, and flourish, and bear the fruit of joy. Maybe the best qualities of men, too, lie locked inside a bundle of cash — this is how Ramnivas began to think. He was a new man: Everything had changed. Life at home had also improved substantially. First, his wife Babiya seemed content all the time, and now cooked the most delicious food.

They could afford to eat meat at least twice a week and eggs every day. The kids asked for ice cream, and the kids got ice cream. If a guest came knocking, Babiya would bring out the good stuff: Haldiram’s namkeen snacks and Britannia biscuits.

Ramnivas bought a sofa, a TV, a VCR, a double bed, a fridge, and a foreign-made CD player from Palika Baazar, and announced that it was only a matter of time before he bought a computer for the kids. He said everyone knew that there was no getting ahead without one. He planned to get them computer courses and then send them both to the States, where they’d make six-figure salaries.

Ramnivas’s relatives, who’d always steered clear of him, suddenly started showing up at his place with whole families in tow. His stock within his own caste community was on the rise, and he was often approached for advice about matrimonial alliances between families. He got all sorts of letters and wedding invitations. If he felt like it, he’d go. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t. But when he did — what a welcome he got!

Meanwhile, Ramnivas had begun drinking every day, and his liaisons with Sushma also became a daily occurrence. By then, Babiya knew all about the affair but had decided to keep her mouth shut. She knew enough about the kind of man Ramnivas was to feel confident he’d never leave her or the kids.

Sometimes Ramnivas wouldn’t come home until well after midnight. Sometimes he’d disappear for a few days — sometimes with Sushma, who now owned several salwar out-fits, complete with matching sandals and jewelry sets. She used to go toe-to-toe with Ramnivas no matter how small the squabble, but now, fearing he might get angry, Sushma silently put up with more and more. On several occasions her mother cautioned, “How long will this last? You have to stand up for yourself and tell him that what’s yours is yours. And he is yours, honey. People are beginning to talk.” But Sushma would reply, “I’m no homewrecker, Amma. He has kids, don’t forget. Let it go for as long as it goes.” And she was sure it would go on for the rest of their lives.

If people asked Ramnivas where he’d gotten so much money, he’d say he’d invested in a half-million-rupee pyramid scheme in Saket, or that he was playing the numbers and kept hitting. Or that he’d won the lottery. Or — and this he reserved for only a few — that he’d met a great holy man near the mosque who whispered a very special mantra in his ear that caused future stock-share figures to flash before his eyes.

In turn, Ramnivas whispered the same mantra into the ears of several people, all of whom failed to see the numbers flash before their eyes.

Whenever Ramnivas felt like it, he’d go and fill up his bag with a few stacks of cash from the wall in Saket. It was amazing that no one had stopped him or arrested him, and no one had moved the stacks of rupees around. Spending the money as he pleased for so long with no one stopping him had turned Ramnivas into a carefree man, and so his daring grew. And yet he was still beset with worry that one day the rightful owner of the money might show up and take it away. So with foresight, he bought a ten-acre plot of land in Loni Border and put it in his wife’s name. He took three-hundred thousand and deposited it into various savings accounts in several banks — all under different names.

Things began to crumble about eight months ago.

Ramnivas made big plans to take Sushma on a trip to Jaipur and Agra, where, of course, they’d have their photo taken in front of the Taj Mahal.

They found a taxi driver the moment they stepped out of the train station. Ramnivas instructed him to take them to a hotel. “What’s your price range?” the taxi driver asked, sizing him up.

Ramnivas could tell that the driver thought he was an average joe, or worse, some schmuck. “It doesn’t matter so long as the hotel’s top-notch,” Ramnivas said firmly. “Don’t take me to some cut-rate flophouse.”

The driver appeared to be around forty-five; he had a cunning look on his face and dark eyes as alert as a bird of prey. He smiled, asking sardonically, “Well, there’s a nice three-star hotel right nearby. Whaddya think?” The man must have been expecting Ramnivas to lose his cool at the mere mention of a three-star hotel, but Ramnivas was unfazed.

“Three-star, five-star, six-star — it’s all the same to me. Just step on it. I really need a hot shower and a big double plate of butter chicken.”

The driver gave him a long look, which he followed with a piercing, hawklike glance at Sushma. Pleased with himself, and mixing in mockery, he added, “Yes sir! On our way! And do you think I’m gonna let you settle for a plain old hot shower? I’ll see to it you have a whole big full tub of hot water! And butter chicken? You’ll get triple butter chicken!”