Ian McDonald - Cyberabad Days

‘How much is my mother paying you?’ Jasbir says into the moment of silence.

‘I couldn’t possibly betray client confidentiality.’ Nahin has eyes small and dark as currants.

‘I’ll disengage you for an additional fifty per cent.’

Nahin’s hands hesitate over the pretty hand drawn spirals and wheels. You were a man before , Jasbir thinks. That’s a man’s gesture. See, I’ve learned how to read people.

‘I double,’ shrills Mrs Dayal.

‘Wait wait wait,’ Jasbir’s father protests but Jasbir is already shouting over him. He has to kill this idiocy here, before his family in their wedding fever fall into strategies they cannot afford.

‘You’re wasting your time and my parents’ money,’ Jasbir says. ‘You see, I’ve already met a suitable girl.’

Goggle eyes, open mouths around the coffee table, but none so astounded and gaping as Ram Tarun Das’s.

The Prasads at Number 25 Acacia Colony Bungalows have already sent over a pre-emptive complaint about the tango music but Jasbir flicks up the volume fit to rattle the brilliants on the chandelier. At first he scorned the dance, the stiffness, the formality, the strictness of the tempo. So very un-Indian. No one’s uncle would ever dance this at a wedding. But he has persisted – never say that Jasbir Dayal is not a trier – and the personality of the tango has subtly permeated him, like rain into a dry riverbed. He has found the discipline and begun to understand the passion. He walks tall in the Dams and Watercourses. He no longer slouches at the watercooler.

‘When I advised to you speak or forever hold your peace, sir, I did not actually mean, lie through your teeth to your parents,’ Ram Tarun Das says. In tango he takes the woman’s part. The lighthoek can generate an illusion of weight and heft so the aeai feels solid as Jasbir’s partner. If it can do all that, surely it could make him look like a woman? Jasbir thinks. In his dedication to detail Sujay often overlooks the obvious. ‘Especially in matters where they can rather easily find you out.’

‘I had to stop them wasting their money on that nute.’

‘They would have kept outbidding you.’

‘Then, even more, I had to stop them wasting my money as well.’

Jasbir knocks Ram Tarun Das’s foot across the floor in a sweetly executed barrida . He glides past the open verandah door where Sujay glances up from soap-opera building. He has become accustomed to seeing his landlord tango cheek to cheek with an elderly Rajput gentleman. Yours is a weird world of ghosts and djinns and half-realities , Jasbir thinks.

‘So how many times has your father called asking about Shulka?’ Ram Tarun Das’s free leg traces a curve on the floor in a well-executed volcada . Tango is all about seeing the music. It is making the unseen visible.

You know , Jasbir thinks. You’re woven through every part of this house like a pattern in silk.

‘Eight,’ he says weakly. ‘Maybe if I called her…’

‘Absolutely not,’ Ram Tarun Das insists, pulling in breath-to-breath close in the embreza . ‘Any minuscule advantage you might have enjoyed, any atom of hope you might have entertained, would be forfeit. I forbid it.’

‘Well, can you at least give me a probability? Surely knowing everything you know about the art of shaadi, you could at least let me know if I’ve any chance?’

‘Sir,’ says Ram Tarun Das, ‘I am a Master of Grooming, Grace and Gentlemanliness. I can direct you to any number of simple and unsophisticated bookie-aeais; they will give you a price on anything though you may not fancy their odds. One thing I will say: Miss Shulka’s responses were very – suitable.’

Ram Tarun Das hooks his leg around Jasbir’s waist in a final gancho . The music comes to its strictly appointed conclusion. From behind it come two sounds. One is Mrs Prasad weeping. She must be leaning against the party wall to make her upset so clearly audible. The other is a call tone, a very specific call tone, a deplorable but insanely hummable filmi hit My Back, My Crack, My Sack that Jasbir set on the house system to identify one caller, and one caller only.

Sujay looks up, startled.

‘Hello?’ Jasbir sends frantic, pleading hand signals to Ram Tarun Das, now seated across the room, his hands resting on the top of his cane.

‘Lexus Mumbai red monkey Ritu Parvaaz,’ says Shulka Mathur. ‘So what do they mean?’

‘No, my mind is made up, I’m hiring a private detective,’ Deependra says, rinsing his hands. On the twelfth floor of the Ministry of Waters all the dating gossip happens at the wash-hand basins in the Number 16 Gentlemen’s WC. Urinals: too obviously competitive. Cubicles: a violation of privacy. Truths are best washed with the hands at the basins, and secrets and revelations can always be concealed by judicious use of the hot-air hand-drier.

‘Deependra, this is paranoia. What’s she done?’ Jasbir whispers. A level 0.3 aeai chip in the tap admonishes him not to waste precious water.

‘It’s not what’s she’s done, it’s what she’s not done,’ Deependra hisses. ‘There’s a big difference between someone not being available and someone deliberately not taking your calls. Oh yes. You’ll learn this, mark my words. You’re at the first stage, when it’s all new and fresh and exciting and you are blinded by the amazing fact that someone, someone at last, at long last! thinks you are a catch. It is all rose petals and sweets and cho chweet and you think nothing can possibly go wrong. But you pass through that stage, oh yes. All too soon the scales fall from your eyes. You see… and you hear.’

‘Deependra.’ Jasbir moves to the battery of driers. ‘You’ve been on five dates.’ But every word Deependra has spoken has chimed true. He is a cauldron of clashing emotions. He feels light and elastic, as if he bestrode the world like a god, yet at the same time the world is pale and insubstantial as muslin around him. He feels light-headed with hunger though he cannot eat a thing. He pushes away Sujay’s lovingly prepared dhals and roti. Garlic might taint his breath, saag might stick to his teeth, onions might give him wind, bread might inelegantly bloat him. He chews a few cleansing cardamoms, in the hope of spiced kisses to come. Jasbir Dayal is blissfully, gloriously love-sick.

Date one. The Qutb Minar. Jasbir had immediately protested.

‘Tourists go there. And families on Saturdays.’

‘It’s history.’

‘Shulka isn’t interested in history.’

‘Oh, you know her so well after three phone conversations and two evenings chatting on shaadinet – which I scripted for you? It is roots, it is who you are and where you come from. It’s family and dynasty. Your Shulka is interested in that, I assure you, sir. Now, here’s what you will wear.’

There were tour buses great and small. There were hawkers and souvenir peddlers. There were parties of frowning Chinese. There were schoolchildren with backpacks so huge they looked like upright tortoises. But wandering beneath the domes and along the colonnades of the Quwwat Mosque in his Casual Urban Explorer clothes, they seemed as remote and ephemeral as clouds. There was only Shulka and him. And Ram Tarun Das strolling at his side, hands clasped behind his back.

To cue, Jasbir paused to trace out the time-muted contours of a disembodied tirthankar’s head, a ghost in the stone.

‘Qutb-ud-din Aibak, the first Sultan of Delhi, destroyed twenty Jain temples and reused the stone to build his mosque. You can still find the old carvings if you know where to look.’

‘I like that,’ Shulka said. ‘The old gods are still here.’ Every word that fell from her lips was pearl-perfect. Jasbir tried to read her eyes but her BlueBoo! cat-eye shades betrayed nothing. ‘Not enough people care about their history any more. It’s all modern this modern that, if it’s not up-to-the-minute it’s irrelevant. I think that to know where you’re going you need to know where you’ve come from.’