Ian McDonald - Cyberabad Days

‘Go on.’

‘Pran.’

Shulka stabbed forward, like the darting bill of a winter crane. There was hot, fatty soya duck in his mouth.

‘Isn’t there always a twist in the tale?’ Shulka said.

In the Number 16 Gentlemen’s WC Deependra checks his hair in the mirror and smooths it down.

‘Dowry thievery; that’s what it is. They string you along, get their claws into your money, then they disappear and you never see a paisa again.’

Now Jasbir really really wants to get back to his little work cluster.

‘Deep, this is fantasy. You’ve read this in the news feeds. Come on.’

‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire. My stars say that I should be careful in things of the heart and beware false friends. Jupiter is in the third house. Dark omens surround me. No, I have hired a private investigation aeai. It will conduct a discreet surveillance. One way or the other, I shall know.’

Jasbir grips the stanchion, knuckles white, as the phatphat swings through the great mill of traffic around Indira Chowk. Deependra’s aftershave oppresses him.

‘Exactly where are we going?’

Deependra had set up the assignation on a coded palmer account. All he would say was that it required two hours of an evening, good clothes, a trustworthy friend and absolute discretion. For two days his mood had been grey and thundery as an approaching monsoon. His PI Aeai had returned a result but Deependra revealed nothing, not even a whisper in the clubbish privacy of the Number 16 Gentlemen’s WC.

The phatphat, driven by a teenager with gelled hair that falls in sharp spikes over his eyes – an obvious impediment to navigation – takes them out past the airport. At Gurgaon the geography falls into place around Jasbir. He starts to feel nauseous from more than spike-hair’s driving and Deependra’s shopping mall aftershave. Five minutes later the phatphat crunches up the curve of raked gravel outside the pillared portico of the Haryana Polo and Country Club.

‘What are we doing here? If Shulka finds out I’ve been to shaadi when I’m supposed to be dating her it’s all over.’

‘I need a witness.’

Help me, Ram Tarun Das , Jasbir hisses into his molars but there is no reassuring spritz of silvery music through his skull to herald the advent of the Master of Grooming, Grace and Gentlemanliness. The two immense Sikhs on the door nod them through.

Kishore is sloped against his customary angle of the bar, surveying the territory. Deependra strides through the throng of Eligible Boys like a god going to war. Every head turns. Every conversation, every gossip falls silent.

‘You… you… you,’ Deependra stammers with rage. His face shakes. ‘Shaadi stealer!’ The whole club bar winces as the slap cracks across Kishore’s face. Then two fists descend on Deependra, one on each shoulder. The man-mountain Sikhs turn him around and arm-lock him, frothing and raging, from the bar of the Haryana Polo and Country Club. ‘You, you chuutya!’ Deependra flings back at his enemy. ‘I will take it out of you, every last paisa, so help me God. I will have satisfaction!’

Jasbir scurries behind the struggling, swearing Deependra, cowed with embarrassment.

‘I’m only here to witness,’ he says to the Sikhs’ you’re-next glares. They hold Deependra upright a moment to slap his face and bar him forever from Begum Rezzak’s Lovely Girl Shaadi Agency. Then they throw him cleanly over the hood of a new model Li Fan G8 into the carriage drive. He lies dreadfully still and snapped on the gravel for a few moments, then with fetching dignity draws himself up, bats away the dust and straightens his clothes.

‘I will see him at the river about this,’ Deependra shouts at the impassive Sikhs. ‘At the river.’

Jasbir is already out on the avenue, trying to see if the phatphat driver’s gone.

The sun is a bowl of brass rolling along the indigo edge of the world. Lights twinkle in the dawn haze. There is never a time when there are not people at the river. Wire-thin men push handcarts over the trash-strewn sand, picking like birds. Two boys have set a small fire in a ring of stones. A distant procession of women, soft bundles on their heads, file over the grassy sand. By the shrivelled thread of the Yamuna an old brahmin consecrates himself, pouring water over his head. Despite the early heat, Jasbir shivers. He knows what goes into that water. He can smell the sewage on the air, mingled with wood smoke.

‘Birds,’ says Sujay, looking around him with simple wonder. ‘I can actually hear birds singing. So this is what mornings are like. Tell me again what I’m doing here?’

‘You’re here because I’m not being here on my own.’

‘And, ah, what exactly are you doing here?’

Deependra squats on his heels by the gym bag, arms wrapped around him. He wears a sharp white shirt and pleated slacks. His shoes are very good. Apart from grunted greetings he has not said a word to Jasbir or Sujay. He stares a lot. Deependra picks up a fistful of sand and lets it trickle through his fingers. Jasbir wouldn’t advise that either.

‘I could be at home coding,’ says Sujay. ‘Hey ho. Show time.’

Kishore marches across the scabby river-grass. Even as a well-dressed distant speck it is obvious to all that he is furiously angry. His shouts carry far on the still morning air.

‘I am going to kick your head into the river,’ he bellows at Deependra, still squatting on the riverbank.

‘I’m only here as a witness,’ Jasbir says hurriedly, needing to be believed. Kishore must forget and Deependra must never know that he was also the witness that night Kishore made the joke in the Tughluk tower.

Deependra looks up. His face is bland, his eyes are mild.

‘You just had to, didn’t you? It would have killed you to let me have something you didn’t.’

‘Yeah, well. I let you get away with that in the Polo Club.

I could have taken you then, it would have been the easiest thing. I could have driven your nose right into your skull, but I didn’t. You cost me my dignity, in front of all my friends, people I work with, business colleagues, but most of all, in front of the women.’

‘Well then let me help you find your honour again.’

Deependra thrusts his hand into the gym bag and pulls out a gun.

‘Oh my god it’s a gun he’s got a gun,’ Jasbir jabbers. He feels his knees turn liquid. He thought that only happened in soaps and popular trash novels. Deependra gets to his feet, the gun never wavering from its aim in the centre of Kishore’s forehead, the precise spot a bindi would sit. ‘There’s another one in the bag.’ Deependra waggles the barrel, nods with his head. ‘Take it. Let’s sort this right, the man’s way. Let’s sort it honourably. Take the gun.’ His voice has gained an octave. A vein beats in his neck and at his temple. Deependra kicks the gym bag towards Kishore. Jasbir can see the anger, the mad, suicidal anger rising in the banker to match the civil servant’s. He can hear himself mumbling Oh my god oh my god oh my god . ‘Take the gun. You will have a honourable chance. Otherwise I will shoot you like a pi-dog right here.’ Deependra levels the gun and takes a sudden, stabbing step towards Kishore. He is panting like a dying cat. Sweat has soaked his good white shirt through and through. The gun muzzle is a finger’s breadth from Kishore’s forehead.

Then there is a blur of movement, a body against the sun, a cry of pain and the next Jasbir knows Sujay has the gun swinging by its trigger guard from his finger. Deependra is on the sand, clenching and unclenching his right hand. The old brahmin stares, dripping.

‘It’s OK now, it’s all OK, it’s over,’ Sujay says. ‘I’m going to put this in the bag with the other and I’m going to take them and get rid of them and no one will ever talk about this, OK? I’m taking the bag now. Now, shall we all get out of here before someone calls the police, hm?’