Ian McDonald - Cyberabad Days

There are four of us, Purrzja, Shayman, Ashurbanipal and me. We are all from the college – still the Brahminical College! – but when we are out we all have our own names, names we’ve made up for ourselves that sound strange and alien, like our DNA. Strange and alien we make ourselves look too; our own style cobbled from any source that seems remote and outr’: J-punk hair, Chinese bows and ribbons, French street sports fashion and tribal make-up entirely of our own design. We are the scariestlooking eight-year-olds on the planet. By now Sarasvati is a coltish, classy fifteen-year-old. Our closeness has unravelled; she has her own social circles and friends and crushing things of the heart that seem so important to her. Shiv, so I hear, is in his first year at the University of Awadh Delhi. He won a scholarship. Best marks in his school. He’s followed his father into informatics. Me, I howl up and down the boulevards of Delhi trapped in the body of a kid.

We race past the open arms of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The red stone looks insubstantial as sand in the amber murk.

‘That’s your home, that is, Vish,’ Purrzja shouts through her mask. It’s well known that Mamaji Has Plans for me. Why should she not? Every other part of me is designed. A good legal job, a prominent practice, a safe parliamentary seat and a steady, planned ascent towards the top of whatever political party afforded the best chance of ambition. It’s assumed that one day I will lead the nation. I’m designed to rule. I floor the pedal and the big Merc leaps forward. Traffic parts like my divine counterpart churning the soma. Their autodrive aeais make them as nervous as pigeons.

Out on the Siri Ring; eight lanes of taillights in each direction, a never ceasing roar of traffic. The car eases into the flow. Despite the barriers and warning signs police pull twenty bodies a day from the soft shoulder. The ring does not obey old Indian rules of traffic. Men race here, hedge-fund managers and datarajas and self-facilitating media mughals; racing around the twin chambers of Delhi’s heart. I flick on the autodrive. I am not here to race. I am here for sex. I recline the driving seat, roll over and Ashurbanipal is beneath me. Her hair is drawn back behind her ear to show off the plastic curl of the ’hoek. It’s part of the look.

I snap the fingers of my right hand into my palm to activate the software in the palmer glove. I hold that hand a hovering few centimetres above her fluorescent body-paint-stained belly. I don’t touch. We never touch. That’s the rule. Sex has rules. I move my hand in a series of gestures as gentle and precise as any classical dancer’s mudras over Ashurbanipal. Not touching, never touching, never even flexing a finger. It’s not about physical touch. It’s our own thing. But inside her head, I am touching her, more intimately than any rubbing or pushing or chafing of parts . The ’hoek beams signals through the bone, stimulating those parts of the brain that correspond to my slow calligraphy. I am writing my signature across her body. As she in return maps the me drawn on the inside of my skull. How does it feel? Like a cat must feel when it’s stroked. Like an otter must feel diving and turning and performing its underwater acrobatics. Like a fire must feel when the wind catches it and sweeps it up a forested mountainside. And without the poetry; like I want to cringe and melt at the same time. Like I must move in a direction I can’t explain and my body can’t express. Like there is something in my mouth that grows bigger with every second but never changes size, like a reverse turd, only sweet and joyful, is working its way back up into my colon. Like I need need need to pee something that isn’t pee that my body hasn’t learned yet. Like I want this to end and never end. It goes on for a long long time and terrible little crying noises come out of our eight-year-aged lips as the aeai steers us through the howling torus of traffic on Siri Ring. We are teens and we are making out in the car.

There is a coming. Oh yes, there is a coming. Like soft fireworks, or the giggling drop at the top of a Ferris wheel or the feeling you get on those nights when the air is clear and you can see out from the roof pool all the billion lights of Delhi and you are connected to every single one. Like a djinn, made of fire. Ecstatic and guilty and dirty, like you’ve shouted a dirty word at a sophisticated party. My nipples are very very sensitive.

Then I start with Purrzja. And then Shayman. As I said, it’s entirely our own thing. It’s well into dark by the time we put up our seats and straighten our clothing and re-gel our hair and I flick off the autodrive and take us up out and over the Ring on a curving off ramp to a club. It’s a bit of a freak place – nutes like it and where nutes are welcome we are usually welcome – but the door knows us – knows our money – and there are always chati mag paps there. Tonight is no exception: we pose and pimp and preen for the cameras. I can write the society column headlines already. GENE-TWEAK FREAKS ON COCKTAIL CLUB ORGY. Except we don’t drink. We’re underage for that.

It’s always late when we get back. Only the house steward and aeais wait for us, gently chiding that it is a school day tomorrow. Don’t they understand that those are the best nights? This night the lights are on in the big drawing room. I can see them from the approach to the car park. My mother waits for me. She’s not alone. There’s a man and a woman with her, money people, I can tell that right away from their shoes, their fingernails, their teeth, the cut of their clothes and the prickle of aeai servitors hovering around them; all those things I can assess in a glance.

‘Vishnu, this is Nafisa and Dinesh Misra.’

I namaste, a vision in clashing cross-cultural trash.

‘They are going to be your new mother and father-in-law.’

My cats can do other tricks too; I feel you grow bored of them running in their ring. Cats! Cats! See, a clap of my hands and they go and sit on their little stools: Matsya and Kurma, Varaha and Narasimha, Vamana, Parashurama, Rama and Krishna and Buddha and Kalki. Good cats. Clever cats. Rama, stop licking yourself. Hah! One word from me and they do as they will. Now, please feel this hoop, just ordinary paper. Yes? Yes. And these, the same, yes? Yes.

I set them out around the ring. Tabby Parashurama is squeezing his eyes closed in that way that makes him look very very smug.

By the way, I must thank you for coming to watch The Marvellous, the Magical, the Magnificent Vishnu Cat Circus . Yes, that’s the official name. It’s on the letters of registration. Yes, and I pay whatever taxes are due. It’s a small entertainment, but at least it’s working. You have solar? Not hooked up to the zero point? Very long-sighted of you. Now: watch! Varaha, Vamana, Buddha and Kalki!

They flow from their painted stools like liquid and run around the inside of the ring, an effortless, cat-lazy lope. The trick with cat circuses, I have found, is to convince them they are doing it for themselves.

And lo! I clap my hands and in perfect unison my cats leap from their ordained orbits clean through the paper hoops. Your applause please, but not for me: for Varaha, Vamana, Buddha and Kalki. Now they run in a circle, hurdling through the hoops. What was that? Is there a lesson in every trick? What do you mean? The spiritual significance of the cats I call to perform? I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t think cats especially spiritual; quite the reverse; they are the most worldly and sensual of creatures, though the Prophet Mohammed, so it’s said, was a great lover of cats and famously cut the sleeve from his robe rather than disturb a cat that had fallen asleep there.