Ian McDonald - River of Gods

Ranjit Ray goes to the head of the table. He doesn’t take his seat. He salutes his board and guests. The big wooden room hums with tension. Vishram would give anything to make an entrance like that.

“Colleagues, partners, honoured guests, my clear family,” Ranjit Ray begins. “Thank you all for coming today, many of you at considerable inconvenience and expense. Let me say at the outset that I would not have asked you to come if I did not feel it was a matter of the utmost importance to this company.”

Ranjit Ray’s voice is a soft, deep prayer that carries to every part of the big room without loss. Vishram recalls that he has never heard it raised.

“I am sixty-eight years old, three years past what Westerners consider in their business ethos the end of economically useful life. In India it is a time for reflection, for the contemplation of other paths that might have been taken, that yet might be taken.” A sip of water.

“In the final year of my engineering degree at the Hindu University of Varanasi I realised that the laws of economics are subject to the laws of physics. The physical processes that govern this planet and the continued life upon it place as stringent an upper limit on economic growth as the speed of light does on our knowledge of the universe. I realised that I was not just an engineer, I was a Hindu engineer. From these understandings I concluded that if I was to use my abilities to help India become a strong and respected nation, I must do it in an Indian way. I must do it in a Hindu way.”

He looks at his wife and sons.

“My family has heard this many times, I trust they’ll forgive one more. I went on a year of pilgrimage. I followed bhakti and did puja at the seven sacred cities, I bathed in the holy rivers and sought the councils of swamis and sadhus. And of each of them, at each temple and holy site, I asked this same question.”

How may this engineer lead the right life? Vishram says to himself. He has indeed heard this homily more times than he cares to remember: how this Hindu engineer used a crore of rupees from a micro-credit union to build a low-cost, no-maintenance domestic-scale carbon nanotube solar power generator. Fifty million units later, plus alcohol fuel refineries, biomass plants, wind farms, ocean current thermal generators, and an R&D division pushing Indian— Hindu — minds into the void of zero-point energy, Ray Power is one of Bharat’s—India’s—leading companies. One that has done it the Indian way, sustainably, treading lightly on the earth, obeying the wheel. A company that steers resolutely around the maelstrom of the international markets. A company that commissions exciting new Indian architectural talent to build a corporate headquarters from sustainable wood and glass and still welcomes Dalits into its boardroom. It is a great and inspiring story, but Vishram’s attention is wandering all over Marianna Fusco’s stretch-brocaded breasts. A message appears cross them in cheeky lilac. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR FATHER!

BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP he thumbs back.

PUNS ARE THE LOWEST FORM OF COMEDY, she returns.

WELL EXCUSE ME, I ALWAYS THOUGHT IT WAS SARCASM, he emblazons in quick-riposte blue across the lapels of his really fast suit. Which is how he almost misses the punch line.

“That is why I have decided it is time to once again take up that inquiry into how the right life may be lived.”

Vishram Ray looks up, nerves electric.

“At midnight tonight, I will resign my directorship of Ray Power. I will give up my wealth and influence, my prestige and responsibilities. I will leave my house and family and once again take up the sadhu’s staff and bowl.”

The boardroom of Ray Power could not be any more quiet or still if it had been nerve gassed. Ranjit Ray smiles, trying to reassure. It doesn’t work.

“Please understand that this is not a decision I undertake lightly. I have discussed this at length with my wife and she is in agreement with me. Shastri, my aide and help of more years than I care to remember, will be joining me on this journey, not as a servant, for all such distinctions end tonight, but as a fellow seeker after right life.”

The shareholders are on their feet, shouting, demanding. A Dalit woman bellows in Vishram’s ear about her clients, her sisters, but Vishram finds himself cool, detached, anchored to his seat by sense of inevitability. It is as if he knew from the moment the ticket arrived on his Glasgow doorstep this would happen. Ranjit Ray quiets the board.

“My friends, please do not think I have abandoned you. The first requirement of the man who would follow the spiritual life is that he leaves the world responsibly. As you know, other corporations seek to buy this company but Ray Power is first and last a family business and I will not give it to alien and immoral systems of management.”

Don’t do it, Vishram thinks. Don’t say it.

“Therefore, I am passing control of the company to my sons Ramesh, Govind, and Vishram.” He turns to each of them, hands held out as if blessing. Ramesh looks freshly shot. His big veiny hands are flat on the table like flayed animals. Govind fluffs himself up and looks around the table, already dividing the room into allies and enemies. Vishram is numb, a player caught up in a script.

“I have appointed trusted advisors to guide you through the transitional period. I have put great trust in you. Please try to be worthy of it.”

Marianna Fusco leans across the wide table, hand extended. A sheaf of ribbon-bound papers rests on the polished surface beside her. Vishram can see the dotted lines at the bottom of the page, awaiting his signatures.

“Congratulations, and welcome to Research and Development, Mr. Ray.” He takes the hand he remembers so firm and dry and soft around his dick. Suddenly he knows this script. “Lear,” he breathes.

Yogendra leaves the SUV in the middle of the street outside Musst. Police and thieves alike recognise a raja’s parking space is where he leaves his motor. Yogendra opens the door for Shiv. Cycle rickshaws detour around him, bells jingling.

MUSST, feat. TALV announces the neon. Now everyone’s got personalised aeai DJs and grooves to their own mix, clubs sell themselves by their barmen. It’s too early in the week for the salary-men, wife hunting, but the girls are in. Shiv slips on to his stool. Yogendra takes the seat behind him. Shiv sets the flask of ovaries on the bar. The subsurface lighting turns it into some alien artefact in a Hollywood sci-fi movie. Barman Talv slides a glass dish of paan over the plane of fluorescent plastic. Shiv pops a pinch, rolls it round inside his cheek, lets the bhang percolate through him.

“Where’s Priya?”

“Down the back.”

Girls in knee boots and short skirts and cling-silk tops cluster bound a table where the club polychrome begins. At the centre, haloed by cocktail glasses, is a ten-year-old boy.

“Fuck, Brahmins,” Shiv says.

“Contrary to appearances, he is legal age,” Talv says, pouring two glasses from a shaker that looks treacherously similar to Shiv’s stainless steel prize.

“There’s good men out there, give a woman everything she wants, good home, good prospects—she’d never have to work—good family, children, a place up the ladder, and they hang off that ten-year-old like a calf from a teat,” Shiv says. “I’d shoot the lot of them. It’s against nature.” Yogendra helps himself to paan.

“That ten-year-old could buy and sell this place ten times over. And he’ll be bouncing around long after you and me’ve gone to the ghats.”

The cocktail is cool and blue and deep and chases the red paan into the deep dark places. Shiv scans Club Musst. None of his girls will catch his eye tonight. Those who aren’t laughing with the Brahmin are fixed intently on the tabletop tivi.