Ian McDonald - River of Gods

The prepared statement comes through with a discreet chime. Najia scans it. It is as N. K. Jivanjee said. She feels as if she has been hit across the front of the head with a big, soft, heavy bat. She hardly hears the Shivaji boy ask, “Was that him? Was it really him? I couldn’t make it all out, what was he saying?”

N. K. Jivanjee. Anyone can get Sajida Rana. But N. K. Jivanjee. Najia Askarzadah hugs herself with joy. Scoop! Exclusive! Pictures copyright Najia Askarzadah. They’ll be syndicated around the planet before the ink’s dry on the contract. She’s on the bike, course set for the Bharat Times office, swinging out through the wire gates into the path of an oncoming school bus before the thought penetrates the amazed numbness.

Why her?

Mumtaz Huq the ghazal singer will perform at ten. Shaheen Badoor Khan intends to be well away by then. It is not that he dislikes Mumtaz Huq. She features on several compilations on his car system, though her tone is not as pure as R. A. Vora. But he does dislike parties like these. He clutches his glass of pomegranate juice in two hands and clings to the shadows where he can peek at his watch unseen.

The Dawar garden is a cool, moist oasis of pavilions and canopies among sweet-smelling trees and precision-pruned shrubs. It speaks of money and bribes to the water department. Candle lanterns and oil torches provide barbarous illumination. Waiters in Rajput costume move among the guests with silver trays of eats and alcohol. Musicians saw and tootle to an electric bass from a pandal under a harsingar tree. Here Mumtaz Huq will perform and afterwards there will be fireworks. That is what Neelam Dawar has been telling all her guests. Ghazals and fireworks. Rejoice!

Bilquis Badoor Khan seeks her husband out in his place of concealment.

“Darling heart, at least try and make an effort.”

Shaheen Badoor Khan deals his wife a society kiss, one on each side.

“No, I’m staying here. Either they recognise me and all they want to talk about is war, or they don’t and it’s schools, share prices, and cricket.”

“Cricket—that reminds me.” Bilquis touches Shaheen’s sleeve lightly, an invitation into conspiracy. “Shaheen, this is priceless. I don’t know where Neelam gets them. Anyway, this terrible grubby little country wife, you know the sort of thing, straight off the Bihar bus, married up and everyone’s got to know about it. There she is, over there. Anyway, we’re standing around talking and she’s hovering, obviously wanting to get her two rupees in, poor thing. We get round to the cricket and Tandon’s century and she says, wasn’t it marvellous, on the eighth and final ball, just before tea. I mean to say. Eight balls an over. Just priceless!”

Shaheen Badoor Khan looks at the woman where she stands alone under a pipal tree, a beaker of lassi in hand. The hand around the silver mug is long and slender, patterned with henna. Her wedding ring is tattooed on her finger. The woman carries herself with country elegance, tall, refined in an unaffected, unsophisticated way. She looks unutterably sad to Shaheen Badoor Khan.

“Priceless, yes,” he says, turning away from his wife. “Ah, Khan! I thought you’d show your heathen face here.”

Shaheen Badoor Khan had tried to steer himself away from Bal Ganguly but the big man can smell news like a Luna moth. It is his purpose and passion as proprietor of Varanasi’s premier Hindi news site. Though he is never without his posse of unmarried stringers—the kind of parties he is invited to draws the kind of women they hope to marry—Ganguly is an obdurate bachelor. Only a fool works his life away building his own cage , he says. Shaheen Badoor Khan also knows that Ganguly is a big giver to the Shivaji.

“So, what’s the word from the Sabha? Shall I start digging a shelter or just stockpile rice?”

“I’m sorry to disappoint, but no war this week.” Shaheen Badoor Khan glances around for escape. The bachelors circle around him.

“You know, it wouldn’t surprise me if Rana declares war and half an hour later sends the bulldozers into Sarkhand Roundabout.” Ganguly laughs at his own joke. He has a big, gurgling, infectious laugh. Shaheen Badoor Khan finds himself smiling. The devotees compete for who laughs loudest. They check to see if any women are looking. “No, but come on, Khan. War is a serious matter. It sells serious amounts of advertising space.” The unattached women in their own private pavilion glance past their chaperone, smiling but shy of eye contact. Shaheen Badoor Khan’s attention is again on the country wife under the pipal tree. Between worlds. Neither one nor the other. That is the worst place to be.

“We won’t go to war,” Shaheen Badoor Khan says smoothly. “If five thousand years of military history has taught us anything, it’s that we aren’t good at wars. We like the pretence and the posturing, but when it comes to battle, we’d rather not. That’s how the British rolled right over us. We sat in our defence positions and they kept coming, and they kept coming and we thought, well; they’ll stop sometime soon. But they just kept coming, bayonets fixed. It was the same in ’oh-two and ’twenty-eight up in Kashmir, it will be the same at Kunda Khadar. We’ll pile our troops on our side of the dam, they’ll pile theirs on their side, we’ll exchange a few mortar rounds and then everyone can march away, izzat satisfied.”

“They weren’t dying of drought in ’twenty-eight,’” one of the paperboys says angrily. Ganguly pulls up, next witticism aborted. Bachelor reporters do not speak out of turn to Prime Ministerial Private Secretaries. Shaheen Badoor Khan uses the embarrassment to duck out of the conversation. The low-caste girls follow him with their eyes. Power has the same smell, town or country. Shaheen Badoor Khan dips his head to them, but Bilquis is on an intercept course with her former lawyer friends. The Ladies Who Used to Litigate. Bilquis’s career, like a generation of educated working women, has vanished behind a veil of social functions and restrictions. No law, no imam, no caste tradition took them out of the workplace. Why work, when five men claw for every job and any educated, socially adept woman can marry into money and prestige? Welcome to the glass zenana.

The clever women are talking now about a widow of their acquaintance; an accomplished woman, a Shivaji activist, quite intelligent. No sooner back from the burning ghat and what do you know? Bankrupt. Not a paisa. Every last stick of furniture gone as surety. Twenty forty-seven, and still an educated woman can be turned out on to the streets. At least she hasn’t had to go to, you know. The “O” people. Has anyone heard from recently? Must look her up. Girls need to stick together. Solidarity, all that. Can’t trust men.

Musicians take up positions in their pandal, tuning, striking notes off each other. Shaheen Badoor Khan will make his getaway when Mumtaz Huq comes on. There is a tree near the gate, he can hide in it’s shadows and when the applause starts, slip out and call a taxi. Another has seen the opportunity, a man in a rumpled, civil servant’s suit holding a full flute of Omar Khayyam. His hands around the glass are quite refined, as are his features, but he carries a heavy five o’clock shadow. He has great dark, animal eyes, with animal fear in them, in the way that animals instinctively first fear everything.

“Do you not fancy the music?” Shaheen Badoor Khan says.

“I prefer classical,” the man says. He has an English-educated voice.

“I’ve always thought Indira Shankar very underrated myself.”

“No, I mean Classical; Western Classical. Renaissance, Baroque.”

“I’m aware of it but I don’t really have the taste for it. I’m afraid it all sounds like hysteria to me.”