Ian McDonald - River of Gods

“That’s the Romantics,” says the man with a private smile but he has decided Shaheen Badoor Khan shares some kindred feeling with him. “So, what line are you in yourself?”

“I am a civil servant,” Shaheen Badoor Khan says. The man gives his answer consideration.

“So am I,” he says. “Might I ask what area?”

“Information management,” Shaheen Badoor Khan says.

“Pest control,” the man says. “Congratulations then to our hosts.” He raises his glass and Shaheen Badoor Khan observes that the man’s suit is smudged with dust and smoke. “Yes, indeed,” Shaheen Badoor Khan says. “A fortunate child indeed.” The man grimaces.

“I cannot agree with you there, sir. I have considerable issues with geneline therapy.”

“Why so?”

“It is a recipe for revolution.”

Shaheen Badoor Khan starts at the vehemence in the man’s voice. He continues, “The last thing Bharat needs is another caste. They may call themselves Brahmins, but in fact they are the true Untouchables.” He remembers himself. “Forgive me, I know nothing about you, for all I know.”

“Two sons,” Shaheen Badoor Khan says. “The old way. Safely at university, God be praised, where no doubt they’re at things like this every night, prowling for wedding material.”

“We are a deformed society,” the man says.

Shaheen Badoor Khan wonders if this man is a djinn sent to to test him for everything he speaks is in Shaheen’s own heart. He was remembering a young married couple, their careers dazzling, their path luminous, the parents so proud, so delighted for their children. And, of course, the grandchildren, the grandsons. Everything you have, save this one thing, a son. A son and spare. Then the appointments with the doctors they had not asked to see, and the families poring over the results. Then the bitter little pills, and the bloody times. Shaheen Badoor Khan cannot count how many daughters he flushed away. His hands have twisted the limbs of Bharati society.

He would talk more with the man, but his attention is turned to the party. Shaheen follows his direction: the woman Bilquis had derided, the good-looking country woman, makes her way through the excited crowd. The arrival of the diva is imminent.

“My own wife,” the man says. “I am summoned. Do excuse me. A pleasure to have met you.” He sets his champagne down on the ground and goes to her. Applause as Mumtaz Huq arrives on the stage. She smiles and smiles and smiles to her audience. Her first song tonight will be a tribute to the generous hosts and a hope for joy, long life, and prosperity for their graced child. The players strike up. Shaheen Badoor Khan leaves.

Shaheen Badoor Khan’s raised hand fails to stop any of the infrequent taxis in this private-mobility suburb. A phatphat drums past, turn at a gap in the concrete central reserve, and pulls over to the verge. Shaheen Badoor Khan starts towards it but the driver twists the throttle and surges away. Shaheen Badoor Khan glimpses a shadowed figure in swathes of voluminous clothing beneath the plastic canopy. The phatphat again crosses the median strip, rattles towards Shaheen Badoor Khan. A face peeks out from the bubble, a face elegant, alien, fey. Cheekbones cast shadows. Light glints from the hairless, mica-dusted scalp.

“You are welcome to share my ride.”

Shaheen Badoor Khan reels back as if a djinn has called the secret name of his soul. “Not here, not here,” he whispers.

The nute blinks yts eyes, a slow kiss. The engine races, the little phatphat pulls into the night traffic. Streetlight catches on silver around the nute’s neck, a Siva trishul.

“No,” Shaheen Badoor Khan pleads. “No.”

He is a man of responsibilities. His sons have grown and left, his wife is all but a stranger to him these years but he has a war, a drought, a nation to care for. Yet the directions he gives to the Maruti driver who finally stops for him are not to the Khan haveli. They are to another place, a special place. A place he hoped he would never need go to again. Frail hope. The special place is down a gali too narrow for vehicles, overhung by intricately worked wooden jharokas and derelict air-conditioning units. Shaheen Badoor Khan opens the cab door and steps out into another world. His breath is tight and shallow and fluttering. There. In the brief light of a door’s opening and closing, two silhouettes, too slim, too elegant, too fey for mundane humanity.

“Oh,” he cries softly. “Oh.”

Tal runs. A voice calls yts name from the cab. Yt does not look. Yt does not stop. Yt runs, shawl pluming out behind it in a blue of ultra-blue paisleys. Horns blare, sudden looming faces yell abuse; sweat and teeth. Tal reels back from a near miss with a small fast Ford; music thud-thud-thuds. Yt spins, dodges the shocking blare of truck horns, slips between a rural pickup and a bus pulling out from a halt. Tal halts a moment on the median strip for a glance back. The bubble cab still purrs on the footpath. A figure stands there, glimpsed through the headlight glare. Tal plunges into the steel river.

Tal tried to hide that morning, behind work, behind huge wrap-round tilt-jet pilot shades, behind the Lord of the Hangovers, but everyone had to come and get the goss on the faaa bulous people at the faaa bulous party. Neeta was celebstruck. Even the cool guys circulated past Tal’s workstation, not of course asking direcrly, but accessing hints and suspicions. The goss-nets were full of it, the news channels, too, even the headline services were beaming pictures from the night to palmers all over Bharat. One of which was two nutes going at it on the floor and A-listers cheering and clapping.

Then a neural Kunda Khadar burst behind Tal’s eyes and it all came gushing back. Every. Little. Detail. The taxicab fumblings, the airport hotel mumblings and profanities. The morning light flat and grey with the promise of another merciless day of ultra-heat, and the card on the pillow. Non-scene .

“Oh,” Tal whispered. “No.” Yt crept home as early as the impending wedding of Aparna Chawla and Ajay Nadiadwala would permit, a shaking, paranoid wreck. Huddled up in the phatphat yt could feel the card in yt’s bag, heavy and untrustworthy as uranium. Get rid of it now. Let it flutter out the window. Let it slip down the seat lining. Lose and forget. But yt could not. Tal was terribly, terribly afraid yt had fallen in love and yt didn’t have a soundtrack for this one.

The women were on the stairs again, winding their way up and down with their plastic water carriers, their conversation dying as Tal squeezed past, mumbling apologies, then resuming in titters and low whispers. Every rattle, every snatch of radio seemed a weapon thrown at yt. Don’t think about it. In three months you will be out of here. Tal plunged into yts room, tore off yts stiff, smoke-reeking party clothes and dived naked into yts beautiful bed. Yt programmed two hours of non-REM sleep but yts agitation and heart-hurt and wonderful, mad bafflement defeated the subdermal pumps and yt lay watching the nibs of light cast by the window blind bindings move across the ceiling like slow worms and listening to the voiceless, choral roar of the city moving. Tal unfolded that last insane night again, smoothed out its creases. Yt hadn’t gone out to get involved. Yt hadn’t even gone out to get fucked. Yt had gone out for a simple mad time with famous people and a bit of glam. Yt didn’t want a lovely person. Yt didn’t want an entanglement. Yt didn’t want involvement, a relationship. And the last thing yt wanted was love at first sight. Love, and all those other dreadful things yt thought yt had left in Mumbai.

Mama Bharat was slow answering Tal’s knock. She seemed in pain, her hands uncertain on the door locks. Tal had washed in a cup of water, removing surface layers of sleep and grime but the smoke, drink, and sex were engrained. Yt could smell them off ytself as yt sat on the low sofa watching the turned-down cable news while the old woman made chai. She was slow about her making, visibly frail. Her aging scared Tal.