Alan Foster - Sagramanda, a Novel of Near-Future India

He could not look his aged father in the face until this matter was appropriately resolved.

Using the family business as collateral, Anil had obtained money that had allowed him to expand one store at a time. Now the Buthlahee family owned twelve such stores, the smallest being larger than his parents' original enterprise. The stores were scattered up and down the coast, following the main north-south road. They managed to compete with the big city stores on their own terms. As a student, the brilliant Taneer had helped his father and cousins set up a proprietary wireless system for controlling real-time inventory that had allowed them to stay one step ahead of their competitors. They served local people seeking food and household goods as well as tourists traveling down the coast and the eight thousand priests of Jagannath Temple, Vishnu be praised. The Buthlahees operated the second-biggest store on Puri's main street, Bada Danda, where they sold everything from sunblock to computer and box accessories.

All for nothing, if the disgraceful prospect Taneer had chosen for himself was allowed to come to fruition.

Via email and vit, Anil and his wife and Taneer's cousins had pleaded and argued, threatened and screamed at him to break off the relationship. All to no avail. Taneer had declared defiantly that not only was he going to remain with the Untouchable woman-thing, he fully intended to make her his wife. Finally, forced to an extreme no decent VyMohans father should be expected to endure, that was the moment when Anil had disowned him. It was the last time father and son had spoken.

But disowning him was not enough, Anil knew. He had talked to his own father, and to his own cousins, as well as to Chautara, the esteemed senior uncle of the family. Sorrowfully, the conclusion was the same among all. Taneer could not be allowed to bring the entire family into permanent disgrace.

More than one male cousin had offered to perform the necessary duty. A grim-visaged Anil had turned them all down. It was his son who was the offender. Therefore it was his, Anil's, responsibility to see to the cleansing of the family name.

Hands brushed at his lower limbs. Some of the beggars imploring him had no legs. Some had been ravaged by HIV-connected diseases. The face of one girl of about sixteen, who had clearly been born beautiful, was covered with open, running sores. Whitened cankers clung to her full lips. Her eyes were already vacant, dead; the rest of her body would follow soon enough. He ignored them all. He did not want to start a riot by handing out rupees.

Dominating the horizon above the crowded, busy street was the Harap Jain temple. Encrusted with tens of thousands of shards of lovingly hand-applied, electric-hued, dichrotic glass, its five-hundred-meter-tall tower dazzled all who raised their eyes to drink in its simple yet spectacular beauty. The full length of the glass-encrusted spire was visible for only five minutes each hour. The rest of the time it was shrouded, as the computer-driven mosaic glass panels rotated inward. Otherwise, the drivers of too many vehicles on the streets below would find themselves blinded by the thousands of individual reflections as the sun changed its position in the sky. Not to mention the pilots of small choppers and other commuter craft that made use of the skyways above the city streets. Like every other religion, the Jains had been compelled to adapt their tenets to the needs of the greater city.

Inquiries at the company where Taneer had worked had brought a faster response than Anil could have hoped for. It appeared that those who had employed his son were as anxious to find him as the father. Utilizing skills born of a life spent engaged in bargaining and business, Anil assured those with whom he spoke that he would be pleased to inform them should he manage to reestablish contact with his son. He did not tell them it would be after he had shot dead his offspring and the whore.

Sagramanda did not frighten him. Business had required that he visit suppliers in the great metropolis several times a year. He felt that he knew the city as well as any nonresident. The delight of the city's chronically overwhelmed administration, public transportation was its pride and joy. The subway and maglev, the fuel-cell-powered buses and electric rickshaws, made it easy even for someone who was not rich to get around with a modicum of efficiency. Having more resources at his disposal than the average visitor, Anil managed quite well.

Finding his son and his son's whore, however, was another matter entirely. For one thing, he had no idea what the trollop looked like.

Before he had ceased communicating with his family Taneer could not stop from going on and on about her purported beauty. A bottle of mercury was also beautiful, Anil knew, and equally lethal if swallowed whole. The woman-thing was incidental to his search. Find Taneer, and he would find them both.

He had already posted his son's most recent picture, together with a substantial reward for information. The Net was a beautiful thing. For years now it had extended its reach even into the poorest villages. Illiterate farmers had learned how to use touch-screens to check the buying prices of various commodities. People who could not read could match portraits to memories, and vote. Sagramanda was home to many millions of technologically sophisticated people. Anil felt that if anyone saw his notice and reward offer and then caught a glimpse of Taneer on a city street, they would know how to respond.

So far, the communicator in his pocket had been silent on that score. He had programmed in a special ring for the line that would connect him to anyone having the information he sought. The device also enabled him to stay on top of business matters back home.

People in their hundreds swirled around him as he stopped outside a small food stall. It was one of dozens that lined the shady side of a wide sidewalk near the small but clean businessman's hotel where he was staying. Fragrant smoke filled the air as various kinds of meat and vegetables were rapidly turned on open gas and charcoal grills whose metal bars were burnt black from decades of charring thousands of meals. He had asked around before settling on this one as a regular hangout. Though he could afford much fancier food than roti and dal, that was the traditional fare he had grown up eating every day. It would not feel right to have anything else for his midday meal.

Gripping the insulated paper wrap that made it possible for him to hold the hot unleavened bread with its load of lentil puree (and a little chicken-he was particularly hungry today) in the thick fingers

of his left hand, he seasoned it with some ambal and took a big bite as he turned up the street. He had several people to meet today. One worked for a private investigation agency that had been highly recommended to him by a fellow businessman back home. No avenue would be left unexplored in the search for his renegade offspring. The honor of the entire Buthlahee family was at stake and, as the family patriarch, everyone was relying on him to do the right thing.

Not for the first time, and in spite of himself, he found himself wondering just how this Dalit girl had managed to enchant his son. Taneer was intelligent, sharp, educated, and for a young man not yet thirty, quite sophisticated in the ways of the world. Yet he had thrown away everything, everything-future, family, honor-for this Untouchable woman. Perhaps hypnotism was involved, though Anil was not sure he believed in that. Considering himself a modern man, he did not lend much countenance to sorcery, either. Drugs seemed more likely. Had this mercenary whore turned his son into some kind of addict? When they had last spoken, and argued, Taneer had been angry. But he had not sounded drugged.