Arundhati Roy - The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

They laughed loudly, like men trying to be boys.

“Tried talking to her? She doesn’t talk.”

“Tried smiling? She doesn’t smile.”

“Where the hell did he find her?”

I’d had my last drink and was moving towards the gate when Naga’s father, Ambassador Shivashankar Hariharan, called out to me. “Baba!”

He belonged to another era. He pronounced Baba the way an Englishman would — barber. (His own name he pronounced Shiver.) He never lost an opportunity to let people know that he was a Balliol man.

“Uncle Shiva, sir.”

Retirement is rarely kind to powerful men. I could see he had aged suddenly. He looked gaunt and a little too small for his suit. He had a cigar clenched between his perfect, pearly dentures. Fat veins pushed through the pale skin on his temples. His neck was too thin for his collar. Pale rings of cataract had laid siege to his dark irises. He shook my hand with more affection than he had ever shown me in the past. He had a thin, reedy voice.

“Running away, are you? Leaving us to our own devices on this happy occasion?”

That was the only reference he made to his son’s latest escapade.

“Where’s your beautiful wife? Where’re you posted these days?”

When I told him his face suddenly hardened. The change that came over him was almost frightening.

“Get them by the balls, Barber. Hearts and minds will follow.”

Kashmir did this to us.

After that I dropped out of their lives. Between then and now, I met her only once, and quite by chance. I was with R.C.—R. C. Sharma — and another colleague. We were taking a walk in Lodhi Gardens, discussing some vexing office politics. I saw her from a distance. She was in a tracksuit, running full pelt, with a dog by her side. I couldn’t tell if it was hers or just a Lodhi Garden stray that had decided to run with her. I think she saw us too, because she slowed her run to a walk. When we came face-to-face, she was soaked in sweat and still out of breath. I don’t know what got into me. Maybe it was embarrassment at being seen with R.C. Or the usual confusion that came over me when I was with her. Whatever it was, it made me say something stupid — something I’d say to the wife of a colleague I happened to bump into somewhere — chummy, cocktail-party banter.

“Hello! Where’s the hubby?”

I could have killed myself just after those words came out.

She held up the leash she was carrying in her hand (the dog was hers) and said, “The hubby? Oh sometimes he allows me to take myself for a walk.”

It sounds terrible, but it wasn’t. She said it with a smile. Her smile.

Four years ago, out of the clear blue sky, she rang to ask whether I was the Biplab Dasgupta (there are plenty of us, the absurdly named, in this world) who had advertised in the papers for a tenant for a second-floor apartment. I said indeed I was. She said she was working as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer and needed an office and could pay whatever the going rent was. I said I’d be more than delighted. A couple of days later, my doorbell rang and there she was. Much older of course, but in some essential way unchanged — as peculiar as ever. She wore a purple sari and a black-and-white-checked blouse, a shirt actually, with a collar and long sleeves rolled halfway up her forearms. Her hair was dead white and cropped close to her head, short enough for it to look spiky. She looked either much younger or much older than her years. I couldn’t decide which.

I was on deputation to the Ministry of Defense at the time, and was living downstairs (in what is now the watermelon). It was a Saturday, Chitra and the girls were out. I was alone at home.

Instinct told me to be more formal than friendly, not to reminisce about the past. So I took her up straightaway, to have a look at the apartment. I showed her around the two rooms — a tiny bedroom and a larger workroom. It was an improvement on her Nizamuddin storeroom for sure, but no comparison to her home of many years in Diplomatic Enclave. She barely looked around before saying she would like to move in as soon as possible.

She walked through the empty rooms and sat at the bay window, looking down at the street below. She seemed enthralled by what she saw, but somehow when I looked out at the same view I didn’t think we were seeing the same things.

She made no attempt at conversation and appeared at ease with the silence. She still wore the same plain silver ring on the middle finger of her right hand. I could see she was having some kind of conversation with herself. Suddenly she became practical.

“May I give you a check? A deposit of some sort?”

I said I was in no hurry, that I would draw up an agreement in the next few days.

She asked if she could smoke. I said of course she could, this was her space now and she could do what she pleased in it. She took out a cigarette and lit it, cupping the flame in her palms like a man.

“Given up beedis?” I asked.

Her smile made the lights come on in the room.

I left her to finish her cigarette, and checked the lights, the fans, the water connections in the kitchen and bathroom. As she stood up to leave, she said, as though she was continuing a conversation we’d been having, “There’s so much data, but no one really wants to know anything, don’t you think?”

I had no idea what she meant. Then she was gone. Then too, her absence filled the apartment, like it does now.

She moved in a day or two later. She had almost no furniture. She did not tell me at the time that she had left Naga and that she intended not just to work, but to actually live upstairs. The rent was deposited straight into my account on the first of every month without fail.

Her arrival in my life, her presence upstairs, unlocked something inside me.

It worries me that I use the past tense.

Even a casual glance around the room — at the photographs (numbered, captioned) pinned up on the noticeboards, the little towers of documents stacked neatly on the floor and in labeled cartons and box files, the yellow Post-its stuck on bookshelves, cupboards, doors — tells me that there’s something unsafe here, something best left untouched, turned over to Naga perhaps, or even the police. But can I bring myself to do that? Must I, should I, can I resist this invitation to intimacy, this opportunity to share these confidences?

At the far end of the room there’s a long, thick plank of wood supported on two metal stands that serves as a table. It’s piled with papers, old videotapes, a stack of DVDs. Pinned to the noticeboards, together with the photographs, are notes and sketches. Next to an old desktop computer is a tray full of labels, visiting cards, brochures and letterheads — probably the graphic design work with which she earned ( earns, for God’s sake!) her living — the only things in the room that look reassuringly normal. There are printouts of what appear to be several versions of a shampoo label, in various typefaces:

Naturelle Ultra Doux Nourishing Conditioner

With Walnut Oil and Peach Leaf Naturelle Ultra Doux has combined the nourishing and relaxing virtues of walnut oil and the soothing qualities of peach leaf in a rich detangling cream that melts instantly in your hair.

Results: Very easy to comb. Your hair regains its irresistible softness, without heaviness. Deeply nourished, your hair is perfectly flowing and smooth. A DEIGHTFUL EXPERIENCE.

“Delightful” is missing an “l” in all the versions. Trust her, at this stage of her life, to be designing misspelled shampoo labels.

What about a shampoo for rapidly disappearing hair?