Deepti Kapoor - A Bad Character

Rain pours down, the city floods. Thunder and lightning fill the sky. And the junctions, they’ve become waterlogged, silt has clogged the drains that are never cleaned. I still go on visits with Aunty here, in a car with water up to the axles in places, stuck in traffic, carrying gifts. I still sit with her at dinner, see Uncle trotting in and out of his room, still answer her questions, listen to her prattle on about the NRI. All this life goes on. But I don’t remember a thing of it.

I remember him instead. He’s following me in the street. The rain-slicked pathways, potholes as puddles, the pools created in the roads, sunlight breaking through the cloud sculpting deep shadows, bringing colour and heat and bouncing light from the sheets. In the evening the headlights graze upon black umbrellas open at crossroads, disembodied toes avoiding the splash of cars and autos. Auto drivers queued up outside Khan. We play games like this: I message him, tell him which market or colony I’ll visit, where I plan to shop, South Extension, GK I, Sarojini Nagar. And he will be there, hidden among the crowds, searching to find me there. I’ll catch a glimpse of him from the corner of my eye. Sometimes I’ll never see him at all. I’ll walk from shop to shop, conscious of my straightened back, my breasts, the arch of my neck. I’ll go back home and undress as he tells me where I’ve been.

Then I arrive at his apartment one day and there are clothes laid out for me on the bed. Clothes he has bought, which he wants me to wear. He says they’ll suit me, that it’s time to become someone new.

He watches as I examine them, measuring my response. They are cool clothes, clothes from the parties in Goa, clothes from the raves: tight T-shirts, cargo pants, a psychedelic T-shirt of Shiva, another with Ganesh. Fluorescent colours. He says, Try them, put them on, and the authority in his voice that is always so absolute is cut with something else. I do it for him without complaint. I undress, I take off my jeans and T-shirt, stand in front of him naked and put them on.

He watches while I dress, and as I do so he holds his breath, getting hard, and when it’s done he comes towards me, puts his hands on me.

In Delhi it was the time of the Cyber Mehfil. A small window of belief, an explosion of parties and raves at the turn of the century, voices celebrating the new millennium, the opportunities it held, the freedom, the new technology on offer, the hope with the music filtered in from abroad, filtered through Goa via the dargahs and temples, the riverbeds and the mountains, becoming Delhi’s own. A small window of celebration and joy in the farmhouses and the disused spaces, before the police got wind of it and shut it down, before the moral panic set in. These parties broke the barriers and stormed the city for a while.

These were the places he went to in the night when I went home to Aunty and lay in bed wrapped up in our love. These are the places he went to dance, take acid, MDMA, where he thinks he is Shiva, Shiva in the flesh. Dancing this new reality, dancing the destruction and the chaos of the world. Everyone was delighted with him, he was well loved. He the one who never held back, who danced through the night like a shaman, a dervish, like a god. Who went on his hands and knees and howled, roared like a lion, tore off his clothes. He was famous for it.

I knew none of this. This part of his life he kept away from me, he didn’t let me into this world, he wanted me all for himself. But for a time these people held the bloom of something new, something no one had seen here before. Like everyone who sees such things, they saw a new consciousness, the end of one world and the beginning of a more enlightened age.

He dresses her up in these clothes and it transforms him much more than her, he becomes hard, he’s hard just watching her slip them on, a storm has risen in his eyes, the air has changed. It’s not the girl that he desires, it’s this possession of her, what he’s made, the dressed-up thing. He puts her in front of the mirror, stands behind her, his hands around her waist, feeling across her, passing over every inch, rising to her ribs, beneath her breasts, under her arms, her shoulders, her neck, kisses her neck, slides his hands back down between her legs over the fabric. He watches her as he does this and she watches his hands. He says, Look at yourself. And she looks. Admire yourself, and she does.

Fall in love with yourself. This is you.

He talks about Shiva to me. He fully reveals this part of himself that had earlier only been hinted at, and which in its distant orbit had been charming, little more than an affectation. But Shiva, he says, is all. Shiva in his aspect as destroyer.

After I see his family I tell no one of his death. I give no sign. I carry on with my daily routine. My exam results arrive and despite everything they are good. In the absence of marriage offers it is agreed I should look for a job. On the surface it is as if nothing has happened. If I maintain this I will be a bright young girl.

But slowly things come back to me. They come in dreams at first, nightmares of him that are hard to place. I tell myself not to remember as I wake, but in the corner of my eye they remain.

He has something for her now: a few drops of acid left in a bottle in the fridge, a gift, wrapped in foil, kept in the dark, still potent, waiting for an occasion to be used.

He drops it on the back of my hand and I bring it to my mouth. He has another drop for himself. Now it’s done there’s no going back.

I’ve made my excuses with Aunty: I’m staying over at a friend’s house. It’s quiet in the colony. In the darkness outside good people have retreated to their beds, but we won’t sleep. He says I’ll see things tonight, the world will open up to me. I’ll see it for the illusion it really is.

We leave the flat and go down to the car. He says we’ll drive into the night out in the desert towards Jaipur.

Driving through the city, nothing happens for a long time. I say, Maybe it’s not working, maybe we should take some more? And he laughs and says, Trust me, it’s coming, you just have to wait.

It begins on the Gurgaon road. Yawning, each one sucking in a lungful of air, but it’s not tiredness, it’s something else, as if bubbles are rising and the atoms of the body are breaking loose. The buildings at the side tingle and shudder. The tail-lights of cars leave tracers of red in their wake. And in the belly, there’s this feeling of butterflies, the compulsion to bring it all up, the impossibility of it, and the knowledge that if you could, it would be nothing less than the universe, a projectile stream of galaxies from the mouth.

But this is only a whisper, a small wave, it comes, it goes. Relax, he says. Relax, and his voice comes to me from far away. I close my eyes and focus on the dark throbbing music he plays, the low hum of the engine. We’re on the highway in the desert.

I open my eyes to a carnivalesque world. Unhinged, the trucks come roaring at us with their painted faces and vicious mouths, the cheap flashing statues of neon gods that adorn their dashboards leading the charge, dancing into the void. Real objects slide on the surface of things. Solid spaces bend. What I once knew to be true is only a canvas to be painted on and torn apart. I turn to look at him and he’s a black beast with a grinning maw. I can’t help laughing out loud. I laugh at him for what seems like hours. There’s a panic somewhere there.