Deepti Kapoor - A Bad Character

We drove around the city that night. He told me everything he knew.

Ali arrived at the apartment on the morning of June 7 to find that some bags had been packed. He told Ali he was going away, heading to the mountains the long way round, the way he loved to go, stopping off first in Jaipur, driving through Rajasthan and Punjab to Pathankot, close to the border, through the desert. From there he didn’t know, maybe Ladakh or maybe Parvati, he would decide on the journey.

Ali expected him to leave straightaway, but for some reason he hesitated. He sat in the flat waiting in silence for something — he wouldn’t say what — so that by the time he climbed into the car the sun had already set. He handed Ali a bag of money, eighty thousand rupees, and gave him the keys to the apartment, telling him to look after it while he was gone. Live in it, he said, bring your wife, be happy. He told him he’d be back in a couple of months. But Ali couldn’t leave things like that. He insisted he’d drive with him some of the way.

When they were out of Delhi on the highway they stopped to eat at a dhaba. That’s where he and Ali said goodbye. They went inside and ate chicken and dal as a last meal. In an effort to prolong the departure they had some whisky.

It was one in the morning and they were still sitting drinking as the trucks and cars and buses flew by, as the drivers drifted in and got drunk in the heavy night. They watched the lights and grew drunk too, one whisky after another, they talked about the past, argued, laughed, embraced. Ali told him his wife was expecting and that he would be a father soon and they ordered another whisky to toast this fact.

Around two, not yet completely wasted, he told Ali it was time to leave. He wanted to make Bikaner in good time, to get there by breakfast. They called over one of the old men who sat behind the counter and the three of them together found a truck that would take Ali back to the city. He paid the bill, gave Ali more money for his new baby, they embraced once more, and then he stood beside his car as he waved Ali’s truck on to the road.

I drifted away from the Businessman in the end. Nothing spectacular. It just happened like that. I still see him around here and there, now and then. We’re still on good terms. He paid for my apartment for another year, and by the time this ran out I’d found a real job for myself.

One of the last big nights I’m with him we’re in a nightclub, drinking champagne, it’s the VVIP section, the coke is plentiful and barely concealed. We’re with his rich and powerful friends.

The men, they’re all at one table, the men and me, talking about business, the latest expensive watches, which airline has the finest first-class service, which politicians are favourable to use. The wives are at another table, they talk about the new Chanel store that is going to open here soon, discuss whether they will summer in a Swiss chalet this year or London again. They don’t talk to me, don’t like to acknowledge I exist. I don’t ever sit with them. I don’t care. These women are driven home early in the night. Because of the children, because of their parents, because of their reputation. Because, because, because.

Then the whisky comes out, the deals are made. This is where the real pleasure begins.

I step away from this near the end and go up to the roof to see the morning arrive. I walk out the door and slowly to the edge, high above the city, stand up on the wall and look down on the construction sites that are below. Vast construction, building the future city, the cranes and the sun all together as one. I flick my cigarette over the edge. Watch idly to see if it will hit anyone. Think briefly about stepping off myself.

All the workers’ faces appear to me, caught between the pale sunrise and the artificial light, men, women, children, slaves to Laxmi, getting the job done. I think for a moment I can see his face among them.

The strangest emptiness here.

The most deafening emptiness here.

The knowledge that I don’t belong.

But I still visited Aunty from time to time. We met on good terms, she asked my opinion on certain things. I sat in the living rooms of those chattering women to hear them talk. About this scandal and that, about servants and marriage and divorce. And they talk about 9/11 too, about the imminent Muslim threat. One woman says that Pakistan is behind it all, and another replies, At least now America will know our true worth.

And Aunty, she talks about us Hindus. She says, Us Hindus never hurt anyone in this world, we’re the most peace-loving people on earth. If anything, we’re too kind. We only defend ourselves when we’re provoked, and we’re always being provoked. But what can we do? It’s our fate to be abused.

A year later, from sunset to rising sun, when all the dust has settled, I drop acid again in the Himalayas, where the stars are in the sky with Shiva, and Parvati is in her valley with me. Shiva and Parvati, the two of them sailing across the night in chariots big as join-the-dot stars.

From this high up in the mountains you can picture a great flood sweeping across India, from the southern ocean up through the jungles and the plains. But I’m not looking down on India tonight, only up at the constellations and the snow-capped mountains and the glaciers that are glinting in gunmetal grey with the smell of apple orchards in their wake.

In a simple concrete room built on the hillside far away, the second movement of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto plays. Then the usual psytrance that marks this place. But in the orchard the noise doesn’t rise above a whisper and this is where the acid holds sway.

That familiar ache, the glimmering skull. There is nothing like this valley, where Shiva dances through the mountaintops with serpents around his head, leaving trails and cosmic explosions, the whole night echoing conciliatory sounds, the constellations rippling as if a rock has been thrown into the sky. Everything has a pulse and a heart to beat here, I see them with my open eyes. Shiva and Parvati too, flitting like a pair of hummingbirds. I watch this dance for hours.

But when the first tendrils of light creep in, it’s time to say goodbye. Coiling round one another, they vanish from me for ever. I wave at them as they go, poke my tongue out and skip around the orchards like a loon before collapsing on the ground.

In this new and empty world to which I belong, goats trot along chalk paths, men kindle fires on the slopes, women build them in their houses under blackened pots, smoke seeping through the roof tiles. Music meanders from temples on the morning wind, dipping in and out, suddenly louder, quieter again, and all the purple flowers of the valley are set ablaze, the sun burning up the mountainside.

The haze dissolves to a deep and lasting blue and the moon like a pelvis sinks to the Ganga’s base. I put my hands in the grass, feel the earth beneath my feet, see the eagles soar above, hear the insects down below. And lying on my back just like the girl I’ve always been, I watch the clouds drift and glow across the roof of the world, becoming newspaper headlines that tell the story of my life, the last one saying, Fuck you, I survive.