Shashi Tharoor - Show Business

Have I ever told you how alike you are to everyone? Because you are, you know. With everyone you behave in the same sort of way, the relaxed, confident pose, the smooth voice, the effortless charm. It always works best the first time, or when the other person is alone with you. But when they meet you again, and they see you’re exactly like that once more, or worse still, when they meet you in a larger group or with other people, and they see you treat all the others the same way, they feel terribly distanced from you, Ashokji. The same people whom you’ve won over the first time feel cheated, because they feel they are no different to you from anyone you might meet the next day or the next year. And indeed they aren’t, are they, Ashokji? No one makes the slightest difference to you — all that matters is how you relate to them. In the process you offer them this perfect exterior, but people are terribly inconvenient, Ashokji, they don’t stick to the script, they don’t confine themselves to their quota of dialogue, their interactions don’t cease when the hero has no further use for them in the plot, their feelings aren’t switched off when the director says “Cut!” And so they walk away from you, and they find other friends, and you’re left without friends in the world. Even those who’d normally be happy to be a supporting actor to a hero, because this hero makes it plain, without ever saying a word, that he doesn’t need their support and won’t notice it when it is taken away.

OK, OK, I know what you’re going to say, or what you would say if you could. You’d say, “Don’t be silly, paglee, am I the same with you as I am with Cyrus Sponerwalla? You see a different me than other people see, or most other people, anyway.” I suppose that’s true, you are different, but only just. With women you’re different not because you want to reveal any more of yourself to them but because you want them to reveal themselves to you. Physically, of course. I don’t think you’ve ever cared very much what goes on inside our heads. So with women you switch on an extra bulb in those eyes of yours, Ashokji, but it doesn’t cast any light on you. And if you do treat a woman who attracts you differently from the way in which you treat a man, you treat most women alike as well, whether they’re sleeping with you, costarring with you, or merely writing gossip columns about you. Except when we’re actually in bed together, for instance, is there much difference between the way you behave toward me and the way you behave toward Radha Sabnis? The casual observer would find it difficult to tell from your conduct which woman is actually your lover and which is the bitchy columnist you’re trying desperately to avoid, without showing it, of course. Though actually, the thought of anyone being Radha Sabnis’s lover is hysterical — I bet you’d never do it for all the black money in Bombay.

Hai, what a fate, to be able to talk like this to you at last, for the first time sitting down and fully dressed, and not even to know whether you’ve heard a word I said! Whenever I tried to talk to you before, you know, after we — don’t make me shy — afterward, I knew you weren’t listening. Don’t try and protest your innocence, I knew. All along I knew. Well, almost. I became suspicious at first because you would seem so attentive as I talked, lying there with my head on your shoulder, and you’d grunt every time I paused, which would only encourage me to go on. But whenever I asked a question you answered with a kiss, and the kiss led on to other things, and then my questions never got answered. This was fun for a while until I began to think it odd that your affection for me always rose whenever I wanted an answer from you. So I started putting in odd things, outrageous things, into the middle of what I was saying but without any change of tone at all, and you never reacted to any of them. I’d talk about a sari I’d seen, or about this aunt of mine whose husband used to beat her, or about the latest things Salma said, and I’d casually add a phrase like “this was the time I was selling myself for a hundred rupees an hour” or “you know the aunt I mean, the one who was sleeping with your father,” and you wouldn’t bat one of your droopy eyelids, you’d just continue grunting at all the right places.

So then I realized that your mind was somewhere else entirely, once your body had spent itself in me, and that you weren’t listening to a word I was saying. All those precious, intimate little secrets and thoughts and anxieties and family events that mattered so intensely to me and that I wanted to pour out of myself to share with you, the things that I wanted to give you to make myself truly and completely yours, the private doors I was opening to let you into my world and not just into my body, none of these things had made the slightest dent in your consciousness. And you know something, Ashokji? It didn’t matter. I was so happy lying there with the hairs on your chest tickling my cheek and your arms around me caressing the hollow of my hip, that I chattered cheerfully on, knowing you weren’t listening and yet feeling the joy of saying all these things to you that were a more precious gift from me than the ones you valued. I thought, it doesn’t matter that he isn’t listening, maybe he too is enveloped by the soft intimacy of my voice, maybe the actual words don’t matter as much as the fact of my saying them, maybe the sound of my words is enough to tie me to him more securely than the fleeting union of our pelvises. Maybe — and maybe he just can’t be bothered. But I don’t want to know. I love him.

Can any woman have loved you more unselfishly, Ashokji? And yet, when you’d had enough, when you’d tried every position you wanted to try and got bored with the familiarity of me beside you, you just spurned me, Ashokji, you garlanded me at your temple and you let me go, you pretended not only that I didn’t exist but that I had never existed. And now I cannot even get you to say, for once, for the first and last time, that you loved me.

Oh, Ashokji, I so wanted to be cheerful, but how can I? See, I’m wiping a tear with the corner of my sari pallav — how you used to hate me doing that! But I can’t bear it just to look at you lying there. In a way it’s just like old times, isn’t it, with you lying there and me talking away into the void. Except that you don’t even grunt now.

You know what I think, I think you really got angry with me over that business of the Swiss money. Really, how was I to know it would be such a jhamela? You said, “Listen, Mehnaz, this brother of yours in the Gulf, can he help?” and I said, “If I ask him to, I’m sure he will.” And then you met him and the two of you worked it all out, why blame me? The whole thing was your idea anyway. I remember how it happened; see, even if you remember nothing that I ever said to you, I always remember every word that you spoke to me, even how you said it and what you were wearing, if anything, when you said it. On this occasion you were wearing only a wrist-watch, and it wasn’t Swiss — see, I made a joke — and you said how unhelpful Cyrus Sponerwalla had been about helping you stash away your black money. You did a perfect imitation of him squealing in horror, “Like, man, that’s illegal!” You did it so well I could practically imagine Sponerwalla’s chins quivering and eyes popping, even though I hadn’t met the man yet. And so I said, not even half seriously, “He should meet my smuggler brother from Dubai, Nadeem’ll really give him an education.” And you suddenly sat up, practically spraining my neck, and said, with that look in your eyes that means you really want something, “Are you serious? Can I meet Nadeem? What does he do? When is he next coming to India?” I sort of rubbed the side of my neck a bit and sat up too and said, “Of course I was half joking. He’s not really a smuggler — can you imagine? — but he does know about these things, he’s a businessman,” and you were so interested you didn’t even ask me how my neck was feeling. I told you, I remember everything.