Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

"It is full to the top with water?"

"Yes."

"Is it as deep as the compound's buildings are tall?"

"No. Maybe three or four meters deep."

"How many people were in it?" Confessions for Asha, despite her mimicking her mother's serious expression, appeared as much travelogue as anything else.

"Two or three."

"See the waste," Anita said to Asha. "Your people," she then accused me. Asha nodded. I wondered how she felt at keeping our lunch meetings secret and whether some part of her enjoyed lying to her mother.

Although I did not mind being questioned, I was afraid of accusations where fair condemnation of my corruption was conflated with something I had never come close to doing. I took bribes, but nearly all went to Mr. Gupta. I could not afford water in bottles, let alone the Oberoi and its swimming pool. "I've seen, I think, seven swimming pools in my life," I said. I waited for this information to be absorbed and then continued.

"The room was no bigger than this living room. It was very cold and it had a sealed smell, perhaps because of the air-conditioning. The curtains were drawn so that the light was dim. There was a view of a road. There was a bathroom to the left, near the door. There were two beds. Mr Bajwa was lying on one, drinking whiskey and watching TV. He was the only one there. His beard hid his kurta buttons and he had his dagger on, but he was wearing black office shoes. Mr. Bajwa had arranged for property developers to see what we were selling to increase interest." Anita made a noise as if she had caught me at something. "I think he also wanted to show off before the people who had ignored him when he was in trouble. Mr. Bajwa spent a long time arranging the grandest hotel possible for the meeting. A little after I arrived, Mr. Mittal and his brother came. His brother looks just like him. Then Mr. Verma and Mr. Satchu came together. Mr. Poon and Mr. Rajan followed."

"We don't need to know their names," Anita interrupted. "How many people in all?"

"Eleven. Mr. Bajwa kept pouring whiskey for everyone. Johnnie Walker Black."

"That costs how much?"

"Maybe four thousand. After the developers began arriving, Mr. Bajwa stayed on his feet. He had the bottle in his hand all the time and would fill a glass even after only one sip was taken. He wasn't paying for the drinks, so why should he care. Mr. Bajwa started smiling as soon as the first developer came and didn't stop till near the end. As he talked and poured whiskey, Mr. Bajwa kept going to the phone and ordering food, which arrived on carts. Samosas, roasted peanuts and cashews, toast, lamb cutlets. The hotel was paying. When the waiters lingered for their tips, he would say, 'It's all paid for by Manager Sahib. I am a beggar.' He was talking so fast, I remembered how crazy he was even before the corruption investigation. He used to lie about everything. I introduced myself to all the property dealers, but mostly I sat on one bed and watched. This meeting would make my job easier, but I was being presented as less important than Mr. Bajwa."

"You do a bad job, you get replaced."

"Mr. Bajwa is a better moneyman than I am," I agreed. To make sure Anita's anger was actually being consumed, I tried always acknowledging insults and responding as candidly as possible.

"That's like saying he's a better poisoner than you."

"Yes. I am an incompetent poisoner. I give people bad headaches instead of killing them." I waited to see if Anita was going to respond. When she did not, I asked, "Am I less bad now because Mr. Bajwa is taking over?"

"No, because you didn't give up your sins voluntarily."

"I think you are better," Asha said. I ignored this, as I always did compliments from her. Instead of harming me in her eyes, the confessions were making me interesting and, because of my frankness, trustworthy.

"Not much work gets done when there are more than two people in a room," I continued.

"And when you are one of these, not even a little bit," Anita said.

"Normally I am lazy, but I am working hard these days. Still, almost nothing was done at the party. Everybody in the room knew everyone else, but they don't get to meet regularly and so were enjoying themselves. There was food. There was drink. Mr. Bajwa had brought diagrams of the properties, white sheets with black print. He unfolded them on a bed, the one away from the door, and on a table. This meeting was a good idea. It's rare for so much land to become available at once, and someone who might at first think that it isn't possible to build on property obtained this way will think again if he sees another person considering buying."

"Why aren't you smart like Mr. Bajwa?"

"He's bolder," I said. "As people drank, it became something of a party. I didn't even finish one drink." I inserted mention of this restraint because I knew Anita felt threatened by alcohol. "I put it on the night table and left it there. Everyone appeared to actually like Mr. Bajwa. They kept hugging him, grabbing his arms. This surprised me, because it made me realize how unimportant relations are that these people could have dropped him so quickly despite liking him. Mr. Bajwa told a good story about his wife.

" 'My wife is my boss. It's because she never gets excited and she never lies and so I can get excited and lie. When we were first married, she asked me how tall I was. I said five feet six, but that I wasn't sure. I must have known the truth, because I said I wasn't sure. But I liked the number, because you can round up. You can think, I am nearly six feet tall. Rita decides to measure me. She does, and she tells me I am five feet five and a half I hate this, because now I have to round down. I am a dwarf I kept waking up the next few nights thinking of this. And I am going to get shorter as I get older. When she told me, I said to her, "If in my twenty-six years I had wanted to know the truth, don't you think I could have found out before this afternoon? Is this the only tape measure in the world?" I sometimes

make her lie to me. "Tell me we have ten rooms in the flat." And she will say, "On the ground floor or on the top?"'

"People were getting drunk. People always use the bathroom more when they are drinking, and a line began forming. Finally they began pissing in the tub and sink. Even when something is free, people want more, and when it's free, the only way to get more is to harm it so other people can't use it. After a while Mr. Bajwa decides to order wine. Wines are more expensive than whiskey."

"How much more?" Anita asked.

"I don't know, but Mr. Bajwa placed his order and a few minutes later the phone rang. 'Hello, Manager Sahib,' Mr. Bajwa said. This I knew meant something, because why would we get called back? Mr. Mittal was sitting beside me, asking me about arranging to get his son into a good school. Mr. Bajwa talked for one or two minutes and hung up. I could tell something bad was going to happen. People were drunk. Mr. Bajwa, Mr. Poon, and Mr. Rajan had spent some time looking over the list of wines, which I think meant they had picked very expensive ones. Then this young man came. He was maybe thirty-five and wearing a blue suit. He introduced himself as the assistant manager in charge of client services. I wondered why the manager had not come himself Mr. Bajwa introduced him to Mr. Poon and Mr. Rajan. Everyone was watching this now, of course, because his introducing the assistant manager to people would make any rejection of his request especially personal.

" 'You ordered wine?' the assistant manager asked, though, of course, he knew we had.

"Mr. Bajwa opened the list of wines. The list was on a desk. He pointed at some and said, 'These three.' Hotels are always willing to let you have empty rooms and order some food and alcohol because it costs them little and later you owe them a favor. But to order expensive things is to make the hotel manager calculate whether you are worth the free things you are getting. The assistant manager asked if Mr. Bajwa would rather not continue with whiskey. Mr. Bajwa looked at him, then slapped him twice, once