Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

Rajesh Khanna's turn to speak came. I lifted Asha onto my shoulders. Even from one hundred meters away he looked heavy and his hair appeared unnaturally dark. This man, at the height of his fame, had married Dimple Kapadia, twenty years younger than he and considered, after she appeared in Bobby, the most beautiful woman in India. With his new wife, he retired from movies. After fifteen years of marriage and two children his wife cheated on him, and he had reentered movies only to discover that his films were no longer hits. Now he was running for Parliament.

As Rajesh Khanna moved toward the microphone, dialogue from his movie Anand boomed from the loudspeakers. The crowd became so loud in response that my heart raced automatically. Rajesh Khanna stood silently before the microphone a minute as the dialogue concluded. "Namaste," he said then. In the last month and a half I had shaken hands with Advani twice, but there is something thrilling about the familiarity of a movie celebrity's voice which no other type of fame can generate. Rajesh Khanna's voice was immediately drowned by the crowd's roar. "Namaste," he said again, and the crowd's roar absorbed this, too. When he realized the crowd was

not about to stop, Rajesh Khanna began a short speech, portions of which he had to keep repeating because of the noise.

Once he was done, the crowd leaked away. I kept Asha on my shoulders and carried her out. Mr. Gupta had never received a response like this, even when he spoke directly after being praised by Advani. But in India even a lip-synching contest in memory of a dead singer can draw thousands.

When things turned bad for Mr. Gupta, I responded with such speed that I must have been expecting disaster. Many other people also acted rapidly, and in the same way, so perhaps our alacrity only revealed a general readiness for betrayal.

One afternoon I came home exhausted and nauseated from a headache. The heat had given me a nosebleed earlier that day, and just before I arrived, the trickle restarted. I lay down on the living-room bed, because when I tried sleeping in the smallness of my room, the ceiling swayed. Anita made me salty lemonade before I fell asleep. I woke an hour later, at about five, with the phone buzzing beside my head. It was late enough in the day that I winced at the idea of a fresh task.

One of Mr. Gupta's servants spoke and in a quick voice requested I come to Model Town.

"Something important?" I asked. From where I lay, I could see a sky so bright that it felt as if day would never end. Beneath it, the roofs, stepped terraces, were abandoned.

"Please come, sir."

"Answer him," said the man who listened to our phone. He liked to enter conversations suddenly and frighten the unsuspecting party.

"Who?" said the servant.

"Your father, baby"

"There was an income tax raid and they found money."

"How much?" asked the phone tapper.

"I don't know. Enough."

I assumed Congress already knew all this information, but I interrupted and said, "I'm coming." The servant hung up.

"I wasn't told about this. That's how I am treated," the man said.

"We are nobodies." I always tried appearing pitiful before him in hope that this might keep him from harming me.

"You are right, Mr. Karan."

When I went to tell Anita about the income tax raid, she was sitting on the common-room floor, wearing glasses and reading the newspaper.

"Of course they had some money hidden away. They couldn't trust you. Also, in case they lose the election, they want to have made something from all this. But to keep undeclared money at home? It's terrible to be both corrupt and stupid."

"This makes me more important," I said, acting stupid. "They can say whatever money found was from family property they recently sold. But that excuse will only work once, so all the money now will have to go through me."

"Life is more complicated than your fantasies," Anita said.

I left for Model Town.

Only two cars were parked in the shade across the road from Mr. Gupta's house. I visited his house several times a week and there were usually ten or more cars and jeeps lined up nearby My worries about the campaign had been kept in check partially because so many other people were taking part in Mr. Gupta's venture. I had expected even more activity than usual because of the scandal. The silence worried me.

It was now nearly seven, but the sky was unflaggingly blue. As I got out of my autorickshaw, a fat man was climbing into a white Maruti van in front of Mr. Gupta's gate. The fourteen-year-old boy who had brought it for him took his five-rupee tip, and in extravagant obsequiousness backed away, salaaming the man and also stepping on his own feet with little exclamations of pain. The boy, his

face terribly streaked by chickenpox, like raindrop marks on a dusty window, had appeared out of nowhere soon after it became obvious that each day there would be a tangle of automobiles outside Mr. Gupta's house. He took charge, parking cars near and far, telling you when he returned the keys that he had had to hunt hard to find shade for your vehicle. In hopes of increasing his tips he had begun behaving clownishly, wearing too-large black shoes and a trained monkey's Muslim outfit of a fez and a vest, and tripping over himself, doing pratfalls and tumbles, when he accepted his reward.

Congress had turned off the electricity on Mr. Gupta's block, and inside the house there was the heavy vibration of a generator but not the overlay of voices to which I had become accustomed during my visits.

Inside, in one of the several living rooms, Mr. Gupta sat on a sofa. Across from him, on another sofa, was Mr. Tuli, the man who had shown me Gopal Godse's business card. The room was very large, and there was a smaller room separated from it by a ceiling-high closet. When I came around the closet into the room, Mr. Tuli was saying, "The police will look. Our people will look." I did not see Mr. Bajwa, although he rarely left a rival adviser alone with Mr. Gupta.

Mr. Gupta patted the space next to him. Since I had begun doling out the money, Mr. Gupta had been showing me more respect. I sat down and tiredness made me sigh. The ceiling fan was turning slowly because only one generator powered the whole house. Both Mr. Gupta and Mr. Tuli were shiny from perspiration.

"It was Ajay's money they found," Mr. Tuli told me. "He'd been collecting money by telling people it was for Mr. Gupta's campaign. Of course, he had never turned over any of the money to us."

"I hope he's dead," Mr. Gupta said, and gave me a half-smile, as if to tell me not to believe him. "He's run away. He might have more money."

"When was the raid?" There were no overturned and slit sofa cushions. The kitchen, which I had passed on my way to the living room, had all its plates and pots on the shelves. One of the latches to

a closet had been pried off. Where the latch used to be was a gash that revealed the yellow wood beneath the red varnish.

"Two, three hours ago," Mr. Tuli answered.

"Ajay said Mr. Bajwa had helped him get the money."

This made sense, because Ajay could not know who needed what favors. "From whom?" I asked. I marveled at Mr. Bajwa's talents, that he had been able to raise money without my ever hearing of his efforts.

"I hit him with my shoes. I nearly knocked off an ear. He cried like a woman." I could not understand Mr. Gupta's voice. It was tight with anger, but slow and almost dreamy.

"Ajay probably sold the same thing to two people and one phoned income tax," Mr. Tuli said. "In an election this close, income tax wouldn't raid a candidate unless they expected to find something in particular."

"I hit him in front of his wife. That was stupid."

"What are you going to say about the money?"

"That it was money from land Mr. Gupta sold, and because nobody will believe it, we'll suggest that the money was Ajay's dowry. Nobody cares about not paying taxes, and people understand dowry, especially for an MP candidate's son."