Aatish Taseer: The Temple-Goers

We came into a large lawn protected by dark, heavy trees with strangler roots. On one side of it, a dance floor was full. A multi-headed sprinkler system spat clear water clockwise, then anticlockwise over the crowd below, making their colour run. A DJ with a goatee sat on a high stage, fortifying old film and Holi music with dull, electronic thuds. Beyond the dance floor was a wide makeshift bar crowded with people. It was the first time I had seen so many people since I arrived. My eyes played with the faces like with a hologram, but no one was recognizable. They were younger and more beautiful than I remembered them; many more Junglee-made bodies – and freer with each other. Couples kissed openly in the sun, the pink of their tongues showing like exposed flesh against their smooth, purple faces. Around us, forming a faintly threatening girdle, were additional security men in black, the splashes of pink and green on their T-shirts seeming to mock them.

Sanyogita knew many more people than I did. She had spent her teenage years in the city while I was in boarding school; she went out more often than I did; and her family, especially Chamunda, was well known. She liked to play the role of a protector when we went out together, making me seem unfriendly for her amusement. She now flashed me an urgent look as her friend Mandira came towards us. She had a strong, masculine face with prominent gums and small filed teeth. She carried silver paint, screeching ‘Sanyo!’ as she bounded up.

‘Mandira, please, no. Not this chemical stuff. It makes my skin break out.’

‘Don’t be silly, yaar. It’s Holi.’

Sanyogita dodged her and hid behind me.

‘Fine, then,’ Mandira said in her slow, booming voice. ‘Maybe your boyfriend won’t be so pricey.’ She laughed loudly, showing her stubby teeth, and with a silver finger drew a cross on my face.

‘No, not on his face,’ Sanyogita yelled, pushing away her hand.

Mandira laughed, flared her eyes and threw her muscular arms around Sanyogita.

‘So do you live in London?’ she asked me abruptly.

‘No, I’m here now.’

‘London has the best food. I love London. We go every summer,’ Mandira said. ‘Nobu, Zuma, Santini’s. So, yeah, I know London pretty well. Then I love this one place called Pucci Pizza. So sweet. You know, I just wish there were more restaurants in Delhi. Every time there’s a new place, like the Chinese at the Hyatt, it’s full because everyone has to go there. One doesn’t even want to go because you have to say hello to so many people. So much kissy kissy. No time to eat. How d’you like Junglee, by the way?’

Sanyogita grabbed my hand before I could answer and took me in the direction of the bar. The sun fell sharply on a line of cane pavilions with people lazing on white mattresses inside. The party here was at a more advanced stage. At a buffet nearby stainless-steel dishes shone like helmets in the sunlight. We settled down in one of these pavilions and soon I was sipping Sanyogita’s bhang from a clay cup and taking small bites of a potato cutlet.

The party affected each of us in different ways. It made Ra set off into the crowd with a pouch of coloured powder, which he patted lovingly on to the cheeks of people he knew. In Sanyogita it produced a kind of arousal. It was as if the sudden thrill of bhang and anonymity worked on her. She was normally fearful of Delhi’s reputation for malicious gossip. But now, as if playing with the excitement of masks, she pressed her open palm against my leg and groin and said, ‘Baby looks so good blue.’

Ra saw and laughed garishly. It made what was a frank but affectionate advance seem somehow humiliating. I gently moved her hand away. But perhaps not gently enough; she seemed wounded.

The afternoon wore on. The sun blazed, making the colour feel like a second skin. I was hot under it. And this heat was like anxiety. The grass on the lawn was stained. Coloured water dried in the mud. Clay cups lay about in broken pieces and the sun’s pale reflection slid into a puddle of muddy purple water.

Just as the sun was leaving the lawn, a flood of newcomers poured in. Among them was a fashion designer in a white suit. He was Kashmiri with red hair and blue eyes. He had slightly pointed, gapped teeth, which he displayed like fangs when he laughed. He was followed by three men of great beauty.

The first was tall with sharp features, high cheekbones and a prominent nose. He seemed vain and distant. The one next to him was shorter, darker and bare-chested. He had an open, friendly face and a horsiness that suited his solid figure. The third, the most beautiful of them all, was tall, with longish hair and a softness around the mouth and eyes. His features, like his physique, were strong and well defined, but covering the prominence of their lines, as if the work of their creator’s thumb, was a gentle effacement. It carried over into the clothes he wore: low, loose jeans and a close-fitting, faded T-shirt, threadbare in places. His beauty seemed to embarrass him, and as if nervous of its effect on any one person, he kept moving about, distributing his attentions. The only person he looked frankly at, with his dark, doting eyes, was the designer. He seemed to need the little red-haired man like a circus animal its trainer. And the designer, though he passed like a ball between the men, laughing and bowing, at once an object of fun and their leader, exhibited something of the showman’s coldness towards their beauty.

‘Mateen Butt’s models,’ Ra, emerging from nowhere, whispered in my ear.

‘The one with the long hair is pretty amazing-looking,’ I said, finding it difficult to be open about male beauty.

‘And guess where he was found?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘In a village in Punjab. Not a poor boy, but straight from a village. Mateen literally drives through Punjab, pulling boys like this out of their homes.’

‘And they come readily?’

‘With their legs open,’ Ra laughed, and seeing me recoil added, ‘No, seriously, why wouldn’t they? It’s a golden opportunity. That one, for instance, was a full Sikh, bearded and turbaned. Mateen had him transformed overnight.’

The models now danced in a circle around Mateen. The sprinklers rained down on them. They taunted Mateen with their dancing, moving clockwise for a few steps and then, in time with the sprinklers, anticlockwise. The handsome model danced with his arms in the air, moving just his shoulders. It was a folk dance from Punjab. His faded T-shirt rose, the holes in it stretched and the pale inner portion of his arms showed. With every shoulder movement, he flicked his straight black hair off his face. Mateen laughed fearlessly as the model closed in on him and drew back. In his hand he carried a packet of light blue powder. He now took some out, and like a genie, blew it in the model’s direction. The model closed his eyes and let the powder cover his face. When he opened his dark eyes, their sockets free of colour, he looked like a clown. He seemed to take a special pleasure in the desecration of his beauty. He smiled, then laughed at tasting the colour on his lips. But Mateen, as if he’d hurt him without intending to, pulled his neck under the sprinkler and the blue powder ran from his wheatish complexion.

It was difficult for any observer to look away or feel indifferent to their taunting. There was something equalizing in their physical beauty. It seemed to cut through the barriers of money and language. In Delhi, where these aspects of status had been encoded in people’s looks, in their bad teeth and skin, their shabby clothes, their scrawny bodies, this flowering of physical beauty, people rehabilitated, and the licence that came with it, felt like avenues had been driven through the city’s closed quarters.