Aatish Taseer - The Temple-Goers

‘Nothing, I’m around,’ I replied, surprised at the urgency in his voice.

‘Good. I’m coming over. I’ll call you to get the address.’

I went back to my mother’s flat that afternoon. I was embarrassed to be meeting Aakash outside the gym. But the plan, coming so spontaneously and arousing my curiosity, felt part of the ease of Aakash’s manners, his endearing overfamiliarity; to resist, I felt, would be to hold on to an imported idea of propriety. On the drive home the streets were filled with the forerunners of the May flowering: the silk cotton’s coral corresponding to the gulmohar’s burnt orange; kachnar’s purple to the jarul’s wispy mauve; and the oleander’s yellow trumpet-shaped flowers, a deceptive but poor imitation of the laburnum. Just before South End Lane, a giant pilkhan towered over these slender flowering trees. Its dense canopy fanned black against the spring sky, now whitening with every degree of approaching heat.

I lied to Sanyogita about needing books in my mother’s library, ate lunch on a trolley alone and sat down to wait for Aakash. At about three thirty, his name flashed on my phone. A few minutes later he was at my door.

I had only ever seen him in uniforms. Now in his own clothes, his attention to style was apparent. He wore low, loose jeans and a striped grey and black T-shirt. Its long sleeves were pulled up to the elbow. A small black backpack hung from his shoulders and a hands-free wire sprawled over their great expanse. Like at the Holi party, he seemed bigger and darker outside Junglee.

He was in a lighter mood than he’d been in at the gym, but watchful. A look of delight entered his eyes as they scanned the flat.

‘You live here alone?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Man, what peacefulness! I have never, not even for a minute, been alone in the place where we live. Not once, not for a minute. Do you get scared sleeping here at night?’

‘No, I sleep at Sanyogita’s. Do you live with your family?’

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘My father’s an auditor in the defence ministry and so we have a flat in the Air Force Colony in Sectorpur.’

‘Do you have any siblings?’

‘Two brothers,’ he replied, then seeming to read a question in my eyes, added, ‘We’re very close, but,’ and now in English, ‘they are very differ from me. My whole family are very differ from me.’

The kitchen door swung open and Shakti appeared with a glass of water on a tray. Once fresh from the village, the city and the job had turned him cynical. But though he’d never met Aakash before, his dull eyes brightened at seeing him. Aakash took the water and registered the interest in his face. Shakti watched him as he drank, the dull look returning to his eyes. Just as his gaze had drifted away, Aakash clamped Shakti’s vast stomach between two fingers. Like a huge toy, Shakti exploded in laughter and surprise. Aakash smiled, holding on to his stomach while wiping his lips, then said, ‘That wife of yours must treat you really well. What’s this stomach hanging out? Too much rice?’ Looking to me for approval, he added, ‘Give me two months with this guy and I’ll whip him into shape.’

‘Shakti, Aakash,’ I said, and for coming so late, the introduction made Aakash laugh out loud.

He was handing back the glass when his gaze landed on Shakti’s feet. His face filled with concern. ‘Why are you wearing those blue chappals?’ he asked. ‘They make you look bad, man, these cheap chappals.’

Shakti stared in amazement at his feet, as if the rubber chappals were the work of some conjuror. Bata’s blue and white chappals were like a symbol of domestic servitude in India. I must have seen them smooth and worn on Shakti’s feet all my life. But they never struck me as strange on him. I had not seen Shakti grow from being a slim man into a fat man. It had happened while I was away; and in a sense, no one was better placed than me to notice the change. But I had seen nothing. Aakash, without a trace of piety, looked as I couldn’t. He didn’t restore Shakti’s dignity; he flung it at him as if forced to defend something that wasn’t his. And Shakti was star-struck. He stood there, disturbed and intrigued, like an old woman who’s just been whistled at in the street.

In his morose way, he said, ‘Aakash bhai…’ (He never referred to me that way; he called me sir.) ‘How did you make such a good body?’

‘With a lot of effort,’ Aakash snapped, and sent him off to get him beer and sandwiches.

‘Beer?’ I asked.

‘Yes, man, feeling thirsty. You’ll have too, no?’

I looked at my watch, then outside. Afternoon sun poured into the flat.

‘No. Not yet.’

Aakash was offended. ‘Our first beer and you won’t join me?’

‘It’s a little early.’

He said, ‘I’m the kind of person who can wake up in the morning and brush my teeth with beer.’

A level of comfort entered his manner, as though, after surveying the flat, he had found it suitable and now wanted to settle down for a session. When Shakti returned with a cold Cobra and two glasses, I felt as if I were being drawn into an unfamiliar drinking culture: of hotel rooms, curtains drawn, a bottle on a plywood table with some nuts, an ashtray filling up quickly. Seeming to read my thoughts, Aakash asked if I had any cigarettes. I didn’t but knew that there were some in the house. Chamunda insisted a packet of Dunhills be kept for her in the bar. I brought these out. Aakash looked at them admiringly, then pulled one out and lit it with cupped hands. He inhaled, inflating one cheek, then with the cigarette at arm’s length, blew on to it, watching the end brighten through the smoke.

The Cobra was amber-coloured. Its pretty colour in the glass, catching the light in the room filling with smoke, made me want to have some. Aakash poured me one with great aplomb, exaggerating the tilt of the glass. I asked him how he’d come.

‘Motorbike,’ he said, letting out smoke from the corner of his mouth.

‘What kind?’

‘Hero Honda,’ he replied, now inhaling strenuously, making a pained face as if it were difficult to talk.

‘Nice.’

He smiled ironically, ‘What to do, saab? I’m not a rich man. But this I can say, the bike was bought with my own hard-earned money.’

I feared some conversation about privilege when he surprised me. In English, he said, ‘I’ve never sucking dick,’ and laughed.

‘What?’

‘Yes, man. You know Sunil, he’s the other trainer at the gym…’

‘The big beefy guy?’

‘No, no. Someone else; I think he comes after you leave. Anyway, he was called for a personal training to the house of a gay. They took him there blindfolded and brought him into the gay’s office. The gay puts sixty thousand down on the table and says, “Sucking.” Sunil ran out from there, but they had bodyguards and Alsatians and Dobermanns, and they say if you don’t sucking, we’ll let them out and they’ll make keema out of you.’

‘What did he do?’ I said, now more horrified at the recounting of this wild story in the middle of the afternoon than at its bizarre, filmy details.

‘He’s sucking, man,’ Aakash said matter of factly. ‘He’s sucking, sucking, for one hour, sucking…’ He screwed up his dark lips so that their pink interior was more visible than ever.

‘Aakash, come on, this is not true.’

‘It’s true, man,’ Aakash insisted. ‘It’s true.’

‘Did he take the money?’

‘Why not, after he’s sucking…’

‘Yeah, yeah, please.’

Aakash laughed. ‘He bought a Hero Honda.’

I was sure the story was a lie, but I couldn’t gauge his motive in telling it. Was he trying to suss me out, see how appalled I would be? I was surprised at his own indifference; the story seemed hardly to make a dent in his notions of morality, as if all vice, no matter what its nature, was a luxury item.