Aatish Taseer - The Temple-Goers

‘I ate dinner from a trolley in front of the television. The servants had gone to bed and I was checking my mail when Jai’s name flashed on my phone. His beauty had faded from my mind; the night seemed deep and inaccessible; I answered the phone reluctantly.

‘ “Krishna?” the voice said.

‘ “Sorry?”

‘ “Is that Krishna speaking?”

‘ “Oh yes, yes.”

‘ “Should we meet? Where do you live? I can come to you.”

‘ “No,” I said, asserting myself against the forcefulness of the voice on the other end. “We can’t meet here.”

‘ “Why?”

‘ “Because the servants are here.”

‘ “So? You can’t have guests in front of your servants?”

‘I realized the offence I caused. It was true: Jai was too much like a servant himself for me to have him over at the house as a guest. I felt my Hindi fail me.

‘ “My mother’s here too. It’s better we meet outside.”

‘ “Where?”

‘ “Can you come to the beginning of Tughlak Lane?”

‘ “You know I’ll have to come by rickshaw. It’s quite expensive and far.”

‘ “I’ll help.”

‘ “What?”

‘ “I’ll help you with the fare.”

‘A silence followed. “OK,” the voice said at last. “I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”

‘Jai’s desire to come to the house unnerved me. I removed my Breitling before leaving the house. I was aware as I entered the night of a pretence on my part: that this was like assignations I had known before, in other places.

‘The depth of the night alarmed me. The haze compressed the yellow street light into tight orbs. The faces of the figures around the chai shop were wrapped up completely in their scarves, leaving only a little space for their eyes. They gathered around a shallow dish in which they’d started a fire. A bulb in the shop illuminated the grime in its windows. I could make out the owner’s vast silhouette, over a blue flame and an eternally boiling kettle. Walking past the shop and its damp washing area, crowded with gas cylinders, crates and a young boy cleaning dishes in a metal sink, I felt I was leaving some final outpost. Though Tughlak Lane was hardly a hundred yards away, the short stretch of road ahead was deserted and badly lit. Occasionally, I passed other figures, all invisible men in their woollens; scrawny bitches, with udders flapping, crept along the edges of the road, scalloped with yellow pools of light.

‘Between my street and Tughlak Lane, a single fluorescent lamp flickered in the darkness, interrupting the stretch of yellow lights. I waited under it for Jai’s arrival. For the first time since I had arranged the assignation, I felt a pang of excitement twist in me, harden and settle among nerves and uncertainty.

‘A few minutes later, the headlight of a rickshaw charted its way through the darkness like a submarine. Jai leaned out of it, alert and ready. As soon as he saw me, he swung out of the rickshaw and ran next to it for a few paces. His ease, his obvious street smartness, were intimidating. He seemed to take charge, and when I put my hand in my pocket, he signalled to me not to and paid the rickshaw himself.

‘ “He’d have given you a different rate,” he said disparagingly as the rickshaw drove off. “So where do you live?”

‘ “Just around here.”

‘ “Where?”

‘ “Will you stop asking so many questions?”

‘Jai smiled. His manner seemed to change. “Come on, then. Let’s go for a walk; it’s a beautiful night.”

‘I had been on the verge of calling the whole thing off, but now felt a little calmer. I chose Tughlak Lane for its nearness to me, but also its beauty. The low, full boughs of the trees lining the lane formed a tunnel and the street lights buried in their canopies burnished parts of the tree with a metallic lustre. It seemed almost to plate the leaves, giving them a solidity they lacked in the daytime. Even the disease, covering the leaves of all the trees on Tughlak Lane with white blotches, now at night seemed part of the light’s alchemic imagination. The Lutyens bungalows of Tughlak Lane were home to politicians, including the heir of the country’s political first family, and the road we walked down was bounded by green sentry boxes, sandbags and high barbed-wire fences. Over the bungalows’ low red walls were ochre houses with arched verandas and large lawns.

‘Jai was impressed.

‘ “This is a VIP area,” he said quietly.

‘ “Yes.”

‘ “Are your family VIPs?”

‘ “No.”

‘ “What does your father do?”

‘My irritation returned, but this time Jai caught it. “Leave it,” he said. “I don’t want to know. I’ll just say one thing. Today, when I met you, I felt I’d made a friend who could help me. You know I’m not a rich man or even middle class, but I have this desire to succeed that prevents me from sleeping. And I know that if I was given just a little assistance, that small lifting hand, I would make it.”

‘ “What do you do?” I asked, annoyed at the mistake I felt I’d made. Only in India could you pick someone up and end up with a gulf this wide between their intentions and yours.

‘Jai said he worked as a chowkidar; that his family in Nepal were high caste and had not always been poor; his mother lived alone in Sectorpur; he wanted to improve her life. I felt I’d heard all this before. I was wretched about my unreciprocated desire for Jai, which had grown with expectation. I noticed his dark smooth skin in the yellow light and experienced an angry sense of entitlement.

‘We passed a house where a wedding was taking place. The blackish-orange heads of mushroom heaters, halogen floodlights and colourful satin cloth that skirted the tent’s white roof were visible from the street. Indian bagpipers in kilts played over the din of voices and laughter. In the dark foliage on the edge of the party, fairy-lit in places, chauffeurs and uniformed banquet staff lurked among steel cauldrons and the light from naked bulbs. Jai wanted to go in. He guessed correctly that I knew whose party it was.

‘We had come to a crossroads on Tughlak Lane. Ahead was a busy main road; on either side, dark service lanes; and behind us, the tunnel of twisted, gold-plated leaves. I looked up and noticed sharp, razor-edged barbed wire coiled around the bent necks of Tughlak Lane’s street lights.

‘I slipped my hand over Jai’s shoulders and led him into a dark service lane on the left. We entered those little streets of Lutyens’s Delhi, devoted entirely to servants’ quarters and dhobis. In the now much thicker darkness, I ran my hand over Jai’s chest and stomach, feeling its slim firmness through the cheap, synthetic fabric of his shirt. Jai, who had spoken without stopping about his aspirations, said, “You know, when I came here tonight, I thought I would be spending the whole night with you.”

‘ “I know, but we can’t go to my house.”

‘ “Why?”

‘ “Because of the servants…”

‘ “But…”

‘ “Because you’re like a servant too,” I snapped.’

Many different things – my familiarity with Tughlak Lane; the need for respite from the story and its creative-writing theme; the blunt violent line bursting from the author’s dead lips; the memory of Delhi in the winter – came together to make me look up and around the room, like someone surfacing for air. The others were captivated. The older woman’s braceleted wrist was rooted firmly on the author’s shoulder; another tall, young man, also in rubber chappals, took notes; Sanyogita listened wide-eyed; only Ra noticed the disturbance near the door of the lamp-lit room, and by following his eyes mine came to Aakash in a red Puma T-shirt, leaning against his tricep in the doorway.