Aatish Taseer - The Temple-Goers

I heard one coo, ‘No, now what is left for me? I’m no spring chicken. How can I get in shape so late in the day?’

‘No! Whaddyou saying, ma’am? You’re still a very young, beaudiful woman. Aakash is there, no?’ I heard in reply.

Then Sanyogita: ‘Come on, you big flirt. Stop charming the chappals off these old women.’

I was scanning the room for the author of ‘The Assignation’ when I heard whispered in my ear, ‘Help, I’m Jai!’

I swung around and saw Ra.

‘Hello, darling. So good of you to grace our creative writers’ circle with your presence. So tell me, no? What’s happening?’

‘Not much. We’re off tomorrow.’

‘He’s quite the little dish, your trainer?’

‘Ash-man?’

‘Hash-man. What did you think of the story?’

‘You know, I know him a little, the author. He comes to Junglee as well.’

‘Really? Poor Kris. Always so down in the dumps.’

‘Why?’

‘Tch, you know, these Hindi-speaking gay types have a very tough time, hiding from the parents, sneaking off with chowkidars, the self-loathing – it’s all too squalid.’

‘He can’t be all that Hindi-speaking if he lives in Lutyens’s Delhi and went abroad for university.’

‘First generation. And he doesn’t live in Lutyens’s Delhi, he lives in Sectorpur.’

‘I thought you didn’t know where Sectorpur was.’

‘I do now. In the kingdom of the divine Chamunda! He just writes about Lutyens’s Delhi; it’s his creative milieu. His father owns Jorbagh Taxis, you know?’

‘How do you know so much about him?’

‘It’s not what you think; we’re like two sisters.’

‘Like three sisters,’ Mandira said, hovering up with a Scotch and soda. ‘Hi, Aatish, nice to see you out. Sanyogita tells me you’ve been being very pricey.’

‘No, just work, Mandira,’ I said, feeling a sudden dread at the mention of the word. ‘It’s not really coming.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘But come out and have some fun, yaar. You’ll feel much better. How can you write anything if you stay cooped up in your flat the whole time?’

There was a lull. Ra looked nervously around the room, as if feeling the burden of keeping the conversation alive. Then his eyes glittered and he beckoned us closer.

‘Got some goss?’ Mandira giggled, taking a step forward.

Ra nodded his head vigorously. Then grabbing my head and Mandira’s as if about to bang them together, he wetly whispered, ‘Jai’s not just any chowkidar; he’s his chowkidar!’ And letting go our heads, he shrieked with laughter.

His laughter coincided with a disturbance at the far end of the room. The double doors overlooking the park and mango tree flew open. A wall of wind and spray blew through the flat.

The creative writers gasped in one voice, ‘Rain, unseasonal rain!’

The months before the monsoon were months of anticipation. The flowering trees, the glare, the blackness of shadows each played their part. The heat was to be endured and complained about, its dryness marvelled at; it was not meant to break like this, at the hands of a mutinous dust storm.

The older people, as if distancing themselves from an impropriety, said their goodbyes and began to leave. But for the young, rain was rain; what matter when it came. Sanyogita hitched up her long skirt and ran on to the little balcony. Of the four or five people who remained, only Aakash looked grimly on the scene, muttering, ‘Not good, not good for the fields.’

But Sanyogita was in a spontaneous mood. She was often so guarded in her show of feelings that sometimes the need for release, working together with the effects of alcohol, would make her boisterous, impulsive, unaware of her own strength. She now wanted all her remaining guests to come downstairs and run with her in the rain. There was something inauspicious about the idea. It was a monsoon activity, a childhood activity; if resurrected, it needed its time; it couldn’t be forced. But that night everyone felt the desire to please. After some token resistance the five of us, Sanyogita, Mandira, Ra, Aakash and I, ran down the darkened marble stairs into the rain.

It was warm rain, acidic and dusty. The earth was not parched enough to release the smells of the monsoon, the trees not thirsty enough to thrash about, blind worms not inconvenienced enough to appear from their holes on to Jorbagh’s wet streets, shimmering with street light. And yet we ran through them alone, jumping in puddles and singing film songs. We ran past the flower shop, the pan wallah, the arboured street holding the Chocolate Wheel, until we came to the gates of Jorbagh. Beyond was the main road and the border of Lutyens’s Delhi. A drenched guard in a canvas trench coat let us through before retreating to his green sentry box. The main road was empty but for the odd car hurtling home. We crossed it and walked along the periphery of Lodhi Gardens, its interior alive with white light and dark wet foliage.

Mandira and Aakash ran ahead. A sudden closeness formed between them, but Aakash seemed only to use it as a counterpoint to Sanyogita and me. He kept looking back, and if he saw Sanyogita with her hands draped about me, kissing me in the rain, he would find some way to hijack my attention. He was like a possessive best friend from the early years of puberty. His red T-shirt was soaked, and raindrops, each swollen with light, hung from his sharp features and bristly hair. Mandira was much more taken with him than he was with her, and with her hand curled about his face, kept yelling, ‘So good to be promiscuous again,’ into the night. Sanyogita, who had known her through her days of sexual promiscuity and only seen her find some stability after marriage, looked nervously at her regression. Ra, straggling behind, yelled, ‘Shut up, you drunk bitch. Or I’ll tell your husband.’ His white designer shirt was soaked and his small hairy stomach showed through.

It was Aakash who first saw the mouth of Amrita Shergill Marg. It gave him an excuse to run back, take me from Sanyogita, and resting his heavy arm on my shoulders, pull me ahead to see what he’d seen. ‘I want you to be with me when you first see this,’ he said overexcitedly, pinching my face. ‘I love you, man. I’m having so much fun.’ His drunkenness, his intensity, his affection, all coming after the distance of the past few weeks, were overpowering. In withdrawing, he’d made me aware daily of his absence, and now filling the empty space he’d created, he filled it completely.

When we were just near the corner of the street, he pressed the palm of his hand over my eyes, and standing close behind me, marched me up the pavement. I felt us step down into the street, walk forward a few paces so that we would have been close to the middle. Then I was swivelled around and made to stand visionless, facing down the length of the street. Aakash held me there, and using my left arm, raised himself on to his tiptoes and asked in my ear if I was ready. Then he tore away his hand to reveal a tunnel of laburnum, its many millions of blossoms bleached in rain and street light. Under each little tree, distorting my sense of space, were spheres of petals, dropping like petticoats down the length of the crescent-shaped street. It was as if Aakash had broken open the trunk of an old tree to show me a sanctuary of moss and cool. ‘I love you,’ he said again, with that same desperation with which he’d once asked me to drink with him. ‘I’m going to miss you, man.’ I couldn’t understand his urgency, but somehow it brought to this ordinary evening, but for the rain, an aspect of finality.

When the others caught up with us Aakash looked at me with such feeling that Mandira and Ra began teasing him. ‘And I thought you were in love with me, you bloody cheat. Here I am ditching my poor husband for you!’ Aakash was unaffected by their teasing; in fact, he was more fearless in showing his affection than before. But Sanyogita didn’t joke or laugh; she’d seen something, perhaps not so much in his eyes as in mine. She came close to me and whispered, ‘Baby…’ in the softest voice. Aakash’s eyes ran cold at the sight of her. He pulled me aside. I excused myself despite my embarrassment.