Aatish Taseer - The Temple-Goers

I called Aakash.

‘Have you heard?’

‘Yes, man. I was there, beev and I were there. We were shopping in CP when it happened. I can’t tell you, if it hadn’t been for beev wanting Pizza Hut’s garlic butter sticks, we wouldn’t be here today. It’s a matter of fate, no?’ After a moment’s silence, he said, ‘Actually, no! Beev’s appetite saved our lives.’ At the cracking of this badly timed joke, I heard a howl of laughter in the background.

‘Is that beev?’ I asked.

‘Yes, man.’

‘Are you still coming?’

‘Of course, man. Keep the beer ready. Who can tell how many life has to spare?’

It was nearly dark now. I could hear a siren wail in the distance. The bell rang. I opened the door to see Aakash in a red turban. He wandered in past me with no explanation for the turban or beev’s absence . I followed him into the flat, where he flicked through the mail, picked a samosa off the tray Shakti brought in and drank half a glass of Cobra beer in one sip. Shakti looked adoringly at him, then shut the front door.

‘Where’s beev?’

The bell rang. Aakash bowed deeply and extended a hand. ‘The beev at your service.’

I opened the door; then I almost couldn’t look. In the light that fell from a single bulb, there stood a girl no taller than five feet in a red turban. She had one plump arm propped against the doorframe and was panting heavily. Beads of sweat glistened on her wet lips and pale face. She wore a baggy purple T-shirt which did nothing to conceal her vast breasts and stomach. The light, catching the grease on her face, shone dully on to the dark flesh that ringed her neck. Two diamond solitaires the size of boiled sweets gleamed in her ears. For some seconds, she didn’t look up, making a show of her breathlessness. I felt Aakash’s chin rest on my shoulder. ‘Your new bhabi,’ he whispered proudly, as if giving me the keys to a sports car.

She was quiet at first, smiling and watchful. She entered the flat timidly, brushing against the doorway and then the dining-room chairs. We walked in behind her, Aakash grinning and gaping at me, watching my every gesture for a reaction. When I showed none, he said, ‘Beev’s healthy, no?’ She heard, and slowly turning around, gave him a cautioning look. He bit his tongue, but was encouraged by the reaction. ‘And the funny thing is I’m her trainer. Beev, what an ad you are for me!’ At this provocation, she swung around and made a short charge, yelling, ‘Always making fun, twenty-four seven, seven eleven, making fun.’ Aakash took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly on the head. The kitchen door swung open and Shakti emerged with more samosas and beer. His expression changed from morose to ribald delight at the sight of them, both in their red turbans. Aakash and Megha joined Shakti in his brazen laughter and I was left feeling somehow that the joke was on me.

When we came into the drawing room, Aakash dropped himself on the sofa, his arms sprawling behind him. Megha sat on the edge of a chair, looking only at him. He closed his eyes and said, ‘Now, you guys talk. I’m going to sleep.’ But when I asked how near they had been to the blasts, he sprang up. ‘Man, you won’t believe it. The silence. Can you imagine an area as big as Connaught Place silent? It was amazing. For two seconds, you could hear the wind, you could hear a brown-paper bag scraping along the road. You know how in the movies when they have mute slow-motion scenes, exactly like that. But I tell you, it’s gone too far. Now something or the other has to be done. Bring back terrorist laws, have quick arrests, quick trials. I’m saying anyone there’s a doubt about, that’s it, straight in jail. It’s gone too far.’

Megha listened carefully.

I wasn’t in the mood for a political conversation. I said, ‘Maybe. But until now there have never been any real arrests, no real evidence. Without that, terrorist laws just become a way to keep the wrong people in jail.’

Aakash’s eyes hardened. ‘Then each one of them will have to go.’ He sighed. ‘The lot of them.’

‘Go where?’

‘I don’t know. Pakistan? Round them up in the Red Fort and blow them away? I don’t care, but this can’t go on.’

‘Come on, Ash-man. You don’t mean that. What about Zafar? Will he have to go?’

Aakash had met him once or twice and was fond of him. His face softened. ‘In so large an operation, a few good people end up sacrificed too. And by the way, I’m not saying just Muhammadans, the bad Hindus should go too.’

For that one moment, Aakash seemed to lose his particularity. I saw in his anger and his hunger a greater Indian rage and appetite; and in his face, the face of a mob.

Megha spoke to me only in English, and to Aakash only in Hindi, no matter how much either of us tried switching to the other. It positioned her at the centre of conversation and brought up a wall between Aakash and me that had never existed before. As she became comfortable, she began poking fun at my Hindi, embarrassing me for speaking well rather than for speaking badly. ‘Oh,’ she teased, when I used the Hindi word for election, ‘using such big words and all. Even I don’t know words like that.’

I became curious about when they’d met. Megha beamed, and resting a small, fleshy hand cluttered with diamonds on Aakash’s lime-green T-shirt, said, ‘What now, it must be six, running seven months?’

‘Seven months?’ I gasped.

It was nearly exactly as long as I had known Aakash. I suddenly remembered, and now understood, what the Begum of Sectorpur had been referring to all those months before.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I said.

Aakash, seeming to enjoy the deception, said, ‘I couldn’t have, man. It’s all been very secret. She came as a client. I was meant to make her lose weight so that her parents could find her a match, according to her caste, which, by the way, is much lower than mine.’

Megha nodded, apologetically adding, ‘We’re Aggarwals, the business caste.’

‘ And ,’ Aakash continued, ‘according to her financial status, which is much higher than mine. Her father’s not a lakhpati or crorepati, but an arabpati. He has three factories in Sectorpur, desi ghee, plastics, autoparts. Her brother went abroad for university; not that it did him any good.’

At this, the two of them eyed each other and laughed.

When their laughter died down, Megha explained, ‘He’s a homo.’

‘A homo?’

‘You know, homo?’ she said, then rattled off, ‘Homo, a gay, fajjot.’

‘Anyway,’ Aakash continued, ‘her financial status is very differ from mine. No one in her family knows anything about us. In fact, I think I can honestly say that if they found out, they would probably try and kill me.’

‘My brother suspects,’ Megha inserted, ‘maybe.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘The homo saw us leaving Junglee together,’ Aakash added quickly. ‘But what can he do? Zero.’ Aakash stressed this by making the numeral with his finger and thumb.

Megha felt some explanation was needed. ‘You know, money is status. That’s a fact of life, but me, I don’t believe in all of this. I can only marry a man whom I respect. Money comes and goes, but respect lasts. All the guys I meet in Delhi, they just want to work for their fathers and live off the family business. Only Aakash is someone I see who wants to make something of his own.’

Megha, as she became more energetic, had taken off her red turban and crumpled it in her lap. Her limp medium-length hair was streaked blonde in places; she had a nose ring. Without the turban, her features were thicker still, her head heavy and round.

The mention of marriage alarmed me; I felt a joke had been taken too far. At the same time I could see how a girl like this, rich, strong-willed and clearly in love with him, could be a great asset to Aakash. Though he enjoyed stressing her ‘healthiness’, deriving from it a kind of boisterous fun that Shakti also shared in, Aakash seemed to see a kind of virtue in her form. It was as if some notion of strong traditional values – of a woman who supports her man, and there were songs about this kind of thing in India – had become tied up with her substantial size. By choosing her, he expressed his contempt for the lithe modern girls he trained at Junglee. And I was not at all certain whether her weight was really so off-putting to him. His mother was fat; the begum had been fat. Certainly behind Shakti’s laughter there had been a note of understanding, as if Shakti was congratulating him on making so robust a choice. In fact, the only person who was deeply uneasy was me. And Aakash, for whatever reason, whether pre-empting me or aware of my discomfort and hurt by it, or simply taking a kind of pleasure in offending my soft tastes, did all he could, after months of secrecy, to include me in his relationship with Megha.