Karan Mahajan - Family Planning

“What’s circumcised?”

“You know: your penis.”

“I hate you,” said Arjun.

“What?”

“I hate you,” Arjun said, now nearly in tears. “Is this what a son needs to hear from his father? A judgment of the size of his penis? Hello, son, your penis is not regular-sized or good-sized or normal-sized, but instead, your penis is circumsized?”

“Arjun, YOU WILL NOT RAISE YOUR VOICE AT ME!”

Arjun walked off toward the hospital gates.

Rakesh shouted behind him, “CIR-CUM-CISION MEANS YOU HAVE NO FORESKIN! IT MEANS YOU HAVE NO SKIN!”

Arjun shot back over his shoulder: “YOU HAVE NO HEART!”

The repartee hit Rakesh with the force of a tennis ball slamming into a racquet with loosened guts. His entire body vibrated around the shocked, shivering antenna of his spine. What was wrong with him? He could only keep his guilty secret by treading clumsily on his own words, each conversation with his son a disaster in the making.

The boy stood near the hospital gates with his back to him, arms crossed, hair wet and clumpy with perspiration, and now Mr. Ahuja was angry. First, Arjun’s intrusion last night and now this public shouting match. He couldn’t condone his son’s constant disrespect. He wanted to shock Arjun into submission with the secret. This was not how he’d imagined doing it. This would not be a rehearsed and penitent explanation like talking to the villagers in his constituency about why they wouldn’t have a ready supply of drinking water for another five months. This would not be a dialogue. This would not be an accidental discovery, a slipup by Sangita. This would be shouting: “THAT’S IT, ARJUN. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. CUT IT OUT. YOU WILL NEVER SPEAK TO ME LIKE THIS AGAIN — UNDERSTAND? HOW DARE YOU RAISE YOUR VOICE AT ME. I AM YOUR FATHER AND IF YOU EVER SPEAK TO ME AGAIN LIKE THIS THEN THAT’S IT. DON’T EXPECT HELP FROM ME, DON’T EXPECT LOVE FROM ME, DON’T EXPECT ANYTHING.” Then he slipped into muttering as Arjun drew closer. “You give people love and all they do is disappoint you. I will not tolerate misbehavior from you. Understand?”

“Sorry, Papa.”

“Good. Now come. Get into the car. I have something very important to tell you. Something about your mother.”

But by the time Mr. Ahuja had gotten into the driver’s seat and begun driving, Arjun had recouped some of his insolence. So when Mr. Ahuja said, “You know, I didn’t want to marry your mother,” Arjun replied, “Oh really.”

Mr. Ahuja couldn’t believe it. His son lacked all empathy. He’d actually raised a child who felt ruthlessly entitled. While his son scowled, Mr. Ahuja’s sense of oppression on Delhi’s roads was total: the hot pedals of the car jimmying tightly; the traffic around him lustrous, garish, blinding with its high beams and swarms of mosquitoes that broke upon the cars like flimsy nets; in his throat the same formulaic desiccation he felt every morning after his snack of coffee and banana; his son at his ornery worst. Then he saw himself in Arjun’s eyes. A man so unapologetic in his pursuit of satisfaction that he’d camouflage his own grunts with the forced wails of his babies — but no. To expect such analysis was to expect too much. There were no eyes to be seen in; his son had turned away. Mr. Ahuja read his son endlessly. Arjun looked bored as he squashed a mosquito against the window. Maybe, Mr. Ahuja thought, he hadn’t given Arjun enough credit. I didn’t want to marry your mother was as self-evident as saying I don’t love her , and Arjun knew that. (The term your mother too was a thorny paradox. He didn’t love Sangita enough to use her real name. So he distanced her by calling her your mother .) Arjun had watched enough TV, in all probability, to know the ins-and-outs of arranged marriages; to know that even painstakingly matched horoscopes produced howling couples; that you could taste man and wife’s indifference in the food that was served up at the table everyday. He’d seen his parents interacting every day. Now Mr. Ahuja had stated the obvious and Arjun would feel insulted rather than feel pity for Mr. Ahuja — and all Mr. Ahuja wanted was to be pitied. He wanted to be pitied for having sex with Sangita. He wanted to prove that he, too, was a victim. That he was living a life he’d had no intention of living. He couldn’t stop himself.

“You don’t know what your mother did to me,” said Mr. Ahuja. “You have no idea. I was shown a different girl. But on the wedding day, in the tent, there was your mama. I went along because I wasn’t sure. Because I didn’t want to cause a fuss. Then I was sure.”

Immediately, Mr. Ahuja regretted his confession. He’d sullied the memory of Rashmi with self-pity. He’d given Arjun ammunition against his siblings. He’d shown himself deeply vulnerable, capable of being cheated at life, at marriage, a man who crumbled behind his stoic façade. He was a monster battling a monster.

“Papa?” said Arjun. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it’s true,” he said.

“But that’s impossible. You saw her. You married her. I don’t believe it. How is this possible? It’s impossible.”

“She’d planned it. You’re confused on your wedding night. I didn’t divorce her because—”

“Confused?” Arjun sneered.

“Well—”

“Papa, she’s still my mother.”

“No,” said Mr. Ahuja, gratefully knee-jerking, “she’s not.”

“What?” said Arjun. But the first thing he thought was not I’ve been lied to my whole life, I’ve been betrayed but I can’t believe this is the first time we’ve been alone together in almost a year .

“Of course she’s my real mother,” Arjun shouted. “Just because you don’t love her—”

“Enough!” said Mr. Ahuja. “Listen to me. What did I say before?”

“Sorry, Papa.”

“Look, Arjun. This was the thing I wanted to tell you. That your Mama — Sangita — is not your real mother. Your real mother was someone else — my first wife. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I didn’t tell you because your mother died when you were three. You didn’t even remember her, what was the point? I didn’t want to tell you, I thought you would feel bad, I thought you’d feel different. But you’re not different. You know that. Even Sangita treats you the same. Whatever she is, she’s been a good mother. And I’m sorry I had to tell you like this. That’s why you are circumcised — you were born in America. Most babies there are circumcised. I was doing my engineering there when you were born. We came back to India because your mother died.”

“How did she die?”

“In a car accident.”

“In America?”

“In America.”

“Was it a love marriage?”

There was something definitive about the question; all modes of inquiry henceforth for Arjun would be sentimental— What did she like? What did she eat? What was her favorite joke? Even the question Was it a love marriage? was sentimental, but it came cloaked in an institutional reference.

“Yes,” said Mr. Ahuja, “it was a love marriage.”

Arjun ground his teeth and tried to look disbelieving — but failed.

Now Mr. Ahuja drove and drove and drove. They’d U-turned under the Moolchand Flyover — sped past its crumbling walls and extravagant bushes that swept the road — and had passed Defence Colony in a rash of high-beamed traffic before approaching the old 1982 Jangpura Flyover. Mr. Ahuja hadn’t driven in years; it showed. His body was tense behind the steering wheel of the Qualis. Old pains resurfaced: his back ached, his shoulders ached, his arse ached, his head ached. Sitting in the back seat of his chauffeured car, he’d gotten used to making relaxed, trenchant observations about the city — now you needed to observe simply to live. Beauty be damned. He shook his fist at drivers zigzagging between lanes; he pummeled the accelerator hard to overtake a young man in a suit who’d whizzed through a red light; honked madly at a truck that had broken down in the middle of the road, its back bumper decorated with small green plants to indicate its vegetative state; and then found himself on the Jangpura Flyover, a wide concrete lung that gently breathed the car up to eye level with treetops and flocks of pigeons, his mind aware not of the aestheticism of the crossing that had once so inspired him but rather of the fact that he was crawling to the crest of the flyover. Crawling . This was to be the simultaneous beauty and tragedy of the flyovers: you’d escape the red lights, but the traffic was growing so fast that you’d still be jammed, your only consolation a view of Delhi from a height.