Indias of the mind: responses to cultural nationalism in Indian popular culture post-Hindutva

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Indias of the Mind: Responses to Cultural Nationalism in
Indian Popular Culture Post-Hindutva.
____________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC Graduate School
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(LITERATURE & CREATIVE WRITING)
August 2015
Copyright © 2015 Suraj Kunnath Shankar

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………………3
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………4
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..5
Chapter
1. Whose India? The Little Indias of Indo-Anglian Fiction
in the works of Rushdie and Chandra……………………………………………………19
2. Bollywood and the Marginal Muslim: Towards a Secular
Filmic World…………………………………………………………………………….52
3. This too is an Indian Story: Rohinton Mistry, the Parsi
Community and the Problems of Minority Identity in a Secular Context……………….73
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….98
The Good in Me Is Dead: Stories………………………………………………………………107
Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………346

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Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Prof. Joseph Boone, Prof. Dana Johnson and Prof. Roberto Diaz for their
continuous support through every stage of this project, and for their generosity with their time
and ideas—I feel very lucky to have had such an amazing committee. I’d also like to thank
Janalynn Bliss for being a good friend and source of support throughout my time at USC:
without your constant help I would most definitely not have finished this project. Prof. Lloyd’s
class on post-colonial theory was also extremely useful, and I’m only sorry that I couldn’t take
more classes with him.
The Good in Me Is Dead is a project that I’ll continue to work on, and one that reflects my
preoccupations from childhood: these pages are filled with the echoes of quite a few people from
my past, many of whom are responsible for the person I am today. To Acha and Amma, for
having faith in me always, even if I haven’t always lived up to your confidence, to Thajudeen Sir
and Masood Sir for caring, and to Sujit and Soumya for being better siblings to me than I am to
them.

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Abstract

This project examines the artistic reactions to the religious violence and anti-secular
discourse in India following the destruction of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992. In
Limiting Secularism, Priya Kumar argues that art can provide an avenue for creating and
examining new modes of minority belonging in India, and she examines both Indo-English
literature and parallel cinema as sites for illustrating potential solutions to the failures of state
secularism. I argue that though Indian-English writers like Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry and
Vikram Chandra rightly reproach Hindutva forces for their hate filled rhetoric and genocidal
actions, these authors’ own cosmopolitan backgrounds and world views prevent them from
successfully offering an authentic portrayal of the Hindutva mindset or of minority belonging in
India. Instead, the answer to Kumar’s problem may lie with popular Indian film: I examine the
role of recent Bollywood films in integrating the Muslim figure into the national imaginary, in
contrast to the industry’s displacement of Muslims to the edges of the national narrative in the
immediate aftermath of the Babri Masjid’s destruction, and argue why Bollywood may be more
successful in illustrating minority belonging and broadening the perception of Indianness than
fiction.
The critical portion of the project is paired with a collection of short stories, The Good In
Me Is Dead, many of which focus on the Indian diaspora in the Middle East. As an Indian
growing up abroad, I’ve always been surprised by the fact that most of our émigré narratives are
located in the United States or Europe despite the thousands of Indians, from all walks of life,
earning their living in a place they will never be able to call home, but is home all the same, the
Middle East. Most stories in this collection are set in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid
demolition and some are set after 9/11, so the issue of Muslim marginalization and demonization
plays a part in the narratives.
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Introduction
On December 6, 1992, the Babri Masjid, a five-hundred-year-old mosque, was torn down
by over 150,000 Hindu activists, known as kar sevaks, despite the presence of the military and
state police, who'd been charged by the Supreme Court to protect the monument. This followed
months of concentrated mobilization of Hindu kar sevaks from across India by the RSS and the
BJP, the right-wing Hindu forces who'd been largely marginalized in Indian political circles in
the aftermath of Independence and Mahatma Gandhi's murder by one among their ranks.
However, the BJP turned from an insignificant political force in the early 1980s (when they had a
mere two members in the 500-plus seat parliament) into the dominant political opposition in the
country by the late 1980s, and the Ram Janmabhoomi (Birthplace of Ram)
1
movement would
help them mobilize even more support and turn Hindutva, the concept of Hinduness, a political
ideology that equated being Hindu with being Indian, into the watchword of the day. The
destruction of the mosque after months of rising tension was the precursor to the worst religious
violence India has seen since Partition in 1947, which claimed over 2000 lives and called into
question the stability of the nation and its secular character.
In the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition and the subsequent religious riots, much
ink was expended by theorists, newspaper editors, television talking heads, politicians, and the
aam janta, the man on the street, on the fragile state of Indian secularism. Terms like "Crisis of
Secularism" and "the End of Secularism" dominated public conversation, particularly English-
language-dominated cosmopolitan discourse. The term secularism itself became the site of
political wrangling, with Hindu nationalists mind-bogglingly positioning themselves as the

1
Hindutva leaders claimed that the Babri Masjid, a 16
th
century mosque, sat on the birthplace of the Hindu god
Ram
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"true" secular force, equating secularism with democratic majoritarianism and terming Indian
secular practice pseudo-secularism, or minority appeasement. The arts were not exempt from the
anxiety surrounding the public failure of minority protection and the State's secular character. In
this dissertation, I look at some of the creative and artistic responses to these events—responses
that focus on the fears regarding the future of Indian secularism and India's future as a nation
state. Specifically, I'll focus on the use of Bollywood films and Indo-Anglian literature to exhort
the public to recognize the critical necessity of maintaining the country's secular character.
The question might arise: why these two particular, disconnected forms of artistic
expression? Surely, a comparison of more merit might be drawn between Indo-Anglian fiction
and vernacular fiction, or even between Indo-Anglian fiction and Indo-Anglian poetry. In their
own way, each of these approaches would make sense. Despite its relative obscurity, Indo-
Anglian poetry occupies the same niche territory as Indo-Anglian fiction, with its leading lights
springing from the same urban, cosmopolitan middle-class. Recently, due to the efforts of
dedicated advocates like Jeet Thayil,
2
Indo-Anglian poetry has drawn greater critical scrutiny,
with the poetic outputs of writers like Nissim Ezikiel and A.K. Ramanujan illustrating a depth
equal to or even greater than the novelistic works of Rushdie et al. As Thayil points out, many of
the aesthetic innovations credited to Indo-Anglian prose writers, like the "chutnified" language
made famous by Rushdie and Upamanyu Chaterjee, were actually in vogue in poetry long before
Midnight's Children brought them to the attention of an eager cosmopolitan audience. And
vernacular fiction could obviously serve to complement Indo-Anglian fiction: ever since the

2
Thayil edited The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, a critically acclaimed collection focusing on
modern Indo-Anglian poets.

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Rushdie-inspired kerfuffle between the two groups, when he basically dismissed the significance
of local language fiction in his highly influential anthology Mirrorwork,
3
there has been an
increased awareness of the distinctiveness of the two forms, and the limitations of then extant
Indo-Anglian works and attitudes, precisely because of the narrow frames of reference and
experiences of most Indo-Anglian authors. However, the decade-old rise of the native Indian
publishing industry in English has helped to collapse the distinctions between the two, with
vernacular fiction increasingly being translated into English due to popular demand,
4
and with
more Indo-Anglian works today catering to the local audience (the current most popular fiction
writer in India, Chetan Bhagat, writes almost exclusively for an Indian audience, whereas
Rohinton Mistry and Rushdie's works were largely consumed outside India).
5
That said, any
examination of the immediate responses to the Babri Masjid issue can be strengthened through
an examination of vernacular works due to the nation-wide resonance of the events; however, my
own limitations as a translator and the multiplicity of these works limit my ability to give this
body of work its due.
The reason for twinning Bollywood products and Indo-Anglian fiction is that, in
commercial terms, these were the most successful and influential genres at the time.
Furthermore, there is a strong correspondence between Bollywood and Indo-Anglian works in

3
“This is it: the prose writing—both fiction and non-fiction—created in this period by Indian writers working in
English, is proving to be a stronger and more important body of work than most of what has been produced in the 16
'official languages' of India, the so-called 'vernacular languages', during the same time; and, indeed, this new, and
still burgeoning, 'Indo-Anglian' literature represents perhaps the most valuable contribution India has yet made to the
world of books.” (Mirrorwork viii)

4
Though Meenakshi Mukherjee points out that this has come at the cost of translations between local languages.

5
Graham Huggan notes this in his work, The Postcolonial Exotic, which analyzes the marketing of post-colonial
works.

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that they both take “India” as a frame of reference and as their audience, whereas vernacular
fiction tends to focus on the specific geographical worlds occupied by the language in which
they are written: for example, in my own mother tongue, Malayalam, celebrated authors like
M.T. Vasudevan and Bashir are largely celebrated for the local color of their fiction—even their
religious works focus on the particular caste and religious politics of their respective districts or,
at most, States. In the Introduction to Away, a collection featuring excerpts from the works of
exilic Indian writers, including two of the three I examine in the following chapters, Rushdie and
Mistry, Amitava Kumar speaks about the evolution of the Indo-Anglian novel and the Indo-
Anglian novelists' tendency to write try and write the Great Indian novel. While one can debate
Kumar's views about the anxiety surrounding Indo-Anglian writers' need to establish their
authenticity, what interests me more is the notion of Indianness that they summon forth. Kumar
points out that the rising generation of Indo-Anglian writers—like Amit Chauduri, Ashok
Banker, and Kumar himself—have shifted away from capacious novels encompassing multiple
Indias, the hallmark of Rushdie, Seth and Mistry. In other words, Indo-Anglian writing has
departed from the signature heteroglossia that defined it during its sudden upsurge in popularity
post-Midnight's Children, the signature that turned writers like Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth
into more than just successful authors and into oracular national voices. However, even these
new types of works are marketed and disseminated under the label of "Indian" fiction rather than
Bombay fiction or Bengali fiction, revealing that the connection of Indo-Anglian fiction and
"India" as a whole remains. Furthermore, the 1990s were still the age of the dominant “Indian”
writers, and two of the works examined here were published in this period. Neither The Moor's
Last Sigh nor Family Matters are considered the best of their authors' oeuvre; however, these
were the immediate, unmediated retorts to the secular crisis by two of India's most celebrated
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writers, whose previous works had also dealt with the contradictions and pressures faced by the
Indian nation state, and therefore these works gained public attention, if not critical admiration,
for delving into the striking issues of the day.
6

In a similar vein, unlike vernacular/local film industries such as Kollywood and
Mollywood, Bollywood has always positioned itself as the film industry for India, not just for
Hindi-speaking states, and its films have generally spoken to and for India, not just its parts.
Bollywood's examination of religion and secularism hasn't always been nuanced, partly because
of the power of the Censor Board, elaborated upon in the second chapter, which forced directors
and writers to tailor their stories to please bureaucrats: famously, Sholay, the classic 1970's
megahit, had to change its ending because the Censor Board disliked its espousal of vigilante
retribution. However, while Hindutva's rise produced social upheaval, cultural anxiety, and
genocidal rhetoric, it also led to an increased focus, in Bollywood works, on the country's
plurality and the social position of minorities. In Limiting Secularism, Priya Kumar laments the
decline of parallel cinema, a social-issues dominated genre which had its heyday in the 1970s
and early 1980s, since that was one area where minority narratives often took center stage. While
the increasing financial costs of filmmaking and shifting audience tastes have led to this decline,
Kumar doesn't mention the growing sophistication of recent Bollywood products. True, the
"masalas" remain, as bloated and more explicit than ever before, catering to an audience no
longer terrified of sex and individualism; however, an increasing number of commercial films
have tackled the heavy and heady social issues of the day, including religious fanaticism and
secularism. Additionally, the rise of second and third-generation Bollywood filmmakers educated

6
The Moor's Last Sigh was also briefly banned in Maharashtra, ironically increasing public interest in the work.

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in the west, conversant in the complex discourse on secularism and possessing cosmopolitan
attitudes and experiences, has allowed for bolder filmmaking. Therefore, we have seen
thoughtful if flawed melodramas like Roja attract interested viewers side by side with jingoistic,
narrow-minded fare like Border. And unlike Indo-Anglian fiction, Bollywood's dependence on
populism for economic success also allows us to examine the Indian public's own contradictory
engagement with the rightward tilt of Indian political discourse.
Before describing the chapters, it is necessary to lay the groundwork for the discussions
and the terms we'll encounter, starting with Hindutva, the contested term at the heart of this
discourse. Hindutva (Indianness/Hinduness), in various guises, has been part of the Indian
political scene since the early twentieth century, yet its potency—both geographically and
politically—was restricted up until the late-1980s. Like "Negritude," Hindutva arose as a
reaction to the colonial rhetoric concerning native cultures, and attempted to both extol and
"improve" existing Hindu culture. Veer Sarvarkar, the ideological father of the movement stated
that “‘a Hindu means a person who regards his land of Bharatvarsha (India) from the Indus to the
seas, as his Fatherland as well as his holy land’” (Creating 67), a definition that immediately
“others” Muslims, Christians and Parsis—whose holy lands lie elsewhere—and subsumes faiths
like Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism under the “Hindu” umbrella.
Additionally, Hindutva attempted to reimagine the figure of the “Hindu,” previously seen
through the colonial and progressive lens as effete, disorganized and inferior to the more martial
Semitic faiths like Christianity and Islam, a negative perception internalized by the educated
Indian elite. Arvind Rajagopal points to the casually pejorative way in which the term Hindu was
used by even eminent Hindu professionals during the heyday of the Nehruvian consensus:
7
in a

7
Nehru's initially popular, accepted strategy for India's development: socialism, secularism and non-alignment.
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well-known comment, the economist Raj Krishna claimed the Indian economy suffered from a
"Hindu rate of growth":
‘‘Hindu’’ here was metonymic of India – ancient and out-of date, too vast to be
successfully influenced by mere mortals, and possessing in this intractability its
own peculiar distinction. Yet the overriding feature of this distinctiveness was
failure – its seeming incapacity to answer the needs of changing times. From
being considered the glory of an old civilization, to be ‘‘Hindu’’ had become the
unbudgeable burden of a backward nation attempting to be modern. (45)
It was in this atmosphere that Hindutva forces emerged in the political landscape. Questions
silenced in the aftermath of Partition rose once more into prominence—the questions of who
‘owned’ India, what it meant to be ‘Indian’ and the problematic position of Muslims and other
minorities in Indian society. The real question, then, is—why did the question of Indian and
Hindu identities re-assume a central importance in national discourse around the late 1980s,
when India was, ostensibly, modernizing and globalizing?
Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam identify this period as a watershed in Indian history
and look at the various historical factors that converged at this moment of national reimagining.
8

Economically, India opened its once-closed borders to foreign investment and free-market
economics, leading to the rise of a mostly Hindu middle class that aggressively set the terms of
national discourse. Politically, the Mandal Commission’s decision to enforce affirmative action
for the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) resulted in an increasingly potent caste-based politics.
Last, the fractures in the Indian national identity led to demands in disaffected areas of the

8
Menon, Nivedita and Adiya Nigam. Power and Contestation: India Since 1989. New York: Zed Books, 2007.

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country, mostly occupied by minoritized populations (Punjab, Kashmir, and the North East, for
example), for increased autonomy, which in turn caused the State to mobilize against them,
increasing their alienation. To these three factors I would add the spread of Bollywood’s
influence into previously untapped areas, especially South India, which helped to disseminate
both nationalist and Hindutva rhetoric more easily, and furthered the Hindu right-wing's aim of
Indianizing and Hinduizing India's historically and culturally distinct regions.
To understand Hindutva's rise one must also understand secularism in the Indian political
and social context, versus its use in the examined artistic works. When critics speak of Rushdie,
Mistry, Chandra and others as secular writers, they refer to the notion of secularism and
secularity in its western sense, where the term denotes "the privatization of religion" (Modern
12), and where even predominantly spiritual countries like the United States possess secularized
public spheres. In the Indian political/cultural context, however, the term secularism has
functioned quite differently, and this difference has helped Hindutva emerge and thrive. As
Anshuman Mondal states in his essay, “The Limits of Secularism":
In India secularism has been narrowly defined in terms of the relation of religious
communities to the state. This qualification—that is, that Indian secularism is not
concerned with the relation between the state and religion per se, but rather of
religious communities—is important because, in India, the semantics of
secularism, and of the debate that surrounds it, is deeply enmeshed with the
discourses of community, as opposed to forms of secularism in western Europe
and America which have been articulated by liberalism. (8)
Thus the Indian government created a rod for the country's own back by focusing on the State's
relationship to the communities and then treating communities differently—for example, post-
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Independence, the government actively engaged in the reformation of Hinduism, not just by
banning negative laws dealing with caste-ism and polygamy, but also by assuming some level of
control over temple trusts and the like: Today, state governments largely decide who occupies
seats on temple boards, and politicking has become an intrinsic part of Hindu religious bodies.
On the other hand, because Nehru’s secular ideals also call for protecting minority rights, the
reform of minority communities was left to its leaders, creating a persecution complex in the
Hindu majority, which was heightened following the Shah Bano case in 1985, when the Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi himself interceded on behalf of Muslim clerics to vacate a Supreme Court
ruling favoring a divorced Muslim woman. Hindutva forces exploited the resulting Hindu
outrage, questioned the validity of state secularism, and positioned themselves as the proponents
of "true" secularism, as opposed to the "pseudo-secularism" in vogue politically, aimed at
appeasing minority voting blocks. If nothing else, the artistic renditions analyzed in this
dissertation attempt to disengage secularism from the political definition, either by foregrounding
a western secular perspective, or by utilizing alternatives to secularism, such as the premodern
syncretism that Ashis Nandy, among others, claim is a more organic and useful mode of ensuring
peaceful coexistence between India's pluralistic communities. Indeed, particularly in Bollywood
films, there is a tendency to conflate the two—syncretic tolerance and secularism—and the
following chapters will examine whether this conflation is useful or harmful in the long term.
Furthermore, I'll engage with Nandy's critique of secularism in the Indian context: that is, since
all the Indo-Anglian writers examined here take secularism's primacy as granted and accepted, I
will query the degree to which their attempts to imagine a more inclusive India are hampered by
their own cosmopolitan world views.
The final key term this dissertation grapples with is that of cosmopolitanism. As will
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become obvious in the following chapters, the artistic responses to Hindutva's emergence were
stridently anti-Hindutva, progressive, and aggressively secular. They also largely originated from
Bombay or other cosmopolitan centers, such as Delhi, Chennai, and Calcutta. Even the exilic
writers examined in this dissertation originated from one of the cosmopolitan centers—for
example, Rushdie, Chandra and Mistry are all products of Bombay, with the city itself serving as
the site of their examination or idealized representation of India. Anthony Appiah, in
Cosmopolitanism, elaborates on his definition of the term:
There are two strands that intertwine in the notion of cosmopolitanism. One is the
idea that we have obligations to others, obligations that stretch beyond those to
whom we are related by the ties of kith and kin, or even the more formal ties of a
shared citizenship. The other is that we take more seriously the value not just of
human life but of particular human lives, which means taking an interest in the
practices and beliefs that lend them significance. People are different, the
cosmopolitan knows, and there is much to learn from our differences. (xv)
In other words, universal concern and respect for legitimate difference are the twin features of a
cosmopolitan mindset, which is similar to Nandy and Madan's understanding of syncretism.
Furthermore, these features are also a trope of the fiction genre itself—it is the primacy of the
individual and the particularity of human beings, after all, that makes fiction such a compelling
vehicle to illustrate the dangers of religious inflexibility and nationalist violence.
This cosmopolitanism also informs many of the theoretical responses to the issue of
Babri Masjid's demolition and many of the fears surrounding secularism's future. Critics like
Ashis Nandy and T.N Madan have undertaken the historiographical route to rationalize
Hindutva's upsurge in popularity and dissect the term secularism and its Eurocentric history as
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part of their analysis. Prominent in their arguments is the understanding that secularism's history
in India differs markedly from the western construction, and Nandy himself is skeptical of
secularism's functionality in an Indian context, other than as a tool to maintain extant power
dynamics, which privilege cosmopolitan attitudes. This critique is particularly useful in
analyzing the popular construction of Muslim “backwardness” through critiquing the
community's perceived treatment of women, and also the ways in which Bollywood both
perpetuates and deconstructs images of Muslim femininity. Last, the narrowness of the
cosmopolitanism vision will also help elucidate the weaknesses of Rusdhie's and Mistry's works
in particular, and the ways in which their "answers" fail to address satisfactorily the causes and
rationale behind Hindutva's rise.
While the above sociological critiques have helped, to a degree, to locate the reasons for
the emergence of Hindutva, Priya Kumar and Aamir Mufti have grappled with ways in which the
artists represented can address the marginalization of minorities, an issue at the core of my own
work here. Kumar's Limiting Secularism uses Derrida's notion of hospitality to argue that artistic
works can help provide feasible alternatives to the damage done by Hindutva, while Mufti
dissects the minoritization of Jewishness in nineteenth century Europe to draw lessons for India's
treatment of minorities today, and uses that framework to explore the works of Rushdie and
others. In the following chapters, I will not only try to point out the ways in which the narrative
and formal techniques of such artistic representations help to undermine Hindutva's message, but
also how they ultimately may stop these works from being as effective as they might be.

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CHAPTER BREAKDOWN
Chapter 1 analyzes the ways in which Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh and Vikram
Chandra's Sacred Games grapple formally and thematically with the violence and religious
fundamentalism that gripped India in general and Bombay in particular, and they do so by
critiquing the hegemonic vision of India that Hindutva romanticizes. Aamir Mufti and Priya
Kumar see Rushdie's imagined Bombay as an idealized site, based on fiction and reconstructed
memories. In the foreword to Alternative Indias, Peter Morey argues that the very act of
representing and centering fiction on minority narratives acts as a rebuttal to Hindutva's
mythology, and both Rushdie and Chandra engage in this form of undermining Hindutva
rhetoric. The Moor's Last Sigh and Sacred Games similarly center on minority experiences and
utilize economic analysis to deconstruct Hindutva's purported aims and to locate the rise of
Hindutva and religious violence in issues surrounding class as much as faith. In addition to
moving the minority perspective to the center of his narrative, Rushdie also purposely
marginalizes the center, by pushing the major historical events that were the focus of his earlier
works, like Midnight's Children, to the margin in order to validate the Moor's claim that his, too,
is an Indian story. Furthermore, Rushdie utilizes satire and parody to undermine Hindutva's
rationale, an approach whose limitations I question.
In Chapter 2, I examine Bollywood's contribution to challenging Hindutva's unitary
vision and the limitations of its depiction of minorities. Bollywood stands apart from Indo-
Anglian fiction in its unashamed populism, its overt use of sentimentalism, and its wide reach
and influence. I look at the disparate responses to the question of Muslim belonging both in the
immediate aftermath of the Babri Masjid riots and following the rise of India's new economic
middle-class. Some of the methods these films utilize include centering the minority perspective
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and narratives, stripping Muslims of their "other" markers (particularly through integration into
the middle class), and romanticizing female Muslim characters. In many ways, this chapter
complements the work done in the previous one, since it could be argued that the recent
"tolerance" in Bollywood mirrors the increasing tolerance in the Indian populace itself (as
evidenced by the muted response to the Bombay bombings and the attack on Parliament in
2008). However, this shift is both positive and negative—positive in the greater national maturity
it depicts, but negative in the way it encourages a cosmopolitan, middle-class mode of
integration or national belonging, one which privileges a class identity in keeping with the
political needs of the rising middle-class.
Chapter 3 focuses on the limitations of the cosmopolitan, upper-crust perspective of
secularism espoused by the educated classes through an examination of Rohinton Mistry's
Family Matters, while acknowledging the strengths of Mistry's analysis and his critique of the
state of the nation. In the introduction to Cosmopolitanism, Anthony Appiah cautions against a
weakness or danger in the cosmopolitan attitude, where the "celebration of the 'cosmopolitan' can
suggest an unpleasant posture of superiority towards the putative provincial. You imagine a
Comme des Garrcons-clad sophisticate with a platinum frequent-flyer card regarding, with
kindly consescension, a rudy-faced farmer in workman's overalls" (Appiah xiii).
Cosmopolitanism, in this context, is intertwined with modernity-as-political-ideology, an
approach used not just to justify colonialist expansion in a previous age, but to rationalize and
justify the formation and direction of the process of citizenship and belonging in post-colonial
cultures. In other words, it may become a weapon used by the cultural elite to maintain their
power. This perspective echoes Ashis Nandy's critique of secularism as an exclusivist language
of power in India: “Once institutionalized as an official ideology, the concept of secularism
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helps identify and set up modernized Indians as a principle of rationality in an otherwise
irrational society and gives them, seemingly deservedly, a disproportionate access to state
power….[Secularism] marks out a class that speaks the language of the state, either in
conformity or in dissent” (Bonfire 117-18). I will examine how, for his strengths, Mistry's work
unwittingly privileges a certain cosmopolitan/modern outlook and mode of belonging that
locates "real" or progressive Indianness only in those of his class, and how this ideological
underpinning ultimately undermines the power of his critique of Hindutva and his attempt to
claim a position of centrality for the Parsee Indian experience in the national fabric.
In Literary Secularism, Amardeep Singh argues against James Wood's thesis that the
novel is the great destroyer of religion, by utilizing Rushdie among other writers to illustrate the
continued influence of religion in literature, both thematically and formally. Since India remains
a country where organized and "lived" religious experience affects lives at both the public and
private, day-to-day level, religion is rarely dismissed in Indo-Anglian works. However, in my
conclusion I argue that the cosmopolitan attitude depicted in Mistry's work is a consistent feature
of Indo-Anglian literary fiction, one that essentially equates the religious with the provincial, and
even Bollywood's depictions of faith suffer from a tendency to grossly oversimplify religious
motives and performances, and to privilege the signifiers of faith over depth. Therefore, I end by
arguing that while the works analyzed within the framework of this dissertation spring from good
intentions, a truly novel and useful artistic response to such violence can only come from a place
that incorporates not just the minority, but also provincial and rural attitudes and beliefs,
incorporating those voices that into the larger national narrative as well.

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Chapter 1
Whose India? The Little Indias of Indo-Anglian Fiction in the works of Rushdie and
Chandra
Since Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981), the Indian novel in English, or
Indo-Anglian literature, has occupied the central position among Indian literatures in the media
and public consciousness, much to the consternation of vernacular writers, who have pointed to
the class/space limitations of Indo-Anglian writers and readers, and, consequently, to the
circumscribed nature of the oeuvre. Additionally, Jyotika Virdi, among others, has questioned
the academic focus on English literature instead of Bollywood works; as Ajanta Sircar argues in
Framing the Nation:
While English has comprehensively occupied the domain of the 'formal'
signifying the conceptual world of education/law/administration, it is Hindi which
has exerted maximum influence from the domain of the popular, especially
through the institutional site of Hindi/Bombay cinema. Further, the transition
from the Nehruvian era to the moment of globalization has decisively rewritten
the terms of traffic between the two. While English in India has lost its traditional
mystique, Hindi has gained a new sense of cultural capital. (4)
Despite these limitations, however, Indo-Anglian literature has one great advantage over
vernacular literature and, to a lesser degree, Bollywood: While Indo-Anglian writers have
traditionally been bound by class, they aren’t circumscribed by geography. For even though
Arundhati Roy, Rushdie, and Vikram Seth, to name three of the leading names of Indo-Anglian
fiction, may all be placed under the same “English-educated upper-middle class” umbrella, they
come from three distinct parts of India, with differing local languages and cultures, and thus their
Shankar 20

works reveal their different experiences of India. Hence English remains the only literary
language to consistently represent the multiplicity of India. As a result, much in the same way
Bollywood stands apart from its regional competition through its tendency to represent the
national rather than just the local—“At the heart of all Hindi films lies the ‘fictional nation’”
(Virdi 32)—English language literature tends to reflect national concerns and themes, even while
focusing on the particular dramas of their narratives.
Recreating and representing this fictional India, however, raises certain questions: Who is
Indian? What is the nature of being Indian? These questions are troubling because unlike
western nation-states formed on commonalities in language, ethnicity, faith or history, India as
we know it is a product of British imperialism, a country given an imagined history by its
political leaders during the freedom struggle. This is a country for which Nehru’s The Discovery
of India (1946), essentially an argument for 'India' as a historical reality rather than a British
construct, remains the ur-text. Historically, Bollywood eluded the difficulty posed by India’s
contradictions by locating “Indianness” in the Hindi-speaking Hindu male, and Bollywood's
increasing audience in the non-Hindi-heartland areas attests to the rapid normalization of this
notion of Indianness. Earlier Indo-Anglian works, too, presented a more circumscribed version
of India: R.K Narayan’s Malgudi novels, the most popular and influential Indo-Anglian works
prior to Midnight’s Children, represent a largely Hindu constituency, despite its setting being a
fictional south Indian village called Malgudi. In the wake of Rushdie’s celebration of India’s
multitudinous and contradictory nature, however, Indo-Anglian writers have broadened their
ambitions to try and capture the contradictory realities of the nation-state. And in the aftermath
of Hindutva's rise, the swiftest challenge to Hindutva’s narrow vision of India has come from
these writers. In this chapter, I will focus on certain novels and short stories by Indo-Anglian
Shankar 21

writers depicting these “other” Indias, and the members of the various minority groups that
occupy them, and I will show how these representations have examined and challenged Hindutva
rhetoric while simultaneously trying to explain its rapid ascent.
Among these, Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh offers the most immediate
response to rising Hindutva discourse, combating Hindutva’s unitary vision of India with
Malabar Catholic-Jewish protagonists who are transplanted to Rushdie’s cosmopolitan Bombay.
Vikram Chandra, an upper-caste Hindu, created a minority character, the Sikh police officer
Sartaj Singh, who serves as the filter through which we view Bombay in the 1995 short story
“Kama” and the follow-up novel Sacred Games. Similarly, Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters
focuses on the travails of a marginalized Parsee family, and Arundhati Roy's Booker Prize-
winning God of Small Things dissects Kerala's Syrian Christian minority. In many ways, the
focus on minority characters by itself serves as a stinging critique of Hindutva reasoning: if Indo-
Anglian fiction is generally considered, despite its limitations, at least representative of a
national consciousness or national identity,
9
representing India through multiple minority lenses
implicitly contradicts Hindutva’s narrow conception of what constitutes a legitimate Indian
narrative and hence, what makes someone Indian.
Rushdie states this goal explicitly in The Moor's Last Sigh: after six chapters detailing the
history of his hyphenated-minority family, the narrator, Moor, pulls short to justify his tale’s
“Indianness”: “CHRISTIANS, PORTOGUESE AND JEWS; Chinese tiles promoting godless
views; pushy ladies, skirts-not-saris, Spanish shenanigans, Moorish crowns...can this really be

9
As Jameson, indeed, argues in his essay, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.”

Shankar 22

India? Bharat-mata, Hindustan-hamara
10
, is this really the place?” (87). For Moor, and by
extension his author, the answer is a resounding yes. Even as he admits that the larger national
narrative is framed in terms of the Hindu-Muslim relationship, he defiantly refuses to cede the
spotlight of his own marginal tale: “Majority, that mighty elephant, and her sidekick, Major-
minority, will not crush my tale beneath her feet. Are not my personages Indian, every one?
Well, then: this too is an Indian yarn” (87). Tellingly, Rushdie, a Muslim, doesn't choose his own
community, the target of Hindutva wrath, as the perspective to critique Hindutva. Majority and
Major-minority, or Hinduism and Islam, as Rushdie's words indicate, are somehow on the same
side, their larger narrative, of a millennium-long struggle, casting such a long shadow on public
discourse as to drown out the real breadth of Indian diversity. Only by allowing those drowned-
out voices to be heard, by celebrating them, and moving them from the periphery to the center,
can India ever hope to become the country Rushdie, Chandra, and Mistry in their differing ways
envision. Though there are many works, as indicated above, that have reacted to the rise of
majoritarianism, this chapter will focus on the works of Rushdie and Chandra because they deal
most explicitly with the machinations of the Hindutva brigade. In the third chapter, the focus will
be on Mistry's Family Matters, which focuses on the relationship between secularism and the
minority community itself.

PLOT AND THEMATIC OVERVIEW
Before tackling the ideological conundrums and historical specificities that make these
works fascinating examples of responses to real-world events, it is helpful to provide a brief

10
Mother India, Our India (Land of Hindus), a phrase used to celebrate secular India even as it equates Indianness
with Hinduism.
Shankar 23

overview of their rather elaborate plots and to question how these stories relate to the formal and
generic elements that the authors have chosen to convey their themes. The Moor's Last Sigh,
Rushdie's first work following The Satanic Verses, was produced at a time when he'd been exiled
from India for harming Muslim sentiments, and as Minoli Salgado notes, was a result of his
"double displacement" from India, as both political exile and Muslim in a now aggressively
Hindu India. Early reviews of the book were not entirely positive: some even referred to the
work as a tired return to old themes, including its presentation of a multi-generational family
drama, national scope, and dollops of magical realism. Even readings complimentary of the
novel admit the tension between Rushdie's characteristic satirical tone and his unironic
utopianism while discussing the past in the novel, especially that of Moorish Spain. Despite
those views claiming that the author was regurgitating old themes, Rushdie himself explicitly
stated that he was trying to portray something new in the novel. In an interview that took place
after he visited India in the late 1980s and saw for himself the rising religious tensions across the
nation, Rushdie argues that “there's a flip side to [the] pluralism" which he otherwise
championed: "the down side can be confusion, formlessness, chaos, a lack of vision or singleness
of purpose. There are some very strong, monolithic, brutal views around, and sometimes those
who have a clearer view get further” (Imaginary Homelands). Therefore, TMLS represents an
evolution in Rushdie's worldview as it critiques cultural hybridity and pluralism for their
limitations even as the text reasserts the necessity for their continued success.
The novel is book-ended by events surrounding the death of Moraes “Moor” Zogoiby, the
only son of a Cochin Jewish father and Malabar Catholic mother, in a small graveyard in
Andalusia, after being wounded by his artist mother's crazed former protégé/lover Vasco
Miranda, a man Moor had chased down in order to get his hands on his mother's surviving
Shankar 24

paintings. However Moor, the narrator, doesn't enter the picture as a character until Rushdie has
narrated the history of the two sides of his family—Abraham Zogoiby, a descendant of the
Moorish Jews who fled Spain following the collapse of the first truly syncretic community in
that part of the world, and Aurora da Gama, the product of a powerful Malabar Catholic clan
whose last name references that of Vasco Da Gama, the Portuguese explorer who discovered the
sea-route to India and began the era of spice trade and colonialism.
The first part of the book covers Aurora's childhood, her relationship with her father,
Camoens, his own history, Aurora's affair at fifteen with the Jewish Abraham, and their
subsequent marriage. On shifting to Bombay, where their children are born, Abraham becomes a
successful businessman, and Aurora a nationally celebrated painter, whose changing, shifting art
is a response to the ever-shifting nature of India itself, earning her the scorn and attention of the
Hindu fundamentalist, Raman Fielding, and the admiration of fellow painters like Vasco
Miranda. Like Saleem Sinai in Midnight's Children, Moor's birth and life contain magical-realist
elements: Aurora's pregnancy lasts only for half a regular term (though Moor also teases us with
the possibility that his Mother had lied about the point of his conception, making him a bastard),
and Moor himself ages twice as fast as other men, so that when he turns 35, he is physically
seventy. Where Saleem Sinai's powers derive from his nose, Moor's come from his deformed
hand, which is imbued with the power of a club, and which he uses as a violent weapon, both as
Raman Fielding's enforcer and as his eventual murderer. But unlike Saleem Sinai's powers,
which change the very nature of the national narrative, Moor's powers have a much more
restricted range of influence, a reduction that can be read as indicative of Rushdie's growing
awareness of the limited power of individual stories to affect larger narratives. Moor's love affair
with Aurora's artistic rival, Uma Saraswati (named after two Hindu goddesses), results in his
Shankar 25

ejection from home, and he begins working for Raman Fielding despite his minority background.
While Fielding is depicted as a religious exclusionist, Uma Saraswati herself is guilty of a more
'liberal' form of the same elitism. Though she glories in her own sophistication and
cosmopolitanism, Saraswati forcefully states that it is the minorities who need to adjust, not the
Hindus. Thus, through the characters of Uma Saraswati and Raman Fielding, Rushdie represents
two forms of majoritarianism, one more benignly passive and one more violently coercive, yet
each ultimately depriving minority cultures of their agency.
The latter half of the narrative takes on elements of a mystery novel, as Aurora dies
during a Ganesha festival, slipping off the top of the hill where she'd been dancing, and though
the police declare hers an accidental death, Moor himself is certain his mother has been
murdered, based on prior statements made by Aurora and the systematic destruction of her art in
various galleries. After learning of Raman Fielding's complicated relationship and possible affair
with his mother, and urged on by his father, Moor murders Fielding, and flees to Spain to meet
Vasco Miranda.
11
Once in Spain, Moor is captured by the now insane Miranda, who reveals to
him that his mother's true murderer—and the effacer of her art—was none other than her
husband and Moor's father, Abraham Zogoiby, really the head of Bombay's crime syndicate, “the
most evil man that ever lived” (417), a man utterly powerful in his business affairs but unable to
command his wife's fidelity. Forced to be an unwilling Scheherazade for Vasco while the latter
works on uncovering Aurora's painting The Moor's Last Sigh, Moor survives only through luck
when Vasco suddenly dies and Moor flees to the graveyard, where he himself expires.

11
Vasco, who shares his first name with the Portuguese adventurer who discovered the sea route to India, hails
from Goa, another Indian state first visited by Portuguese.

Shankar 26

Though the novel falls in the genre of magical realist fiction
12
like Rushdie's previous
works, the comparatively muted presence of magical realism in the text, and indeed the thematic
shift from a focus on Anglo-Indian history to one on Iberian-Indian history marks the novel as a
departure from his previous works, and its literary ambitions as markedly different. In Imaginary
Homelands, his non-fiction essay collection, Rushdie first asks the question, “Does India exist?”
By maintaining the formal elements of his previous works, which are closely connected to the
Indian national mythology, while shifting the focus from the much studied Indo-Anglian
relationship, Rushdie seems to be answering, “Yes, but it needs to imagine itself differently.”
How should India reimagine itself and where should it look for a model? The title of
Rushdie’s novel is suggestive because it offers many associations: the title is an in-text reference
to Moor's own death at the end of the novel, to the Moorish Emperor Boabdil's last sigh as he
gazes back at the syncretic Empire he has lost to the fundamentalist-Catholic reconquista, to the
hill named The Moor's Last Sigh, the site of Boabdil's historical sigh, and of course, it evokes the
last sigh of literature's most famous Moor, Othello, a man who sees the certainties of his world
come crashing down around him just as Moor Zogoiby does. In the novel, the intertext
symbolizes not just the syncretism that Rushdie sees in his own literary outpourings, but also the
intertext of Indian history and the possibility of change: Since the old, homemade visions have
revealed their limitations, the text suggests, perhaps it is time to look elsewhere for an answer, a
radical solution for a culture that has always prided itself on its particular history.

12
The section prior to the Conclusion of this chapter explains why Rushdie sees Magical Realism as a necessity
to write about India, with relation to people's religiosity.
Shankar 27

Unlike Rushdie, Vikram Chandra is an author whose works shift genres in every
iteration. His first Novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain, was markedly influenced by Rushdie's
works, mirroring Rushdie's signature magical realism and transnational scope. His short story
“Kama” (in the collection Love and Longing in Bombay) is a mystery story in which the “why”
matters as much as the “who,” and features as its protagonist, the Sikh inspector Sartaj Singh.
Sacred Games continues the experiment Chandra began in "Kama," namely that of creating a
literary detective text with genre roots, a post-colonial noir of sorts: Sacred Games, for instance,
contains elements of the mystery, espionage, and gangster genres popular among Bollywood
viewers, and its overarching plot features a mystery concerning a nuclear device at large in the
country, to be detonated by a god-man wanting to end the small humiliations and small
bloodshed (838) that have characterized post-Independence India through a cleansing one that
offers hope for renewal.
The novel begins with the death, in a nuclear fallout shelter, of one of its dual
protagonists, Ganesh Gaitonde, a wanted don, at the hands of the other protagonist, police officer
Sartaj Singh;
13
Gaitonde had fled India during the internecine gang wars that consumed Bombay,
so his return to Bombay, and his location prior to his death, puzzle Sartaj and drive the plot
forward—the story isn't so much who-done-it as why-done-it, told mostly through alternating
chapters featuring a close-third person account of Sartaj's investigations and a first person
narrative of Gaitonde's past by his ghost. The novel is, therefore, characterized by its attempts to
deconstruct the detective novel genre—since we know who-done-it from the very beginning, and

13
Technically, Gaitonde orchestrates his own death and commits suicide, but at the beginning of the novel
readers assume that it is only because he is surrounded by Sartaj's men.

Shankar 28

because the detective, Sartaj, never gets a satisfactory answer to his puzzle (though the reader,
who has Gaitonde for a parallel narrator, does). Sartaj and Gaitonde are obvious doubles, a fact
that once again only the reader and the dead Gaitonde are privy to. Indeed, by presenting the men
as doubles—in their search for meaning in life, their love for two sisters, their use of violence
and coercion to achieve their means, and their comparable, poignant naiveté despite their violent
lives—Chandra collapses the divide between cops and criminals so intrinsic to the genre, and in
doing so he steps beyond genre conventions to make the novel a critique of “India Shining,”
revealing the confusion, corruption and criminality lying beneath the veneer of success in the
new India.
If Sartaj's present-day narrative reveals the institutional corruption and its commonplace
acceptance that plague and shape Indian society, then Gaitonde's tale directly grapples with the
metamorphosis of the nation in the 90s, since Gaitonde's rise to power is accompanied by a
search for meaning that leads him to working for India's national spy agency RAW, and to taking
on a religious mentor, Guruji, a god-man who, unknown to Gaitonde, foments violent,
supposedly Islamist plots in order to start a religious war in India to cleanse the country of
apathy and corruption. Through the tale of Guruji and Gaitonde, Chandra critiques not just an
inflexible worldview but also a bankrupt spirituality that parallels and echoes the bankrupt
economic success of the nation.

Shankar 29

THE PAST IS NEVER PAST: CRITIQUING HINDUTVA THROUGH HISTORY IN
RUSHDIE
Hindutva’s recent success partly springs from a dichotomized understanding of Indian
history by the Indian populace: the popular versus the elite/official. Popular history, unlike its
academic and westernized counterparts, makes no distinction between the mythic and the real.
The popular Indian understanding of history gives the same weight to the events described in the
Ramayana as it does to the historical reality of the freedom movement, and as such casts India's
roots as “naturally” Hindu and the traumatic historical moment of Partition as a crime against the
majority community by misinformed or malicious members of the largest minority. This popular
understanding of history has also filled the gaps in official history, such as the state-sanctioned
silence in school textbooks regarding the violence following Partition, the formalization of
various laws seen as anti-Hindu or favoring minorities, and the repressed public discourse
surrounding Hindu resentment of perceived losses during Partition.
14
For example, in TMLS, it is
through the conversations at Fielding's home that the liberal, educated Moor first hears of the
notion of “the existence of a list of sacred [Hindu] sites at which the country's Muslim
conquerors had deliberately built mosques on the birthplaces of various Hindu deities” (299).
While Moor may have been unaware of this “fact,” it is commonly circulated in Hindu
communities of all social classes and economic backgrounds. Yet popular history has also
offered options for viewing India’s plurality positively, as Rohinton Mistry illustrates in Family
Matters. The Hindu shopkeeper, Mr. Kapur, reminisces nostalgically about the glory of India's

14
One of these, that Mahatma Gandhi had purposely betrayed the Hindu majority because of his love for
Muslims, continued to be circulated despite the official hagiography, and it shows how the inability of the state to
contest these false beliefs led to Hindutva gaining a stronger foothold in India.

Shankar 30

pre-secular tolerance, much in the same way as theorists like Ashis Nandy and T.N. Madan do
today; indeed, drawing on a supposedly tolerant past, and the notion of a tolerant, flexible
Hinduism, has been one of the many ways in which Hindutva politics has been opposed, even by
the elites, as discussed below in an examination of popular rhetoric by Moor and Zeeny Vakeel.
By and large, however, the realm of the popular has been exploited to advance Hindutva rhetoric
in recent times, with majoritarian thoughts and attitudes being normalized through film,
television, and other popular media, and as such, the popular has been viewed with suspicion by
Indo-Anglian writers, including Rushdie and Chandra. In TMLS, Rushdie's criticizes the
common beliefs listed above by mocking the very idea of a Muslim conspiracy through Moor's
sardonic tone: “not only their birthplaces but their country residences and love-nests, too, to say
nothing of their favourite shops and preferred eateries” (299). Even though it is mocking,
however, this sentence only reveals the potency of the popular—the way in which religion and
the gods themselves are still living and breathing for the masses, which adds to the latter's sense
of injured rage.
If the popular understanding of history is one object of Rushdie's ire, then popular politics
is another. Rushdie’s works draw heavily on Nehru’s vision of India, and in The Moor's Last
Sigh Rushdie points to an unwitting father of Hindu nationalism, by contrasting Nehru’s vision
and Mahatma Gandhi’s populist actions. Depicting the freedom struggle as a clash of differing
values, Nehruvian and Gandhian, one drawing on rational western discourse and the other on
populist sentimentality, Rushdie has Moor’s grandfather Camoens articulate his own unease with
the Gandhian cult of personality and Gandhi's manipulation of Hindu mythology to popularize
the freedom movement. “Camoens once went, without Belle, all the way across the mountains to
the small town of Malgudi on the river Sarayu, just because Mahatma Gandhi was to speak there:
Shankar 31

this, in spite of being a Nehru man” (55). Watching Gandhi exhort the locals into patriotic fervor
through the use of religious imagery and the recitation of his favorite prayer, Camoens grows
alarmed: “'I had seen India's beauty in that crowd but with that God stuff I got scared. In the city
we are for secular India but the village is for Ram. And they say Ishwar and Allah is your name
but they don't mean it, they mean only Ram himself....In the end I am afraid the villagers will
march on the cities and people like us will have to lock our doors and there will come a Battering
Ram” (55-6). The majoritarian impulse—to subsume Allah, Jesus and the like under the
umbrella of Hinduism—was also proactively practiced by the Mahatma himself in his continued
use of a prayer that overtly stated the same--”Ishwar and Allah are both your names"—in the
name of pluralism.
Camoens isn't the only oracle in the text, and through these textual doom-mongers,
Rushdie implies that India's original leaders should have more clearly seen the obstacles to their
project to secularize the nation, since his characters can clearly see the problems from the outset.
In a later scene, as the Moor's parents and friends celebrate India's independence, their Goan
15

friend Vasco Miranda mocks them for their celebratory tone, prophesying that they, the western-
educated elite, whom he refers to as "Bleddy Macaulay's minutemen"
16
(165), were foolish to

15
Goa, under Portuguese rule at the time, didn't become part of India until its forcible annexation in 1961; thus
Vasco had no reason to celebrate India's independence.

16
Rushdie quotes Macaulay's infamous “Minute on Indian Education” much later in the novel: To form a class,
Macaulay wrote in the 1835 Minute on Education,...of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in opinions,
in morals and in intellect . . . to be interpreters between us and the millions we govern (376). Vasco merely relays
the resentment felt by the religious majority of the secular-socialist assumption that the world would and had to
change to suit their beliefs
Shankar 32

buy into Nehru's vision of a secular progressive India, which failed to take into account the real
power of religion in society.
Circular sexualist India my foot. No. Bleddy tongue twister came out wrong.
Secular-socialist. That's it. Bleddy bunk. ...You think India will just roll over, all
those bloodthirsty bloodsoaked gods'll just roll over and die. Our great hostess,
great lady, Aurora, great artist, thinks she can dance the gods away.
Only one power in this damn country is strong enough to stand up against those
gods and it isn't blankety blank sockular specialism. It isn't blankety blank Pandit
Nehru and his blankety-blank protection-of-minorities Congress watch-
wallahs. ...I'll tell you what it is. Corruption. (165-66)
Vasco's angry rant, and the ways in which he twists the words secular-socialism—“circular
sexualist,” “sockular specialism”—parallel Camoen's prophesy in that they hint at future
realities: the way in which the term "secular-socialism" eventually ceases to have any meaningful
resonance in Indian public discourse; the normalization of the idea of a "pseudo-secular" politics
being practiced in the country; and the limited ability of secularism to combat religious attitudes
and convictions post-independence despite state-legislated minority protections. Aurora's yearly
dances during the Ganesha festival, to which Vasco Miranda refers in his harangue, are a
challenge to the gods, a mockery of religiosity—hers is a performance of defiant and aggressive
secularism. But instead of working to destabilize the festival it critiques, “dancing Aurora
became, over the years, a star attraction of the event she despised, a part of what she'd been
dancing against. The crowds of the devout . . . saw their own devotion mirrored in her swirling
(and faithless) skirt . . . the more scornfully the legendary lady danced...the more eagerly the
crowds sucked her down towards them, seeing her not as a rebel but a temple dancer: not the
Shankar 33

scourge, but rather the groupie, of the gods” (124). In this deft passage, Rushdie re-encapsulates
the theme mentioned earlier in the text, of the way Majority will subsume every other narrative
into its major-narrative given the chance. For forty years, up until the day she dies, Aurora
continues her futile one-sided battle with a god she cannot beat; hard-line secularism, mockery of
the gods, and other attitudes of this ilk have no staying power in this culture, Rushdie indicates,
because such tactics ignore the fundamental realities of a culture in which religion is very much
part of the day-to-day lives of the average citizen. Vasco's prophecy, fulfilled later in the book, is
that the most potent avenue that can combat the power of the gods is corruption and materialism,
which, the reader learns, are the tools wielded by Aurora's husband.
Camoen's revelatory trip also includes a pleasurable little wink for long-term Indo-
Anglian fiction readers. By name-checking the fictional town of Malgudi, the setting of RK
Narayanan's Malgudi stories, including Waiting for the Mahatma, Rushdie both acknowledges
his debt to and difference from Narayanan, the first great Indo-Anglian novelist. Unlike his
predecessor, Rushdie being “a Nehru man” views Gandhi skeptically, and unlike Narayanan,
who belonged to the generation that won Independence, Rushdie has a more clinical and critical
attitude towards that moment of history and the nation it created, responsible as it is for the
“Battering Ram” which emerged in the 1990s to tear through the veneer of India's secular
projection. In the novel, Camoens frames Gandhi's politics and its effects as creating a divide
between the rustic popular and the cosmopolitan secular and sees cosmopolitan multiplicity and
secularism as threatened by the encroachment of village attitudes. Camoens' attitude reflects
some of the perceptions of the liberal intelligentsia, who initially dismissed Hindutva's potency
and reach with much the same rationale and were unable to account for its increasing popularity
among middle-class urban Hindu voters. In TMLS, Rushdie attempts to provide a serious answer
Shankar 34

for Hindutva's rising urban hold and in doing so, he examines Camoen's perception of Bombay
as a cosmopolitan haven.
Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry and Vikram Chandra are all products of Bombay, and in their
works Bombay predominantly functions as the contested site for future Indias. In their specific
cases, the choice of Bombay as a narrative setting may be traced back to their personal histories,
but in the larger perspective too, this is an apposite choice, since at a national level Bombay
serves the same function for India that London does for UK or New York and L.A do for USA.
As India’s financial center, entertainment hub and most populous city, Bombay has served for
most of India’s post-independence history as the home of Indian aspirations—the city that
denizens of India’s various states flock to, regardless of faith, regional background or wealth.
Partly because of the tensions created by the city’s multicultural population, Bombay has also
been the nerve center of some of the most potent acts of extremism in India, from the riots of
1991 to the retaliatory Bombay blasts of 1992 by Muslim mobsters, to the terrorist attacks of
2008 by Pakistani extremists, all of which had a religious motivation. As a result of its hybrid
population, Bombay has also been home to some of the staunchest Hindu chauvinists, including
the Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray, caricatured in TMLS through the figure of Moor's boss and
subsequent victim, Raman Fielding.
Rushdie’s fiction and Bombay are closely intertwined, with Bombay serving the same
function for him as Macondo does for Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Yoknapatawpha for
Faulkner. Rushdie himself has stated in the past that “[Bombay] as reality and as metaphor is at
the heart of all my work” (IH 404) (although his works since Imaginary Homelands have shifted
away from the Bombay-centric focus of his earlier works). For Rushdie, Bombay represents (or
serves as metaphor for) the best of what India has to offer. As Claudia Anderson notes, “Rushdie
Shankar 35

does not just reclaim his city of birth; he (re)-creates Bombay according to his own imagination
of what the city was or should be….Bombay stands in Rushdie’s fiction as a metaphor for a
certain ‘idea of India’ that he associates with the notion of multiplicity” (33), or to use Rushdie's
own words, Bombay is “the city of mixed-up, mongrel joy” (Moor 376). Moor himself sees
Bombay's fate as intimately intertwined with that of India: “Bombay was central, had been so
from the moment of its creation: the bastard child of a Portuguese-English wedding, and yet the
most Indian of Indian cities. In Bombay all Indias met and merged....Bombay was central: all
rivers flowed into its human sea. It was an ocean of stories; we were all its narrators, and
everybody talked at once.” And this multiplicity, this human sea that forces its inhabitants to
meld together is free, in Moor's recollections, from the sectarianism that plagues India:
In Punjab, Assam, Kashmir, Meerut—in Delhi, in Calcutta—from time to time
they slit their neighbour's throats and took warm showers or red bubble-baths, in
all that spuming blood. They killed you for being circumcised and they killed you
because your foreskins had been left on. Long hair got you murdered and haircuts,
too; light skin flayed dark skin and if you spoke the wrong language you could
lose your twisted tongue. In Bombay such things never happened. (350)
Though Moor backs off from the certainty of this statement almost immediately—“never is too
absolute a word”—he repeatedly asserts Bombay's status as the one Indian city relatively free of
the vicious violence of the other Indias. Because this Bombay, the Bombay of Moor's childhood,
eventually turns into the epicenter of India religious violence, though, TMLS traces the idea of
multiplicity, and cultural hybridity to Boabdil's failed Arabian Spanish state. Through Aurora's
paintings, the Moor's own Spanish-Jewish lineage, and Vasco Miranda's obsessive behavior,
Rushdie makes the Iberian-Moorish setting part of his narrative and important to his vision of
Shankar 36

India. Because the Moor is an Indian by way of Moorish/Jewish Spain, because Vasco is Indian
by way of Portugal, and because the Moor's family and Vasco are all, as Macaulay's minutemen,
products of an English lineage, the narrative opens up the bounded notion of a national identity,
one which the Hindutva forces seek very much to circumscribe. Nehru tried to find solutions for
India's religio-secular issues in its own past, by drawing on Hinduism's syncretic nature.
However, believing that the Nehruvian vision failed to account for the reality of India rather than
the textually created myth, for the lived experience of Hindus and Muslims today rather than a
historical reading with a secularist slant, Rushdie searches for solutions to India's new crisis
trans-nationally, in Moorish Spain, where the Moorish conquerors once tried to create their own
tolerant, thriving society.
The account of Boabdil's failed attempt to set up a secular paradise, and the ways in
which the forces of corruption, led by Moor's father, eventually co-opt rather than reject religion
for their own ends, hint at a darkening of Rushdie's vision regarding India's future. This is further
illustrated by the fall from grace of Aadam Sinai, the potential savior from Midnight’s Children,
who represented Rushdie's hope for the post-freedom generation, the children of midnight's
children. At the end of Midnight's Children the dying protagonist, Saleem Sinai sees hope for
India's future in the wary, watchful gaze of his young son. However, in TMLS, Sinai returns not
as a savior but a smooth-talking charlatan working in concert with Moor's unscrupulous father
and Aadam's public fall, via an arrest for fraud, represents explicit Rushdie's disappointment with
the generation in which he had invested so much hope in 1981.

Shankar 37

PORTRAYING THE HINDU RIGHT: COMMON GROUND IN CHANDRA AND RUSHDIE
Vikram Chandra’s Love and Longing in Bombay, a five story collection, tries to capture
the complexity and contradictory nature of the city through its examination of Bombay’s
denizens, ranging from the rich sophisticates of Malabar Hills, the IT crowd of new Bombay, to
the bigoted Hindutva forces who oppose the protagonist of the story "Kama", Sartaj Singh, a
member of the Sikh community. This short story, in particular, is both representative of
Bombay’s inclusive potential and its tendency to “other” minorities. The narrative intersperses
Sartaj’s investigation of the murder of a Gujarati businessman, Chetanbhai Patel, with the
official end of Sartaj’s own marriage, and through his perspective we see Bombay in all its
complex glory and the threat posed by Hindutva to the city's inclusive and vibrant nature.
Chandra’s vision of Hindutva features the “Rakshaks” (Saviors) loosely modeled on the
Shiv Sainiks (Shiva’s army) of Maharashtra. Through Sartaj’s eyes we see that in a rapidly
modernizing, shifting Bombay, the Rakshaks are an aggregation of those unable to find their
place in this new world, and thus forced to fabricate a narrow, inflexible myth to cling to in order
to find meaning in life. Chandra represents the inflexibility and rigidity of this vision through the
domestic drama surrounding the murder being investigated: Sartaj discovers that the murdered
man, Chetanbhai Patel, was killed by his own son, a Rakshak, for the "Crime" of having
encouraged his wife, in their late-middle age, to experiment sexually and thus horrified a son
raised in a mother-worshiping culture
17
and involved in an ascetic, almost asexual ideology.

17
The mother-worship aspect of the Indian psyche is tied to Bollywood in TMLS, in a scene where the Moor's
mother angers the stars of the seminal Bollywood hit Mother India: “Motherness—excuse me if I underline the
point—is a big idea in India, maybe our biggest: the land as mother, the mother as land, as the firm ground beneath
our feet” (137).
Shankar 38

If “Kama” focuses on the subtle ways in which Hindutva rhetoric warps segments of the
younger generation and positions Hindutva as a natural result of modernity, then Sacred Games
focuses on the larger picture—how modernity, economics, and realpolitik help exclusivist
rhetoric flower. Modernity and economics serve as the dual engines driving Hindutva forward in
this novel, which charts the elasticity of the term “Hindu.” The novel takes its inspiration from
the underworld war between Dawood Ibrahim’s D-Company and Chotta Rajan's syndicate in the
wake of the Bombay riots and bomb blasts, which was viewed as a Hindu versus Muslim battle,
and which resulted in Dawood Ibrahim's permanent exile in Pakistan.
Outside of the film industry, the underworld is perhaps India’s most strongly secular site,
where material aspirations matter more than faith. Rushdie argues the same point in TMLS—
“Corruption was the only force we had that could defeat fanaticism”—and the Moor views the
inter-religious underworld as “a dark, ironic victory for India's deep-rooted secularism. The very
nature of this inter-community league of cynical self-interest gave lie to Mainduck's vision of a
theocracy in which one particular variant of Hinduism would rule” (332). So the fact that this
self-same underworld, whose members seemed solely driven by the profit motive, would engage
in retributive acts for demonstrably religious reasons, stunned Indian commentators.
Chandra's novel examines why and how such changes could take place by examining
both Gaitonde's life's narrative and his own mutating nature in a country that in itself was
undergoing relatively seismic changes in a short period of time. The Rakshaks, in this novel,
have progressed from reactionary idealists to stakeholders in the State's power-structure, and
Chandra traces the changing character of the organization, as well as the political-criminal nexus
that together made their rise to power possible and facilitated their continued strong presence in
Bombay despite Hindutva's failures elsewhere.
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Rushdie, too, dealt with the issues of the political-criminal nexus and the rise of the
Hindu right in TMLS, but he and Chandra approach the subject matter in very different ways.
Where Chandra's works are sensitive to the nuances and different motives of those who ascribe
to its philosophy, Rushdie, writing in the heat of the moment, perhaps, or angered by the faux
cartoonish antics of the Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray,
18
reduces the Hindu right to caricature in
his work,
19
diminishing the effectiveness of his own critique in the process.
That Rushdie is parodying Thackeray is obvious. Rushdie's creation Raman Fielding, too,
has an improbably western-sounding, literary surname,
20
and Fielding too is a political cartoonist
turned firebrand right-wing leader like Thackeray. And where Thackeray founded the Shiv Sena
(Shiva's Army), which combined its right-wing religiosity with regional exclusivity, Fielding
founds the Mumbai Axis, named for “the goddess—a.k.a Mumba-Ai, Mumbadevi, Mumbabai—
thus uniting regional and religious nationalism in his potent, explosive new group” (231). But
instead of utilizing Thackeray's own history—as a regional provocateur drawing on the
prevailing chauvinistic “Bombay for Bombayites” sentiment, who only later shifted to religious
fundamentalism, in keeping with the public turn—Rushdie creates a history that incorporates
India's national pastime cricket, and in the process makes simplistic his analysis of the sudden
normalization of Hindutva ideology. Thus Fielding's ideology is birthed in his reading of cricket,

18
A man who started off politically with the xenophobic cause of kicking South Indians out of Bombay,
Thackeray shifted his focus to Muslims when it became politically convenient. Viewed as a highly educated and
intelligent opportunist by the left, Thackeray's various outlandish statements, such as his sympathy for Hitler, have
sometimes caused his statements to be greeted dismissively by the intelligentsia, a rather foolish move considering
his influence

19
This semi-humorous description does NOT extend to his description of their actions, which are raw and
visceral.

20
Thackeray's last name, a caste-name, just happens to mirror that of the Vanity Fair author.
Shankar 40

the national pastime and an English import: “He would harangue his friends about the Indian
game's origins in inter-community rivalry. 'From the start the Parsis and the Muslims tried to
steal the game from us....But when the Hindus got our team together, naturally we proved too
strong'” (231). Furthermore cricket informs the very form of his organization: becoming
the basis of the rigidly hierarchic, neo-Stalinist inner structures of the
'Mumbai Axis', or the MA, as it quickly came to be known...Raman Fielding
insisted on grouping his dedicated cadres into 'elevens', and each of these platoons
had a 'team captain' to whom absolute allegiance had to be sworn. The ruling
council of the MA is known as the First XI to this day. And Fielding insisted on
being addressed as 'Skipper' from the start. (231)
Later in the text, Rushdie furthers his mockery of the right-wing and Fielding in particular
through the questionable route of evoking homophobic humor from his audience by exaggerating
the homosocial texture of such organizations.
He preferred male company. There would be evenings when in the company of a
group of saffron-headbanded MA youth wingers he would institute a sort of
macho, impromptu Olympiad. ...Lubricated by beer and rum, the assembled
company would arrive at a point of sweaty, brawling, racuous, and finally
exhausted nakedness. At these moments Fielding seemed truly happy. Shedding
his flower-patterned lungi he would loll among his cadres, itching, scratching,
belching, farting, slapping buttocks and patting thighs. 'Now nobody can stand
against us!' he would bellow. (300)

Shankar 41

Rushdie's motives here are obvious: his style in general tends to caricature, to bowdlerize history
and history-makers, but in a novel where the aim is to critique the failures of the secular-state
and the rise of the religious right, the choice seems strange, given the previously mentioned
incidents regarding Camoens and Aurora, where the right-wing's potency and its allure is
described in much more effective ways. By turning the right-wingers into one-dimensional
caricature, Rushdie is forced to find reasons other than the resonance of their persona or beliefs
for their allure: “There was a thing Raman Fielding knew, which was his power's secret source:
that it is not the civil social norm for which men yearn, but the outsize, the out-of-bounds—for
that by which our wild potency may be unleashed. We crave permission openly to become our
secret selves” (305). Yet this reasoning, based in psychology, does not answer the question of
why that particular historical moment led to the rise of the “secret selves” in public discourse.
In Chandra's “Kama,” too, the Hindutva forces are depicted as overwhelmingly—or
perhaps completely—male, in keeping with the RSS' militaristic nature. But Chandra is far more
interested than Rushdie in the psychology of the average Rakshak and other fundamentalists in
terms of their relationship with the world; Chandra's antagonist isn't a politician like Fielding but
a nineteen-year-old true believer, Kshitij, who is also guilty of patricide. And Sartaj Singh, as a
Sikh, is better placed than Moor to explore the nuances of fundamentalism because of his liminal
Indian identity as a Sikh—a religious community doubly viewed as insiders (due to their
overwhelming numbers in the military and the police force) and outsiders (due to the Khalistan
freedom movement, which cost the lives of Indira Gandhi among others)—and his societal
position as a policeman.
In fact, Sartaj's Sikh identity plays an important role in the story, since it his visual
'Sikhness' that offends Kshitij and also gives the younger man an upper-hand in the political
Shankar 42

game. Parulkar, Sartaj's boss, warns him gently of the dangers of harassing Kshitij: “For an
outsider, a Sikh, to push a little was to push a lot. It was true, even though the Patels were
Gujaratis and so outsiders themselves. There were outsiders and outsiders. To say, I was born in
Bombay was very much beside the point” (110). Though the Patels are linguistic outsiders, not
native to Bombay, their Hindu identity gives them official leverage over Sartaj. And despite his
status as a policeman Sartaj's Sikh identity creates a power imbalance in his dealings with the
Rakshaks. When he goes to pick Kshitij up for questioning, Sartaj notes the lack of the usual
aura associated with his police uniform: “In the corridor outside it was they who watched him, a
solid phalanx of dark faces, completely silent. They stepped aside to let him pass, but exactly
that one moment too late that let him know they could do anything they wanted, despite his pistol
and any other thing” (145). Here, that "any other thing" is the almost unlimited power over the
civilians that the average policeman in India typically has. Where Rushdie depicts Hindutva as
laughable, Chandra treats its adherents as menacing, their potential for violence a threat even to
policemen, to say nothing of the average person: Thus Kshitij manages to menace the owner of
the hotel where his parents conduct their weekend trysts in his quest to uncover their secret: The
owner explains, “'I said I was tired of talking to him and called Jaggan from downstairs to throw
him out. Then he started shouting, abused me. Randi, he said. So Jaggan gave him a
shake....Then he said he would come back. With friends. Come back with your whole paltan, I
said. We'll see you, he said. The Rakshaks will take care of your kind....They know how to
handle whores like you....They're absolutely mad, those bastards. Capable of anything. So I let
him see the room'” (139). Like Rushdie, Chandra depicts the Rakshaks' ideology as limited and
inflexible, but unlike Rushdie, in taking their threat seriously Chandra is able to explore
Hindutva's attraction to the young characters in the story, as well as the ways in which the
Shankar 43

ideology itself ensures the limits of its popularity. In Chandra's telling a "pure" ideology like
Hindutva will mostly attract a certain kind of person, but this very reason will keep others from
accepting it in a modernizing world.
Sartaj's Sikh identity isn't just a hindrance to his investigation: it also keeps him from
dismissing the Rakshaks in the same way they dismiss him or Moor dismisses Fielding since he
draws a connection between the Khalistanis and the Rakshaks when his consideration of Kshitij
causes him to remember two young “terrorists” he once knew:
In the rearview mirror, Sartaj could see Kshitij's shoulder, the line of his jaw, and
he thought, it's always hard on the serious ones, they were always tragic with their
earnestness and their belief in seriousness. He remembered two boys who were
the grandsons of farmers in his grandfather's village near Patiala. He remembered
them vaguely from a visit to the village, remembered them in blue pants and ties.
There had been a celebration of their results in the seventh class exams, and he
had tried to talk to them about the Test match that everyone was listening to but
had found them boring and uninformed. After that he had not seen them again and
had not thought about them until his father had mentioned them....They had been
caught by a BSF patrol as they came over the border ...laden with grenades and
ammunition....Sartaj had never heard of their organization but he had no
doubt it was a very serious one. (90)
Seriousness and earnestness, not the need to be our “secret selves,” is Chandra's answer to the
question "Why Hindutva?” or, indeed, why any ideology. "Seriousness" and "earnestness" lead
to the focus on a larger, rigid picture rather than the incoherent, incomprehensible real. This
seriousness further manifests itself in an anti-materialism and evangelical frenzy. When Sartaj
Shankar 44

visits Chetanbhai's home after his murder, the sights he sees—the statue of an apsara, the
furnishings—add to his previous surmises about Chetanbhai, whose watch, worth over 200,000
rupees, had been ripped from his dead body. And so he immediately notices how Kshitij is
different from his more materialistic, sensuous and self-indulgent father: “He followed Kshitij
into his room, which was shocking in its austerity after the gaudy brilliance of the rest of the
house. There was a shelf stacked neatly with books, a desk, a bed, and a calendar with a goddess
on it” (86). Neither Sartaj nor the reader know Kshitij's political affiliation at this point, but
Sartaj is already repelled by “his drab owlishness, his youth entirely lacking in dash or energy or
charm” (86).
Indeed, the story repeatedly highlights this point by continuously evoking father versus
son. Chetanbhai is shaukeen, enjoys the material aspects of life, the Rolex watches, the gaudy
statues, and a libertine, progressive lifestyle; the son is rigid, anti-materialistic, and drawn to the
past—the history books in the house, which Sartaj wrongly assumes Chetanbhai owns in fact
belong to Kshitij, and Sartaj only discovers Kshitij's political affiliation through the discovery of
his literature: “There was a line drawing of a goddess on the cover, superimposed over a map of
India, and the words 'The Defender' underneath. He had seen the magazine before: it was a call
to arms, a harkening back to a perfect past of virtue and strength, and an explanation of every
downfall” (144). And Chetanbhai is loved by the neighbors because of his civic interventions,
getting jobs for the neighbor's children, organizing functions, and the like, (101) whereas Kshitij
remains almost unknown to them other than as a young man respectful of his mother (102). In a
subtle way, Chandra criticizes Hindutva for depriving its adherents of lived experience and for
privileging an imaginary connection of idealists over the real connection of community.
Shankar 45

And yet this anti-materialism, this strange eagerness for the "right" form of the spiritual,
also makes Kshitij a formidable foe. When Sartaj tries to force the truth out of Kshitij, through
intimidation and, when that fails, violence, he finds once more the “blunt and unprepossessing
iron in him” of the true believer (86). Sartaj is used to civilians breaking down and confessing
their crimes before the authority and violence of the state but the nineteen-year-old boy is defiant
since authority to him exists in the past. After having Sartaj's subordinate Katekar beat Kshitij
offstage, Chandra has Sartaj himself enact violence on the page: “[Sartaj] took the patta, turned
around, and with all the swing in his shoulders brought the strap up and down and onto Kshitij's
buttocks. And then again. The sound it made was like two flat pieces of wood dashing together”
(153). But Kshitij retorts that Sartaj can't hurt him, only his body, and “Sartaj could see the eyes,
shining and focused, looking straight ahead, straight through the grimy wall, at something a
thousand miles and a thousand years away” (153).
Unlike Rushdie, Chandra doesn't dismiss Hindutva—it is far too potent and pervasive to
be easily dismissed. Instead he illustrates the dangerousness and moral bankruptcy of the
ideology through the story of two consenting happy adults having their happiness destroyed by
their own son's inflexibility. Chandra takes the ideal Indian son—respectful, studious, and
religious—and reveals how even this ideal can be corrupted in the face of Hindutva. In Chandra'
considered outlook, the Rakshak workers, despite their dangerousness, are largely oversensitive
young products of modernity, attempting to confer order on the world through creating rules that
draw on an imaginary historical stability. The danger in this attempt to inoculate themselves
against disorder is revealed through the actions of someone like Kshitij, who seeks to impose his
own morality and "seriousness" on his parents, and in the process destroys his family—the
Shankar 46

reader feels sympathy for Chetanbhai Patel and his sensuousness, and, though repelled by
Kshitij's actions and ideology, he comprehends his motivations.

WAITING TO UNDERSTAND THE BARBARIANS: RUSHDIE AND CHANDRA'S
FAILURE IN IMAGINING THE HINDU
In “The Clash of Civilizations”, Samuel Huntington makes a claim that has now taken on
the aura of common sense in explaining the West/Islam binary: “Even more than ethnicity,
religion discriminates sharply and exclusively among people. A person can be half-French and
half-Arab simultaneously, a citizen of two countries. It is more difficult to be half-Catholic and
half-Muslim” (27). But why does religion discriminate so sharply, especially in the postcolonial
context? For writers like Rushdie and Chandra, products of a secular-liberal education and
proponents of that ideology, understanding why religious identification continues to exert such a
strong hold on the Indian imagination is difficult to answer because their backgrounds and
experiences are removed from this world experience. Indeed, if their descriptions of Hindutva
seem limited, then their understanding of the lived religious experiences of the majority who
helped Hindutva flourish is even more absent on the page,
21
which begs the question: how
successful can a secular-humanist perspective be in examining a situation and providing alternate
“ethics of belonging” is it cannot identify the problem in the first place? Another question arises,
concerning how well the texts answer these questions: Who are the people that support
Hindutva? What is its lure for them? What does religion mean in the life of the non-secularists?

21
This is not a case of authorial egocentricity, at least in Rushdie’s case, as an examination of Imaginary
Homeland shows.

Shankar 47

Both Rushdie and Chandra attempt to answer this question, but their attempts seem hampered,
startlingly enough for writers, by a failure of the imagination.
The representative Hindu featured in these works is striking because of his/her lack of
lived religious experiences. In Sacred Games, the Hindu don, Ganesh Gaitonde, spends much of
the novel trying on different identities, and striving to find a spiritual center, while maintaining
healthy friendships across religious divides. In “Kama” Sartaj's right hand, Katekar, who is
himself Maharashtrian Hindu and thus a prime candidate for Hindutva recruitment and the text's
representative of average Hindu-ness, views the Rakshaks unfavorably, as aberrant in their
behavior. He mocks them as they march in the rain, saying, “'Tough boys. A little rain won't stop
them. After all they want to clean up the country'” (89). Since "cleaning up the country" would
involve interfering in people's daily lives one can understand Katekar's exasperation, but the
character's thoughts never veer from the secular approach.
How then do the texts explain Hindutva's popularity? In TMLS, Zeeny Vakeel, Moor's
friend (and also Saladin's lover in The Satanic Verses) re-presents the secularist argument
regarding the artificiality of Hindutva's version of Hinduism only to be challenged by an unlikely
source, Moor himself. The shift in the nature of Hinduism, its increased assertiveness and
aggressiveness, has been one of the most-studied issues since the fall of the Babri Masjid, and
Rushdie encapsulates the major theoretical arguments in the conversation between Zeeny and
Moor. Zeeny calls Hindutva a fraudulent identity, arguing that “'in a religion with a thousand and
one gods they suddenly decide only one chap matters....Point two: Hinduism has many holy
books, not one, but suddenly it's all Ramayan, Ramayan” (338). Zeeny's argument is striking
precisely because its verity makes Hindutva's rising popularity rather inexplicable: despite the
narrow scope of their interests, the Hindutva brigade managed to win adherents all across India,
Shankar 48

even in places where Ram and the Ramayana didn't carry the same resonance as it did in the cow
belt: for example, South India, where Ram has never carried as much weight as Krishna or Shiv.
The reason for this phenomenon is given in Zeeny's monologue:
for Hindus there is no requirement for a collective act of worship, but without that
how are these types going to collect their beloved mobs? So, suddenly there is this
invention of mass puja, and that is declared the only way to show true, class-A
devotion. A single, martial deity, a single book, and mob rule: that is what they've
made of Hindu culture, its many-headed beauty, its peace.
Thus Zeeny's answer to Hindutva's rise is that the public rendering of collective identity offered
by Hindutva was its lure; in a country increasingly fractured by caste and regional politics, this
larger collective identity allowed the majority to perform their allegiance to the Nation, and their
relationship to one another in ways that traditional, personal forms of Hinduism did not—thus
the “double line of young men in khaki shorts” carrying a banner that “was soggy and limp”
(“Kama” 89) in the rain is an affirmation of love of country as much as faith. However, as Moor
points out almost immediately, Zeeny's final thoughts, about a true, beneficent, "many-headed"
and peaceful Hinduism now marred by its political variant are an example of fatuous
sentimentalism. “You think Hindus Sikhs Muslims never killed each other before?” (338), Moor
asks, pointing out that an appeal to the notion of a peaceful, syncretic “True Faith” is as
intellectually specious as the Hindutva attempt to legitimize their form of Hinduism at the cost of
others and would never serve to convince intelligent skeptics to support their position.
Rushdie offers no real answer for the question of why the average person so strongly
identifies with communal politics as to hate others: indeed, he'd grappled with this problem even
earlier, in his collection of non-fiction essays, Imaginary Homelands, in which he expresses
Shankar 49

surprise at the vehemence of generally mild men of either religion to the rising tensions
surrounding Babri Masjid,
22
but the only gesture he makes towards understanding them is in his
use of form:
If one is to describe reality as it is experienced by religious people, for whom God
is no symbol but an everyday fact, then the conventions of what is called realism
are quite inadequate. The rationalism of that form comes to seem like a judgment
upon, an invalidation of, the religious faith of the characters being described. A
form must be created which allows the miraculous and the mundane to co-exist at
the same level—at the same order of event. (376)
Rushdie's basic claim here seems to be that his use of magical realism is particular enough to
portray the religious mindset, but unfortunately, magical realism and other stylistic tics aren't
enough to make it clear why this seismic shift in public discourse took place.

CONCLUSION
The “Crisis of Secularism” in India has been as much about the crisis that secularists
faced in trying to explain how a fundamentally flawed ideology could cut across class/social
lines and gain discursive dominance in a culture that prided itself on syncretism and pluralism as
it is about the real world violence and social restructuring that followed. Like these thinkers, the

22
When asked by Rushdie whether the Babri Masjid ought to be used by both religions, Harbans Lal “as mild and
gentle a man as you could wish to find” says the shrine is Hindu and “there was no possibility, in his mind, of a
compromise.” When the Muslim Abdul Ghani is asked the same question he “was just as unyielding” (28-9). “The
gentleness of Harbans Lal and Abu Ghani made their religious divisions especially telling....The new element in
Hindu communalism is the emergence of a collective Hindu consciousness that transcends caste, and that believes
Hinduism to be under threat from other minorities.” (29-31)

Shankar 50

writers examined above are those for whom secular humanism and universal ideals are intrinsic,
commonsensical aspects of viewing the world; portraying this period meant reinscripting
minority narratives into the national one, highlighting the narrow vision and bankrupt ideology
of Hindutva and stepping into the majoritarian worldview to understand why this particular
ideology had captured the national imagination at this time. Both products of cosmopolitan
Bombay, Rushdie and Chandra manage to spin largely convincing yarns about the city's true
cosmopolitanism as opposed to the selective history espoused by Hindutva.
Rushdie's threading of Hindutva rhetoric to pre-Independence discourse also draws
attention to the constructed nature of Hindu identity as a colonial effect, and of the “Islam”
Hinduism created as its “Other.” In this move, Hindutva was merely replicating colonial
discursive practices: in “The Nation and Its Women,” Partha Chatterjee studies how English
colonialists did much the same in 19
th
century India by first constructing a version of Hinduism
that effaced the texture of the lived reality of Hindu lives, reified Brahminical scriptures, and
then attempted to cure the societal ills supposedly promoted by those scriptures: “By assuming a
position of sympathy with the unfree and oppressed womanhood of India, the colonial mind was
able to transform this figure of the Indian woman into a sign of the inherently oppressive and
unfree nature of the entire cultural tradition of a country. The practical implication for the
criticism of Indian tradition was necessarily a project of 'civilizing' the Indian people: the entire
edifice of colonialist discourse was fundamentally constituted around this project” (242-3). In
some ways, Moor's comment on the ways in which Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims have been killing
each other for so long is also one of the aftereffects of this colonizing project, but blaming
colonialism, or other theoretical factors like Hindu consolidation, doesn't explain individual
Shankar 51

reactions that include average men and women rationalizing the murder of neighbors, the rape of
their daughters and wives, and the slaughter of their children in the name of religion.
In this last sense, of trying to understand Hindutva's lure to the average person, Chandra
and Rushdie achieve only qualified success. Though Rushdie ends up satirizing the Hindu Right
via parody, his only avenue for explaining their rise lies in the parroting the theoretical
explanations of secularists through the medium of Zeeny Vakil, which are undercut both by
Moor and by Rushdie's own experiences in Imaginary Homelands. And though Chandra fares
better, by not demonizing the Hindu right, his most arresting example of a right-wing zealot is a
fellow product of a secular-liberal education who has fallen through the cracks, Kshitij, which
makes his worldview easier to explain away. Since the main minority characters in both authors'
works share their creator's rationalist impulse, we are denied a clear window to the cultural
particularity of this society and the ways it views religion, one that may help us understand the
situation and the possible ways to alleviate it.

Shankar 52

Chapter 2
Bollywood and the Marginal Muslim: Towards a Secular Filmic World
In The Cinematic ImagiNation, Jyotika Virdi argues against Indo-centric postcolonial
studies' tendency to reify literary texts while ignoring the more pervasive Hindi film industry,
“Bollywood.” In terms of popularity and influence, Virdi argues, Bollywood productions have a
much greater reach than Indo-Anglian texts. Furthermore, since they're produced locally they
offer a clearer reflection of issues affecting the average Indian than the Indo-Anglian texts
produced by an educated urban minority in a land still blighted by significant illiteracy.
Therefore, in analyzing the discourse surrounding the rise of Hindutva and the continued
marginalization and demonization of Islam in the public sphere, it is important to study the way
Bollywood has influenced and been influenced by Hindutva discourse, especially since, as
Kumar notes, “Bombay cinema has long been affirmed as one of the most enduring secularist
cultural sites of contemporary India with its diverse personnel coming from various religious and
regional backgrounds” (179). As such, Bollywood stands as a symbol of the potential of a truly
secular India. In this chapter, I look at a few key filmic texts that trace the shifts in Bollywood’s
representations of Muslims over the period of Hindutva’s ascent and initial decline (Sarfarosh,
Chak De India and My Name is Khan) because these movies both foreground Muslim characters
and achieved blockbuster status, and as such are more indicative of changes in the popular
imagination than examples from parallel cinema, such as Fiza.
Despite Bollywood’s status as a secular site, confirmed by the number of leading industry
players with minority and Muslim roots, mainstream Bollywood movies have historically failed
to exploit the experiences of its Muslim members to question the (assumed) majoritarian public
assumptions. In fact, driven by commercial considerations, the industry has historically pandered
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to the anti-minority prejudices held by the dominant community. In “Exoticized, Marginalized,
Demonized,” Kalyani Chadha and Anandam P. Kavoori trace the broad shifts in the cinematic
representation of Muslim characters in Bollywood post-Independence, through the
anthropological strategies of representation recognized as “critical to the production and
maintenance of social and cultural difference,” ranging “from exoticization and marginalization
to demonization” (134). In the wake of religious violence following Partition, and due to the
prevalence of anti-Muslim sentiment, many major Muslim performers in Bollywood adopted
Hindu names: icons like Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari and Ajit (real names Muhammad Yusuf
Khan, Mahjabeen Bano, and Hamid Ali Khan) superficially “passed” as Hindus by changing the
names that marked their minority status. During this period, then, Bollywood’s reaction to the
vocal resentment against Muslims was to portray “Muslims exclusively as kings or elites who
inhabited a world that was spatially, linguistically, and culturally not just removed but distinct
from the one occupied by its viewers” through historical films like Mughal-E-Azam (136). Even
the “Muslim socials,” which supposedly portrayed the plight of the Muslim community post-
independence, focused mainly on the remnants of the aristocratic classes that once ruled India.
Together then, up until the late 1960s, the historical films and the Muslim socials managed to
reinforce a stereotypical, limited and exoticized view of the community. By ignoring the vast
majority of Muslims and their day-to-day lives, Bollywood effectively constructed the present as
a Hindu India in the cinematic sphere.
During the seventies, however, this exotic representation fell out of favor due to the
falling popularity of the Muslim social and the rising popularity of “Angry Young Man” films,
where the angry young man, the protagonist railing against the failing and corrupt State, was
almost invariably Hindu. Kavoori and Chadha argue that though Bollywood’s representation of
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Muslims expanded during this period to include more Muslim ‘types’ than before, including the
urban poor, the failing popularity of Muslim socials basically led to the marginalization of
Muslim characters in mainstream films, where they mostly played a supporting role to the Hindu
protagonist. Furthermore, the on-screen visual and aural images during this period helped to
reinforce Muslim otherness even as it admitted Muslims into the national framework: the
bearded, bead-counting Maulvi, the hijab-wearing, long-suffering mothers, and the young men in
distinct Muslim attire were marked not just by visual signifiers signaling difference but by their
high-toned and often stilted dialogue, their frequent references to Allah( Khuda in Urdu) and
fate, and their general narrative purpose of helping protagonists with moral dilemmas, much like
the “Wise Black Man” stereotype in Hollywood films. This mode of Muslim representation, too,
fell out of favor following the Emergency and the loss of the nationalistic idealism that had
fuelled those faux-secular aspirations, and that had reached its height with the release of the
blockbuster Amar, Akbar, Anthony (1977) which depicted three brothers raised in three different
faiths, (2)—the idealized secular India envisioned by Gandhi.
The late 1980s and 1990s, the period of ascendant Hindutva politics, which underscored
the increasing fragmentation of the Indian polity and cross-border tension with Pakistan, saw the
rise of films that featured Muslim characters in explicitly negative roles, mostly as villains and
anti-nationals. Border (1997), for example, drew on the history of the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971,
and portrayed the defense of the nation by a small coterie of troops set against the superior
Pakistani forces—the defending troops came from different backgrounds and religions but
included not a single Muslim. The result is that the only Muslims depicted in the film are the
enemies, from Pakistan, bent on destroying the amiable and patriotic Indian soldiers.
Considering the time period—marked by the nuclear one-upmanship between India and Pakistan
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and increasingly prevalent religious riots—this move by the filmmakers, and the movie’s
subsequent box-office success, reveal something about the majority’s conception of India.
If Border is one example of a Bollywood tendency in the 90s to “Hinduize” the Indian
imaginary, then the Amir Khan vehicle Sarfarosh (1999) is a prime example of the anxiety of
Nation and Islam’s place within it. Ostensibly a terrorism-based thriller, Sarfarosh attempts to
portray the economic processes involved in cross-border terrorism, but the narrative’s use of the
trauma of Partition ultimately leads to an emphasis on the “otherness” of Muslims from the
Indian Imaginary.
The movie features Amir Khan (himself a Muslim) as Inspector Ajay Rathod, who is in
charge of a special task force assigned to investigate the sudden surge in armaments found
among both the criminal underclass and various separatist militant groups. The movie does a fine
job of articulating the fact that acts destabilizing the State don’t necessarily require a theological
or communal motivation—the villains include a Muslim underworld figure and two upper-class
Hindu businessmen driven by economic desires, and these men's faiths have little bearing on
their actions. Indeed, their inter-religious association seems much more relaxed and amiable than
that of the protagonists. Yet this admirable message is sublimated due to the anti-Pakistan
rhetoric in the narrative. Rather than examine the failures of State that drive local insurgencies,
or the ethical positions of insurgents, the film portrays Indian insurgents as naïve pawns of a
foreign power, India’s dark “Other,” Pakistan, and in the process of “Othering” Pakistan the
narrative throws doubt on the position of Muslims in the national frame.
The very first visual of ‘Pakistan’ in the film comes soon after a drawn out and
exceedingly violent scene featuring tribal militants mowing down innocent travelers, which
includes chasing them from their buses to a river, killing them, and then looting their corpses.
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With the audience emotionally primed we then meet the secret instigators of this violence: The
camera focuses on a fluttering Pakistani flag, lowers to an ornamental cannon, and cuts inside the
building behind the cannon, where a bearded, un-mustachioed Muslim gives a marked Muslim
greeting (Salaam aleikum, Wa’eilkum salaam) to a visitor. The camera pans to show that his
office has a large, detailed map of India and Pakistan.
Speaker 1: I’ve brought good news. The Indian papers are full of news regarding
our successes.
Speaker 2: (smiles after glancing at headlines): Who did this?
S1: Some man named Veeran.
S2: What’s his grudge?
S1: None. We made something up.
S2: That’s our mandate. Find the disgruntled elements in Hindustan. And help
them. Give them guns and money. Let them get used to it. This is also a kind of
war. And we need to win this war.

The objective of this brief scene is two-fold: to dismiss the various insurgencies that were
causing public anxiety at the time by marking insurgents as misguided pawns needing
reintegration into the national imaginary, and to create an “Other” on which the audience can
focus their ire in order to reinforce nationalistic sentiment. The use of the word "Hindustan"
(land of Hindus) rather than India, as well as the intimation of a “kind of war,” in a period where
the term jihad was being used more frequently, both help in Othering the markedly Muslim
Pakistani villains from the audience. On the one hand, what Sarfarosh does is nothing new. The
demonization of the “Other” is a staple of all popular cinemas: Hollywood, for example, featured
one-dimensional Russian villains such as Ivan Drago during the height of the Cold War. The
problem is that this “Other” is created by utilizing markers that other a significant portion of the
national populace, and place the onus of national integration on the “Othered” Muslims.
The movie separates its "good Muslim" character, Inspector Saleem, from its "bad
Muslim," Ghulfam Hassan, by having Saleem claim and perform his allegiance to the nation;
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Ghulfam Hassan, on the other hand, claims an allegiance but performs otherwise throughout
(which repeats the Orientalist trope of the slippery nature of the Muslim community). Originally,
the movie has Saleem as the primary officer on the arms smuggling case. Having lost track of a
Muslim suspect, which leads to the death of three constables, Saleem is forced to give up control
of the case to Rathod, a younger officer he trained, because Saleem’s faith automatically moves
his mistake into the category of potentially treasonous. When a hurt Saleem initially refuses to
work under Rathod, Rathod accuses him of being indifferent to the Nation’s needs, claiming that
while the Hindu Rathod saw the nation as his home, Saleem might not. Rathod further proclaims
that he has no need of "a Saleem" to protect his home. As a member of the majority community,
Rathod is both above reproach and quite assured about his status within the Nation without
needing to perform and proclaim his allegiance, unlike Saleem.
Spurred by this slur, Saleem sets off to find the evidence that Rathod desperately needs,
using his network of contacts (in scenes that illustrate how the underworld, with Money as God,
remains the one likely secularist site in India, as Rushdie argues in TMLS). Evidence in hand, he
returns to a frustrated Rathod, who has hit a dead end, and having proved his loyalty turns to
leave with a bitter farewell, only for Rathod to call him back.
Saleem: Save your country, your home. Why do you need me?
Rathod: To save this country, I need not one, but ten Saleems.
Saleem: Not 10, you’ll get 10000 if you’ll only trust us.
Rathod: Saleem.
Saleem: Listen to me, Sir. Never again tell a Saleem that this country isn’t his
home.
Rathod: I won’t. I never will.

Restored to the fold, Saleem serves as Rathod’s faithful second-in-command for the remainder of
the movie. Though the scene might appear a ham-handed way of critiquing the minoritization of
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Muslims in general, it draws attention to the ways in which “good” Muslim characters have been
forced, time and again, to publicly enact their devotion to the State, and the movie justifies the
necessity of this patriotic performance through the portrayal of the other major Muslim
character—Ghulfam Hassan—as obsessively grudging, cunning and treacherous: in short, the
slippery, untrustworthy Muslim of stereotype.
Ghulfam Hassan happens to be a famed Mohajir (Indian Muslim migrants to Pakistan
during Partition) singer taking advantage of his artistic renown to dupe his generous Indian hosts
and take revenge for the perceived losses his family suffered during Partition. The movie
complicates our perspective of this villainous character by portraying him as an “Other” even in
Pakistan because of his immigrant status (which also helps the text make a clumsy parallel
between India’s earnest welcome of Ghulfam versus Pakistan’s callous treatment of him,
winning us brownie points for hospitality and inclusivity): his Pakistani overseers see him as a
mere tool and frequently remind him of his unstable position in Pakistani society.
An Indian audience of Sarfarosh at the time of its release would interpret Ghulfam
Hassan’s character through their own perceptions of not just Pakistan, but also of Mohajirs, the
Mohajirs’ ill-treatment in Pakistan, and the strangely schizophrenic relationship between India
and Pakistan at that historical juncture—a point at which the relationship between the two was
both at its lowest ebb and its most promising in decades, with frequent border skirmishes
between the countries undercut by the relaxation in artistic travel that permitted the first wave of
Pakistani artistes to travel and work in India. One could argue, in fact, that the façade Ghulfam
Hassan puts on, as a peaceful qawwali artist, invites the audience to connect the character to
famed qawwali artist and noted pacifist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, whose chart-topping numbers
include a duet with Indian producer A.R. Rahman calling for peace between India and Pakistan.
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About the time of Sarfarosh’s production, Khan had made the transition to Bollywood playback
singer, a source of consternation for Hindutva adherents convinced that the Pakistani musicians
and artistes working in Bollywood were working against India. The fact that the central villain
isn’t a Pakistani soldier or even a member of the underworld, then, reveals the anxiety extant in
public discourse due to the influx of neighboring talent into the industry—the fear that we were
being taken advantage of. Even more telling from a religious perspective is the villain’s Mohajir
status. As a member of the group that chose to move to Pakistan during Partition, Ghulfam
evokes that historical moment of trauma, and his murderous rage at the losses his family suffered
after all these years evokes the anxiety and uneasiness of the audience about the fallout of that
historical moment. In the scene where Ghulfam's villainy is revealed to the audience, we see him
seated in the dilapidated home of his ancestors, speaking of the nature and order of crimes, and
he reveals his unbending and unforgiving nature by hurting a kid (baby goat) that clumsily
destroys a vase.
Despite the character shading that Sarfarosh provides, the movie’s most potent message
is to suggest the implacable nature of cross-border hate and, by embodying that rage in the anger
of a Mohajir openly longing for a return to the glory of Muslim Rule, the movie articulates the
unspoken fears and suspicions of its Hindu majority: that the Muslim minority’s allegiance
always remains to the community itself and the bygone world of their rule. It was, after all,
chasing that dream that led to the creation of Pakistan, according to the Indian narrative. The
most visceral violence onscreen is carried out by the regional rebels and the members of the
underworld, but their material aspirations are comprehensible to an increasingly capitalism-
savvy audience. The essentially ‘idealistic’ rage of the Muslim characters, based on religious
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“Otherness” and the longing for a return to their golden past, however, is foreign,
incomprehensible, and therefore inassimilable and dangerous to the mainstream.
In order for the Muslim polity to become palatable to the majority, then, they need to be
seen as likely to welcome integration and eager to become part of the path forward rather than
the reminder of a traumatic past. And the reality of India’s economy is that, like other
minoritized groups in developed nations, the fruits of economic liberalization have mostly passed
the Indian Muslim populace by. This reality is starkly reflected in movies like Rang De Basanti,
which depict Muslims continuing to be ghettoized in isolated communities—and in such a
climate what was required was a new projection/possibility of Muslim belonging. That such a
possibility would arise in the site most connected with possibility and symbolizing secularism—
film—was inevitable: this possibility is embodied in the persona of an actor viewed as both
Muslim and undeniably, vocally, and proudly Indian, who further embodies a ‘softer’ and
consequently more palatable form of Islam in the public sphere, and whose own film persona
was constructed, ironically, along the lines of "Ram" of mythology: Shah Rukh Khan.

THE MUSLIM MALE IN THE “KHAN TEXT” OF CURRENT INDIAN CINEMA
In Bollywood Cinema, Vijay Mishra argues that megastar Amitabh Bachchan "has been
an indispensable text around whom almost a quarter century of Bollywood Cinema has
congealed” (156); inarguably, Bachchan, the biggest star of the seventies and eighties, has
managed to remain a box office draw for over four decades, though his success since the 1990s
has been mostly as a supporting player to younger protagonists. Reading Bachchan as an “Actor
text” Mishra argues that Bachchan formed a potent symbol of the political and cultural attitudes
and fissures of the turbulent 1970s and 1980s. I argue that in the period following economic
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liberalization and the rise of Hindutva (1991-present), the primary actor texts around which
Bollywood cinema congealed were the dominant “three Khans” in general, but Shah Rukh Khan
in particular. As Sunny Singh, quoting an industry insider, says, in the 2000s only sex and Shah
Rukh interested the paying audience (213), and in the same vein one could argue that only
violence and Shah Rukh pleased them in the early 90’s, and family and Shah Rukh in the latter
part of that decade. Indeed Shah Rukh Khan’s rise and public persona has led to his representing
not just Bollywood cinema, but also “New India” itself , exemplified by the way SRK has
become India’s dominant pitch man, for everything from ordinary pencils to soft drinks to luxury
items. In his chapter on Amitabh Bachchan, Vijay Mishra analyzes the way in which this actor
balanced his screen persona—that of the “Angry Young Man,” the representative of the poor and
downtrodden—with his star person—that of a brooding, womanizing product of the new
aristocracy. Shah Rukh Khan, on the other hand, has carefully maintained the public persona of a
middle-class boy come good, since he is the only one of the "three Khans" from a non-industry
background, and is thus seen as someone whose success owes little to nepotism. A Muslim
married to a Hindu, who publicly professes his faith while raising his children in both faiths,
Khan represents what most Indians and Indian Muslims aspire to—success, relevance, and
inclusion in the national imaginary. It is indeed one of the great ironies of the last twenty years
that the Indian diaspora in the United States, which contains some of the most vehement
Hindutva support, is also SRK’s most rabid audience.
Interestingly, SRK’s own filmic persona underwent a dramatic shift, from his early years
as a more malevolent version of the “Angry Young Man,” which first raised him to
superstardom, to the domestic, loving lover/husband/son/father persona that has made him the
aspirational model for millions. Like Mishra, Sunny Singh compares Amitabh and SRK and
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finds mythological parallels to both their star personas in the two major Hindu epics: Amitabh
echoes the anti-heroic figure of Karna from the Mahabharata in his angry young man roles, a
protagonist with shades of grey; though SRK started off in the same vein his own filmic persona
in the latter half of the 1990s and the early 2000s drew “on images and themes from the
Ramayana”, with a focus on family, duty, and happiness, “thereby reflecting, articulating , as
well as helping build the zeitgeist of the times” ( 216), when the rising economy and increasing
liberalization led to a focus and romaticization of family for various reasons. Singh further
connects two particular SRK films, Mohabbatein (2000) and Swades (2004), explicitly with the
Ram mythology, arguing that SRK’s filmic popularity, and consequent personal popularity,
derives from this audience association. The use of the Ramayana as the ur-text of the new
millennium rather than the Mahabharata, I argue, also signals a shift in the national psyche and
reflects the optimism of the decade: The former is the epic of peace, just rule, and growth,
whereas the latter details the advent of Kalyug and the difficult path of justice. The use of the
Ramayana and SRK as Ram signals a nation believing in progress and the material excesses
implied by this progress.
Therefore, considering Shah Rukh Khan’s popularity, not just in India but also within the
diaspora, the significance of his recent “Muslim” roles becomes obvious. Despite his star power,
SRK has by and large avoided Muslim roles, and he first played a Muslim character in 1999,
almost a decade into his career, in the decidedly non-masala film, Hey Ram. The role he did play
was, unfortunately, a throwback—that of a Muslim aristocrat in the freedom struggle, the type of
Muslim figure that has served as one-half of the shorthand for all India’s Muslim population in
the public imagination. Of the four Muslim characters that he has played, though, three (Kabir
Khan, Sahir Khan and Rizwan Khan) have been characters in movies released within the last five
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years. Two of these in particular feature him as an average Muslim marginalized and damaged
by the state apparatus. Yet these characters don't strike back through terroristic acts but by trying
to reconcile religious identities with the larger interests of state—and considering the fact that
SRK himself is an average Muslim who has occasionally earned the ire of the Hindu right, these
portrayals help broaden the public perception of what it means to be Muslim in India, and also
evoke audience sympathy for the Muslim plight in India today. The first of these movies, Chak
De India, loosely based on a true story, features Khan as a disgraced former Indian hockey star
trying to reestablish his fortunes by coaching the Indian women’s national team. The second, My
Name Is Khan, features Khan as an Asperger’s suffering Indian settled in the United States, who
suffers a personal tragedy in the aftermath of 9/11 as a result of his Muslim faith, and sets out on
a personal mission to convince Americans that he—and Muslims in general—are not terrorists.
Together, these two films begin the task of undoing the pop-cultural myths and tropes that have
grown around Islam due to Bollywood’s past.
Chak De India is first and foremost India’s first popular feminist sports film, one that
valorizes the strengths and possibilities inherent in Indian women. Inspired by the Indian
women’s hockey team’s success at the 2002 Commonwealth games, the movie narrates the story
of a disgraced former player turned coach trying to turn a group of disparate, uninspired and
unambitious women, who symbolize the fractured Indian imaginary, into a unified collection
capable of taking on the world. The script writer’s intentions throughout were to highlight the
team’s fictional success and thus draw attention to the real-life success of their counterparts at
the 2002 Commonwealth Games. However, Khan’s star persona is such that during the film’s
publicity tour, press attention focused not on the female actors and their real-life counterparts,
but on Khan’s character and his purported real life counterpart, the former Indian hockey player
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Mir Ranjan Negi, who as goalkeeper became the prime target of public opprobrium after India’s
humiliating 7-1 drubbing by Pakistan in the 1982 Asian Games, which forced him to end his
career.
SRK plays Kabir Khan, the Indian hockey team captain who misses a crucial penalty
during the dying seconds in the World Men’s Hockey finals against Pakistan; in the aftermath,
his innocuous handshake with the Pakistani captain results in a smear campaign, orchestrated and
amplified by a hysterical national press and picked up quite readily by the general public, which
proclaims Khan a national traitor based on the flimsiest of evidence—his Muslim identity. In a
series of quick cuts we see how one reporter’s mischievous question gets transformed into fact in
the public estimation; the reporter’s rhetorical question is picked up by respected newspapers and
also the television media, stoking the public ire; the slippery slope of the mob’s logic and the
dominant perspective concerning the Muslim minority is also illustrated in an televised interview
segment where we see a reporter questioning the ‘man on the street’ regarding Kabir Khan:
Reporter: Do you think Kabir Khan purposely let Pakistan win the match?
Man 1: I’m not sure if he did it purposely, but he did win it for them.
Reporter: And what do you think?
Man2: We must turn these kinds of people upside down.
Reporter: And you?
Man 3: I think these type of people should have left for Pakistan during Partition.

The shift in the attitude towards such reasoning in just a single decade is extraordinary: where
Border and Sarfarosh reflected the attitudes depicted above, these attitudes, CDI’s narrative
intimates, are unreasonable and unfair. The hegemonic assumptions about Indian Muslims come
into play here in the way Kabir seamlessly slides from the individual described in the first
person’s answer into the ‘typical’ Pro-Pakistan Muslim of the second and third’s. Additionally,
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in the public discourse concerning Khan’s supposed act of treason one voice is silenced, that of
Kabir Khan himself.
The next scene shows us why: Khan’s supposed actions have resulted in his expulsion not
just from national affection but also from his physical home; in a melodramatic scene, we watch
Khan escort his mother from the neighborhood he grew up in as one neighbor scrawls “traitor”
on his wall, and a young child pipes up, “Daddy, daddy, I want to see a traitor too.” As Khan and
his mother trudge away, the camera cuts to a woman hurrying to give them food for their
journey, only to be stopped by the woman's husband, who warns, “Would you like us to get
kicked out of here too?” This entire scene is accompanied by the mournful extradiegetic vocals
proclaiming the enforced displacement of Muslims from the nation-space in the song “Maula
Mere Lele Meri Jaan.” The lyrics translate as follows: I was your third color once/ I have lived
by your traditions/You are my Lord, my pride/Take my life It's yours, My Lord.” The third color
on the Indian flag, green, officially refers to India’s agrarian roots, though its origins lie in the
Swaraj flag conceptualized by Mahatma Gandhi, who had wanted the green to symbolize Islam.
The decision, prior to Independence, to free the flag of communal associations led to saffron—
the color associated with Hinduism—being reconceptualized as renunciation (courage and
sacrifice), white as light and peace, and green as mentioned above (also faith and chivalry).
However, saffron has increasingly and visibly become associated with the Hindu faith in public,
and as a result the association of green with Islam has also become much more prominently
accepted than earlier, and the audience is likely to read the flag this way, despite official edicts.
Studying the lyrics further, the Urdu word, Maula, derived from Al-Mawla, traditionally used to
refer to Allah, signals both the singer’s Muslim origins and his patriotism, since he’s utilizing a
term of faith to proclaim his willingness to be subsumed by the Nation-state—a clear retort to
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Hindutva accusations of Muslims being more strongly tied to faith than to India. Overall then,
the lyrics guide viewers to sympathize with Khan, and by association, the extradiegetic singer
and others like him, expelled from the National frame.
The song recurs once in the movie, towards the end, just as the Indian women win the
World Cup, redeeming Kabir Khan in his country’s eyes. As the girls celebrate on the field,
Kabir Khan staggers on the sidelines, an Indian flag in the background, eyes tearing up, gazing
up at yet another fluttering Indian flag as the mournful lyrics are repeated. Like Inspector Saleem
in Sarfarosh, Kabir Khan has proclaimed and then enacted his loyalty to the nation and earned
the right to return to his old neighborhood. The movie ends with Khan reopening the door to the
old house as a small boy scrapes away at the word “Traitor” branded on Khan’s door. What is
never addressed or explicitly noted in the feel-good ending is the unfairness of this moment. The
average man on the street who’d relentlessly branded Khan a traitor for seven years now
celebrate him as a hero without examining their complicity in his suffering. The people of his
neighborhood, the ones who actually grew up around him, do reveal their shame, but their
original act was forced by the general public condemnation of Khan. Additionally, during the
teething troubles under his coaching, when one of his charges angrily reminds the other girls that
Khan is a “traitor,” instead of fighting back Khan meekly offers to resign. The fact that Khan
accepts without question the need to prove his allegiance is the one troubling aspect of this
movie though the overall message that Muslims belong and deserve not to be scapegoated is a
positive and necessary one.
The focus on Kabir Khan as protagonist, his self-flagellation, marginalization, ultimate
redemption and reintegration into the state take place in the larger discursive construction of
SRK as Muslim. Unlike Muslim actors of previous eras, the current crop of Muslim superstars
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have never had to hide their identities, yet their easy acceptance by the public in the 90s arose
through their artificial recalibration as an “acceptable” type of Muslim, shorn of the visual and
aural markers of their faith, married to or involved with Hindu women, and generally silent about
religion. As SRK has grown into the “Khan text” of Indian pop culture, however, his Muslim
identity has moved more to the forefront: as host of WWTB a Millionaire, Khan frequently used
religious markers, such as exclaiming “Allah” at times, thus introducing a modern Muslim
presence into the homes of viewers. And what SRK represents is a much more relaxed and fluid
version of Islam than that of general understanding, one more in line with the Sufi precepts. On
the one hand, it is troubling that we still accept only a relaxed performance of Muslim faith; on
the other, most Muslims fall somewhere in the spectrum between Khan’s relaxed approach and
the stereotype portrayed in movies, and as such the growing public acceptance of and ease with
SRK can only aid in the Muslim integration into the national imaginary.

BOLLYWOOD IN THE 2000s (OR HOW ECONOMICS CHANGED EVERYTHING)
Even during the period when Muslim characters and characterization suffered most in
Bollywood, the industry’s complicated stance on religiosity and sectarianism was obvious from
the ways in which a few movies called into question the dominant pro-saffron message. While
the 1990s saw a pervasive, if non-concerted, demonization of the Muslim male in popular
culture, and cinematic eruptions of the fears regarding Muslim loyalty to the State were enacted
in movies such as Sarfarosh (1999), Border (1997), and Roja (1992), a movie like Krantiveer
(1994), as Vijay Mishra points out, questions the naturalization of religious sectarianism and
addresses the economic forces responsible for the cycle of violence.
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And long before the initial decline of the Sangh Parivar (the umbrella term for the
different Hindu right-wing parties) began in the mid-2000s, Bollywood had begun to atone for its
tacit support for the Hindutva agenda in the prior decade. The year 2000 saw the release of
Mission Kashmir and Fiza, both featuring the emerging star Hrithik Roshan in the role of a
Muslim terrorist. Unlike most comparable Hollywood films, the terrorist-protagonists were
depicted not as one-dimensional obstacles in the protagonists’ paths, but as the products of
societal marginalization and demonization (Priya Kumar). In Fiza, movie creator Khalid
Mohamed, who is himself Muslim, critiques the continual economic and political
marginalization and personal dehumanization of Muslims within the nation space, arguing that it
is this sense of collective marginalization and non-belonging among Muslim youth, a sense that
they are being criminalized and demonized by the State itself, which is exploited by anti-national
forces for their own ends. In Mission Kashmir, the protagonist becomes a terrorist to avenge the
loss of his parents, the incidental victims of Statist military actions. However, despite the
sympathetic treatment accorded to the main characters, this continual representation of Muslim
protagonists as terrorists could arguably be seen as rearticulating and confirming the stereotype
even while interrogating it.
Since the mid-2000s, the viewing public has seen a rise in Muslim depictions that aren’t
merely exoticized or typified. Even texts that do focus on terrorism, like Anwar, Kurbaan and
New York, portray a wider variety of Indian Muslim experiences than ever before, and no longer
do films depend purely on overdetermined visual signifiers to "create" the Muslim. More
importantly, we’ve also had blockbuster hits that focus on Muslim viewpoints in modern India in
particular, and the modern world in general, encouraging the audience to challenge its
understanding of the much-maligned minority.
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Partly, this is a result of Bollywood’s maturation as a whole, with the industry, like the
country itself, undergoing radical changes within the last ten years. This has resulted in increased
professionalization, stronger productions and the emergence of stronger plots and more nuanced
narratives in the hands of a younger generation of directors, many of whom are second-
generation filmmakers, and therefore products of a secular atmosphere. Partly, too, it owes to the
middle-class exhaustion with Hindutva rhetoric and its limitations, and also to India’s rising
economic success, which has seen Pakistan’s hold on the national psyche usurped to some
degree by the specters of the United States and China, the two world superpowers Indians wish
to emulate. Viewed this way, the eruption of Muslim demonization in Bollywood in the 90s
could be viewed as a result of economic desires too: every group wanted a piece of the newly
liberated Indian economy, and in staking their claims, the majority marginalized the already
poverty-stricken minority.

BOLLYWOOD AND THE FEMALE MUSLIM
Despite advances in the portrayal of South Asian Muslim lives in Bollywood, the general
slant of the Muslim-State relationship has remained mostly unchanged, and this is most visible in
the portrayal of female Muslim characters. Studies of nationalism, such as Partha Chatterjee’s
The Nation and its Fragments, have analyzed how from its very foundations in the Independence
movement, Indian national identity has pivoted around the figure of the feminine, and the anxiety
surrounding ownership of and control over the female body. In the current post-liberalization
boom, one of the reasons for rising Hindutva support was the increased economic independence
and consequent social independence of young women—the "westernization" of culture and youth
alarmed traditionalists. And indeed one of the most contentious issues facing the newly formed
Shankar 70

countries post-partition had to do with this very issue: the repatriation of women of Hindu, Sikh
and Muslim faiths, kidnapped in the violence following Partition, to their respective families.
And much of the fear regarding the figure of the Muslim male have to do with the fear
paralleling the historical European concern during Turkish incursions, of the presumed
licentiousness and rapacity of the Muslim male. As Priya Kumar and other commentators have
noted, by and large inter-marriage between the faiths depicted in Bollywood features Hindu men
involved in relationships with Muslim women—most famously and contentiously in Bombay
(1995), in which the protagonist, the cosmopolitan Hindu Shekhar, elopes with the more
traditional Muslim Shaila Bano; in Veer-Zaara (2004), the Pakistani Muslim Zaara falls in love
with the Indian Hindu Veer. Even Fiza (2000,) the least commercial and sharpest examination of
the plight of young Muslims in an increasingly intolerant nation, provides Fiza with a Hindu
boyfriend in order to symbolize her modernity and signal her ultimate allegiance to the Nation-
state. The Muslim female, on the other hand, doesn’t present the same sexual threat. Instead, she
serves on film as the defender and re-articulator of state values and state sanctity. As mother (in
MNiK), sister (Fiza), lover or wife (Fanaa), the Muslim female’s role is to protect and defend the
state, often from the Muslim male.
My Name is Khan in one way symbolizes how far Bollywood has come in just a few
years—it is the first popular movie in a long time to feature a Muslim male/ Hindu female
dynamic (albeit a ‘damaged’ Hindu female, in that she is a divorcee and a single mother).
Though the story focuses on Rizwan’s journey, the heroine, Mandira, is a character symptomatic
of Bollywood’s increasingly liberal presentations—a successful single mother happily raising her
child, albeit in a western setting which allows for her freedom. This extraordinary level of
freedom, however, isn’t extended to the female Muslim characters, whose task seems to be to
Shankar 71

protect the extended family and the state. Rizwan’s younger brother becomes estranged from him
due to Rizwan’s marriage to a Hindu, but Rizwan’s sister-in-law, the understanding Haseena,
holds the family together by acting as peace-maker, attending Rizwan’s wedding and insinuating
herself into Rizwan and Mandira’s life in such a way that her eventual trauma acts as the impetus
for the brothers’ reconciliation. In a much earlier segment in the narrative, set during Rizwan’s
childhood, and following an incident of communal violence, Rizwan’s mother is horrified at
hearing her son uncomprehendingly repeat the angry avowals for revenge by the neighborhood
Muslim males, and instructs her son in a very Nehruvian viewpoint: that the world isn’t divided
by faith but by personal ethics. In the scene, pivotal to Rizwan’s understanding of the world, his
mother seats him down in front of an notebook, draws two stick figures, one holding a lollipop ,
one a sword and asks him to identify the Muslim and the Hindu. When a puzzled Rizwan reveals
his inability to do so, his mother explains: “In this world there aren’t Hindus and Muslims; there
are good people and bad people.” It is this understanding that sustains Rizwan during his
brother’s estrangement, during his brush with the militant preacher, Faisal Rahman, whose
poisonous rhetoric influences some disillusioned young men, and in his interpersonal
relationships with the Americans he meets on his journey to convince the American President
that Islam and terrorism aren’t equivalent. Significantly, Rizwan’s father is not part of the
diegetic narrative, as he dies off-screen prior to the narrative: the Muslim female, not the Muslim
male, enables Rizwan’s belonging.
Fiza (2000) and Fanaa (2006) on the other hand demand even greater sacrifices of their
female Muslim characters—in both movies the female protagonists are forced to confront the
threats their loved ones pose to the state, and to end this threat by killing them. Fanaa, loosely
based on the English novel Eye of the Needle, couches this act of murder in the promise of the
Shankar 72

future: Zooni, the young Kashmiri Muslim protagonist, isn’t just Rehan Khan’s lover but also the
mother of his child—by killing her terrorist husband she saves not just the state, but also her son
from being part of the cycle of violence that consumes his father. In Fiza, Fiza’s kills her
beloved brother, Aman, on his instigation. However, this climatic act functions as an indictment
of the state, since Aman's choice springs from his fears regarding State retribution, a fear
common among Indians, who’ve grown up in a culture where fears regarding police actions and
brutality are openly circulated. The different contexts and implications of these acts of violence
in the two movies can be ascribed to the fact that Fiza sprang from parallel cinema, unlike
Fanaa, and director Khalid Mohammed doesn’t offer the nationalist reading that mainstream
Bollywood does.
Bollywood’s mainstream portrayal of Islam and Muslim lives has markedly improved in
the post-9/11 world, as a result of a shift in India’s self-perception, yet even these positive
articulations of Muslim identities contain the ghosts of earlier fears and suspicions, and
Bollywood's ideology remains consistently aligned with the needs of the State: while the visual
signifiers of Islam have widened, while the varieties of Muslim experiences portrayed has come
along by leaps and bounds, in essence the message remains the same: To be a good Muslim
essentially means to sublimate personal and religious considerations to the needs of the (largely
Hindu) whole, even if one is wronged as Kabir Khan is, mistreated and stereotyped as Rizwan
Khan is, or even if one’s heart breaks while killing one’s brother as Fiza’s does.

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Chapter 3
This too is an Indian Story: Rohinton Mistry, the Parsi Community and The Problems of
Minority Identity in a Secular Context

Secularism, as explained in the introduction, has had a rather distinctive history in India,
and though state-sanctioned secularism has succeeded, at least on a superficial level,
23
it hasn't
led to the rise of a secular consciousness or secular outlook in society at large. Because of the
way secularism was enshrined in the Indian constitution, and practiced by the State, India’s
secularism pivots around the notion of community, as does the self-identification of its citizens,
who define themselves not just as Indians but, very strongly, through their linguistic, regional,
caste, and, most especially, religion-based affiliations. Considering this reality, Rohinton Mistry's
works demand particular attention in any study of community and communalism in an Indian
context. What makes Mistry’s works stand out from Rushdie’s and Chandra’s is his examination
of a minority community—albeit one that has occupied the inoffensive model minority position
in the Indian consciousness—rather than just minority characters.
24
In a way, Mistry’s work
stands out from that of other Indian authors in English
25
precisely because of the detailed
infusion of the rituals and the materiality of religious Parsi life, which make his narratives more

23
Since Indian State sponsored secularism aims to acknowledge community identity and differences, the rise of
communal politics, despite its overall negative effect, can be said to represent a victory of sorts for secularism.

24
While Moor is part of a both the Catholic and Jewish minority communities by birth, his parent's social status
and Rushdie's shift of geographical focus via their decision to leave ancestral Cochin and raise their kids in Bombay
deprive us of the particularities of either community's communal life. Even in the Cochin section, Rushdie mostly
focuses on family drama.

25
Only in the literary genre: the pop-lit novels have given rise to a whole genre of fetishized works about
minority communities.

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easily identifiable and relatable to the perceived “true” Indian experience.
While Rushdie's and Chandra's works forefront the cataclysmic effects of the failure of
state-sponsored secularist structures and the rise of majoritarian fundamentalism, Rohinton
Mistry's Family Matters, set like the vast majority of his works in Bombay, focuses on the
domestic drama of a minority Parsi family living in a Parsi community during this same era.
Since a work that critiques Hindutva would be expected to forefront Hindutva actions and
politics, Mistry’s decision to focus on a domestic drama seems strange, and some have argued
that it is a product of the limitations that exilic writers like Mistry face: like Rushdie, Mistry is a
long-term expatriate, though his expatriation to Canada is one of choice rather than necessity,
and his works are largely based on a remembered India. This assertion regarding the limitation of
exilic writers is grounded in certain truths: thematically, Mistry’s works that deal most
extensively with the political affairs of the State are A Fine Balance and Such a Long Journey,
set in the 1970s, the period of the greatest upheaval previously faced by Indian democracy, and
coincidentally, the period right before Mistry’s departure from India. Despite this perceived
limitation imposed by geographical distance, however, Mistry has stronger ties to his religious
background than the other examined writers, which makes his point of view distinctive and
worthy of examination.
If the Muslim community has been the most visible “Other” in post-Independence Indian
discourse, and the Sikh community—of which Chandra's Sartaj Sigh is a member—the most
contradictory and liminal, whose identity has shifted between keepers of the state and the enemy
of the state,
26
then the Parsi community has been India's version of the Asian community in the

26
See Chapter 1 for a mention of the changing nature of Sikh belonging in Indian public discourse following the
rise of Sikh nationalism in the late 70's-early 80's, culminating in Indira Gandhi's assassination.
Shankar 75

United States, the model minority, the ones towards whose status even many in the majority
aspire. Westernized yet insular and shrinking by the day, India's Parsis, the descendants of
Iranian Zoroastrian migrants who fled Iran during the advent of Islam, occupied a privileged
position in national discourse in the British Raj and early post-Independence India due to their
westernization,
27
their pervasive presence in the business world in India pre-liberalization (Tata,
Birla, among other industrial families), and an accident of history—the daughters of both Nehru
and Jinnah, the architects of modern India and Pakistan respectively, married Parsi men, and as a
result, the community has had a high visibility in the political narrative, very out of keeping with
its size and political influence. Additionally, the community's members have had a significant
impact on Indian and Pakistani art, literature and the sciences: Homi J. Bhabha, the father of the
Indian nuclear program, Homi K. Bhabha, the famed literary theorist, the composer Zubin
Mehta, the celebrated Pakistani novelist Bapsi Sidhwa, and Rohinton Mistry, among others, are
products of this community. In an interview with Paul Thompson, Homi K. Bhabha has even
talked about how his religious and communal roots shaped his writings.
28
The community's
privileged status has, however, been eroding post-liberalization, with the rise of Hindu
chauvinism and financial clout, and the fall in the Parsi numbers due to the community's own

27
“Amongst the Indian communities, they formed a very early Westernized bourgeois class, much earlier than
Hindus or Muslims. Parsees were the middle men between the British and the Indians . . . . They had a kind of
cosmopolitan feel about them, they were freer to circulate, and they became the conduits for certain kinds of British
communication” (“Between Identities” 183).

28
Bhabha traces the roots of his own ideas regarding hybridity to his childhood, family history, and thereby his
generalizations about the Parsi community: “I belonged to a small community of Parsees, a largely urban
community of Persian immigrants who'd come to India in the seventh century. This minority community is not very
well known, generally, and is very small, but has a very distinctive flavour, or style, rather than a distinctive
tradition. And there is something about belonging to a community with a style or flavour, rather than a tradition of
tablets, which has a rather contemporary feel about it. Because the essentialist model of identity seems, in some
way, now passe: identities are much more performative and you construct a sense of identity.” (183)

Shankar 76

repressive views regarding Parsi purity. It is this context, of a community negotiating its identity
in a swiftly changing world that seems to have passed them by, that serves as the background of
Mistry's Family Matters.

OVERVIEW OF FAMILY MATTERS
Like his other works Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters can be classified as belonging to
the social realist genre and focuses on the domestic drama of the extended Vakeel family, a
middle-class Parsi family living in Bombay, as larger seismic events unfold in the outside world,
affecting the characters. The novel is set in 1995, in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition
and the Bombay riots that shook the nation’s beliefs in its secular foundation. The 71-year-old
Nariman Vakeel lives in the spacious apartment he co-owns with his middle-aged stepchildren,
Jal and Coomy Contractor, who oversee him with a sense of resentment and duty. When
Nariman, refusing to heed their advice, goes on a walk by himself and ends up breaking his
ankle, he is sent to live with his biological daughter, Jal and Coomy's younger half-sister, and
favored child, Roxana Chenoy, for an agreed upon period of three weeks. Though both wings of
the family struggle to maintain their middle-class lifestyle, Roxana's family, which consists of
her husband Yezad and her sons Murad and Jehangir, face greater problems, both in financial and
space-related terms, since they live in already cramped quarters. However, out of a sense of duty
and love they take Nariman in at their apartment, Pleasant Villa, and while his presence is never
begrudged, it does add to the financial burdens of the family. The subsequent actions of Yezad
and his younger son, Jehangir, to alleviate the family’s perilous financial situation, Coomy’s
attempts to make Nariman’s stay with Roxanne a permanent one, and Nariman’s own rueful
recollections of his past, as he begins to enjoy living amidst the youthful energy of his
Shankar 77

grandchildren and interacting with the neighbors, serve as the meat of the novel.
Unlike A Fine Balance, Family Matters largely refuses to veer from its focus on the
domestic drama, never explicitly taking on the societal shocks and frictions that dominated
national consciousness during the novel's time setting. Perhaps this explains why this work has
received little critical attention compared to Mistry's earlier works. The bare plot outline
reinforces the argument that the work doesn’t particularly stand out as a post-December 6
29

novel, especially since, unlike in the works examined in previous chapters, the Hindutva forces
are rarely seen actively pursuing their agenda within the work, other than through reportage. As
mentioned earlier in the chapter, some readers have used Mistry’s exilic status and his
consequent limited knowledge of the nature of grassroots secular movements to dismiss the
worth of this work. However, simply accepting such a claim would involve having to ignore how
Mistry uses allusions, flashbacks and characterization to make significant arguments about the
decaying nature of Indian secularism and the problematic nature of community affiliation. Even
if Mistry isn’t entirely conversant with the latest secularist discourse in India, as a member of the
tightly-knit Parsi community he is well aware of the repercussions of India’s secularist failures
on the community.
Like most of Mistry’s larger works, Family Matters utilizes a constantly shifting third
person limited point-of-view, thereby deepening our understanding of each character and their
circumstances as the narrative progresses. Even though Coomy and Jal's treatment of their
stepfather Nariman initially appears heartless, we learn from both Coomy’s and Nariman’s
flashbacks that his dissatisfaction and sorrow at being forced to give up the love of his life and to
marry their widowed mother was never quite hidden from the children, leading to their later

29
The date of the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
Shankar 78

resentment, particularly in the aftermath of their mother’s death. More significantly for the
purposes of my argument, Nariman’s flashbacks also provide a way to compare the subtle ways
in which Mistry contrasts the smug orthodoxy of the Parsi community in Nariman’s youth and
the more frenetic, fearful orthodoxy of the modern age, as represented in the epilogue through
Yezad's transformation following the loss of his job and Nariman's death.

F AMILY MATTERS AND PARTHA CHATTERJEE'S PROBLEMATIC SECULARIST SOLUTION
Despite being set in the tumultuous, religious-politics riven Bombay of the 1990s, Family
Matters foregrounds not the problems that affect the larger city of Bombay, the focus of much
national discussion during the time, in newspapers, films, literature, and other media, but one
that affects one of its supposedly progressive and secular communities.
30
In the aftermath of the
destruction of the Babri Masjid and the rise of Hindutva as a political force that equated
modernity with Hindusim and backwardness with minority status, Partha Chaterjee argued that
the way forward for Indian secularism was to maintain the direction set in the constitution, by
empowering minority communities to a greater degree, thereby empowering minority
individuals.
31
His suggestion paralleled ideas put forth by theorists such as Ashis Nandy, who
believed that the western concept of secular individualism would not answer India’s needs. In a
way, this suggestion refers back to the era of British rule, since the idea of community coalitions
and community consciousness was first codified and exploited by India’s colonial masters to
maintain their hegemonic status, such as when they used divide-and-rule by replacing pure

30
Mistry's works largely serve to illustrate how superficial this progressivism is.

31
Chatterjee uses Foucault's notion of governmentality and his own ideas regarding Tolerance to argue that
minority communities should be given the right to unquestioned difference. (“Religious Minorities" 33-39).
Shankar 79

democratic principles with communal ones, providing each community with its own
representation in Parliament, thereby giving minorities a real voice in government but also
ensuring that there would be no uniform resistance to their rule. In the face of the real
powerlessness of minority communities in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition, when
majoritarian politics spurred Hindutva activists to continue making a mockery of the law, aided
by a toothless judiciary and a complicit police force, Chatterjee conceives of reinforcing minority
communities' standing as a way to provide minority communities material power in the future, to
combat their current lack of institutional influence. Considering the fact that Hindu majoritarian
politics was viewed as an unrelenting force at the time,
32
Chatterjee and like-minded thinkers
were right to worry about the limitations of Indian institutions and the democratic process in
handling minority needs. However, Chatterjee provides an equally flawed solution, which
implicitly accepts the Hindutva charge that secularism is an ideal untranslatable to the Indian
idiom.
There are two problems with Chaterjee’s assertion that democracy will be better served
through community representation at a political level:
1. Despite its limitations, the current system allows for the possibility of an abstract
Indian citizen, and therefore allows minorities to dream of someday achieving the same
position as individuals belonging to the hegemonic culture. Community-oriented political
segmentation will ensure that this never comes to pass, that even at an individual level,
minorities will be permanently othered.
33

32
The books and articles written at the time all evince an unstated expectation that India's Hindutva tilt would
continue indefinitely, particularly post-Godhra. Fortunately, those fears have largely proved unfounded.

33
Chatterjee does address this in his essay: Universal citizenship is merely the form offered by the bourgeois
liberal state to ensure the legal-political conditions for the deployment and exploitation of differences in civil
Shankar 80

2. Placing power in the hands of the minority community may help the community as a
whole, and help the government avoid the charges of majoritarian appeasement and
hegemony, but it creates a significant problem as well since the majority/minority or
majority/individual tyranny that affects current Indian democracy can be replicated within
minority communities as well; instead of fearing the majority's power, now individuals
belonging to minority communities will have to fear their own communities.
34
In a way,
Mistry’s decades-long family drama serves as a strong illustration of this point.
While providing minority communities with increased legal power might solve some
issues, privileging communities, rather than individuals, creates its own problems, as Mistry’s
narrative demonstrates. Jal and Coomy’s primary motivation in dumping their step-father is a
lifelong sense that he had never loved them or their mother. Because we enter the narrative
through Nariman’s perspective, the step-children come across as childish and grotesque, two
middle-aged, querulous single people
35
with an unnervingly co-dependent relationship, and their

society; universal citizenship normalizes the reproduction of differences by pretending that everyone is the same.
More concretely . . . nowhere has the sway of universal citizenship meant the end of either ethnic difference or
discrimination on cultural grounds (“Religious Minorities” 37). While his second assertion is true, the aspiration
towards universal citizenship has served as the ground for personal and community emancipation worldwide.

34
The Shah Bano case is an infamous example of this. Shah Bano, a Muslim divorcee who sought the court's
assistance in getting financial support from her husband was finally thwarted when Muslim community leaders
pressured the Prime Minister into rescinding the court's decision. This case was also exploited by Hindutva forces,
who claimed that it illustrated Muslim political privilege. Again, Chatterjee addresses this (“Religious Minorities”
30) but he doesn't seem to provide a solution.

35
How strange this is in India is made clear early on in a conversation between Roxana and her family.
'Poor Jal and Coomy,” she said. “So sad.”
“Why?” asked Jehangir.
“Because they never got married, they don't have a family like us.”
“And it always feels gloomy in their house,” said Murad. (37)
Here Mistry has his characters mirror the universal Indian attitude towards the unmarried.

Shankar 81

complaints that Nariman doesn’t love them as much as Roxanne feels absurd, an invented
justification for their actions. However, as the narrative unspools and we see events from
Coomy's perspective and Nariman’s own reminiscences, the step-children are revealed to be the
victims of an unfortunate arranged marriage between their mother and Nariman, forced upon him
because of his community-disapproved relationship with a Christian woman, and forced upon
her by the community's discomfort with a widowed woman heading up her own family. At the
novel's beginning, while awaiting Roxanne and her family for his birthday dinner, Nariman
reminisces about the turns in his life, and the degree to which the religious community was
imbricated in day-to-day Parsi life:
Much rejoicing had erupted when his parents announced that their only son, after
years of refusing to end his ill-considered liaison with that Goan woman, refusing
to meet decent Parsi girls, refusing to marry someone respectable—that their
beloved Nari had finally listened to reason and agreed to settle down.
He could hear every word on the balcony where he sat alone. As usual, Soli
Bamboat, his parents' oldest friend, semi-retired and still a very influential lawyer,
was the first to respond. “Three cheers for Nari!” he shouted. “Heep-heep-heep!”
and the rest answered, “Hooray!” (12)
Mistry's tone here is almost humorous though the subject matter is not. Through Nariman’s
memories we get to see the degree to which community pressure, particularly minority
community pressure, which fetishizes community purity and rigid identity as a way to combat
hegemonic assimilation, can limit the options of affiliated individuals. This effect is furthered by
their friends' use of the language of a political rally ("heep-heep hooray"), with all the jingoistic
associations of political parties enforcing conformity at a candidate. The pressure of community
Shankar 82

restrictions in this society is also addressed when Nariman's love, Lucy, suggests turning their
backs on everyone. Nariman demurs: “He told her that they had discussed it all before, their
families would hound them, no matter what” (14). In foregrounding the problems faced by
minorities from within their communities—the pressure to conform to a totalizing vision of what
it means to be Parsi, to follow the religious dictates which decide not just how often you pray,
but also whom you marry and what you do in life—Rohinton Mistry's work illustrates the
poverty of Chatterjee's alternate vision. The narrative of Nariman's unsatisfactory past reveals
how dangerous the privileged status of communities can be to individuals. The fact that Yezad,
whom we first see as a cosmopolitan, humorous man dreaming of a better—and in his mind,
western—life for his kids, turns into a religious fanatic with a strained relationship with his sons
also reveals the allure of such a call to purity and truth.
In his article on Family Matters, “Communalism, Corruption, and Duty,” Peter Morey
argues that in addition to its reference to militant Hindu fundamentalism through Yezad's
conversations with Mr. Kapur and his interactions with his co-worker Husain, a victim of the
religious infighting, the text critiques the failures of Indian secularism in two ways: first, by
illustrating the growing orthodoxy of the Parsi community, which, Morey argues, the text
presents as a minority’s mirror to the growing Hinduization of the public sphere; second, by
depicting the moral failures of "Generation Next" as a result of the extant power differences and
people’s responses to it. Jehangir, the younger of Yezad's children and the closing point-of-view
character in the novel, happens to be both his father's and grandfather's favorite and vocalizes
Mistry's perceptions regarding tolerance in the novel's epilogue. Throughout the work, Jehangir's
sensitivity and acute observation are illustrated through his patience and concern with his
grandfather, sensitivity to his parent's worries, his teacher's decision to name him as a homework
Shankar 83

monitor, and so on. However, once he comes to understand his family's perilous financial
situation, the devoted, ethical Jehangir, the only one of the homework monitors to take his
teacher's words regarding their responsibility to heart, betrays his ethical principles for financial
gain. The Jesuit school that Jehangir and Murad attend is meant to create the ideal abstract Indian
citizen, yet we see that all it does is replicate the previous generation's power dynamic and
mistakes, where homework monitors accept bribes to maintain the status quo, and students,
despite official chastisement, organize themselves in cricket teams that pivot Catholics against
non-Catholics unthinkingly and automatically (186-7).
Morey’s first assertion is partially true. All of Mistry’s works have featured the
machinations and growing difficulties of a once-thriving community that has found itself
shrinking in numbers and influence in post-Independence India. However, while the novels and
stories set in the 1970s largely utilize the orthodoxy of the community, depicted through non-
central characters, for comic effect, Family Matters takes their actions more seriously, as
reflected in the long-term repercussions of orthodoxy on the lives of Nariman and Yezad, and
through having one of the point-of-view characters, a round character, actually shift to the
orthodox way of thinking. Indeed, the text closely ties the orthodoxy to events in the public
sphere since Yezad's shocking transformation is a result of Mr. Kapur's death at the hands of the
Hindu fundamentalist Shiv Sena, a result of Yezad's own clueless machinations. Mistry is even
more direct in drawing a connection between the failures of the secular state and the corruption
of the coming generation in his depiction of Jehangir's expectations and actual experiences as
homework monitor:
Homework Monitoring was Miss Alvarez's pet project, her system of having
assignments checked by the pupils' peers. The goal, she said, was to integrate the
Shankar 84

qualities of trust, honesty, and integrity in her students. She told them the
classroom was a miniature model of society and the nation. Like any society, it
must have its institutions of law and order, its police and judiciary. And it could
be a just and prosperous society only when the citizens and the guardians of law
and order respected and trusted one another.
“If you are good citizens in my classroom,” said Miss Alvarez, “you will be good
citizens of India.” She believed this was the way to fight the backwardness and rot
and corruption in the country: classroom by classroom. (188)
At first out of desperation, then out of necessity, Jehangir lets himself be corrupted by the well-
off students, making a mockery of Miss Alverez's dreams, and revealing the difficulties faced by
the State considering the extant inequalities and attitudes prevalent in its body politic.
Finally, Mistry critiques "community" as a solution to the problems faced by the State by
pointing out the ways in which community identity can diminish individuality and individuals. In
the novel, Vilas points out that the Parsi community's self-mythologies have basically hurt the
community: community solidarity turns into reification and fetishization, which Vilas himself
critiques, when he points out that the much-fetishized 'Parsi qualities' like honesty have hurt the
community in post-Independence India. On the one hand, this is a critique of the failures of the
State to limit corruption; in the bigger picture it is a critique of the community's self-
circumscribed views of itself, which hurts its members. Identity politics, therefore, is a danger
from both without and within because the terms by which the community “others” itself from the
majority tends to remain static, thereby inhibiting community growth and personal
independence.

Shankar 85

SECULARISM AND CAPITALISM
In both Rusdhie’s and Chandra’s works, the writers make a connection between the
failure of Indian secularism and the rise of capitalist consciousness in post-liberalization India.
Rushdie views the religious riots as a ploy utilized by politicians to garner more of the
increasingly scarce Bombay real-estate, depicted though the way Mainduck and his allies
leverage religious politics to increase their wealth, in addition to terrorizing minorities. Similarly,
Chandra illustrates how the politico-criminal nexus—represented by the antagonist Gaitonde—
exploits growing religious disquiet to clear out many of Bombay’s slums, which then becomes
prime real estate, increasing the wealth of the cynical politicians and crimelords, whose
relationship to faith is depicted as complicated—though not atheists, Gaitonde and his crew have
no compunction about using any means for material gain. In both these cases, then, capitalism is
a negative influence which leads to the curtailment of an already teetering secular consciousness
among the citizenry, and a rise of religious chauvinism and violence. In integrating this reasoning
into their narratives, Rushdie and Chandra mirror some prominent critical explanations regarding
Hindutva’s unexpected rise, which sees capitalism as a negative force, one which served as the
impetus for Hindu mobilization across class lines, the increasingly blurred lines between politics
and organized crime, and the breakdown of State institutions. However, it could be argued that
capitalism was also India's safeguard, and that the fears of a never-ending rightward tilt of
political discourse didn't come to pass precisely because of post-liberalization India's greater
economic clout and global integration. This new reality forced previously ineffectual State
institutions to at least ensure a reduction in religious violence to appeal to foreign investors, and
turned the attention of the younger generation from religious divisions to personal material
benefits. Blaming capitalism also ignores the degree to which the socialist state structures'
Shankar 86

failures set the stage for the rise of Hindutva.
Mistry's work illustrates a more complicated vision of the relationship between
economics and secularism: the Chinoys, despite their humanistic cosmopolitanism, western
tastes, and education, subsist in cramped quarters in a city increasingly shorn of opportunities for
those without the right connections and political clout, which in the temporal period covered in
the novel involves minority communities in particular. Jehangir’s decision to accept his
classmates’ bribes stem from his family’s straightened circumstances. More resonantly, Yezad’s
decision to spur Mr. Kapur's political ambitions, leading to Mr. Kapur's death, springs from a
similar motive—to gain promotion and thereby improve his own financial standing. The State-
socialism unevenly practiced in India largely restricted financial opportunities and set up a
patronage system that engendered corruption and youth resentment due to the lack of
opportunities, and Mistry views these practices, not capitalism, as responsible for India's flaws,
flaws that turn a secular, cosmopolitan man into a fanatic.
Secularism—or secular culture—and cosmopolitan identity are closely tied in our
understanding: we live in a world that privileges these values, views them as necessarily more
valuable and progressive than their opposite. In colonial history, particularly, secular and
cosmopolitan community identities helped the Parsis in India and the Berbers in Algeria to gain
political and social power. Even today, secularism is used as a political tool in the court of global
opinion: the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown in Egypt to
international silence because the latter's anti-secular status unnerved the watching world; in the
same vein, his secularist credentials allowed Hosni Mubarak to maintain his dictatorial
stronghold as Egyptian leader for three decades. It is the fascist Hindutva's understanding of this
notion that prompts them to proclaim themselves, ironically, the harbingers of true secularism.
Shankar 87

Historically, the privilege of a secularized identity worked in favor of the Parsi
community as well. Arguably, this community has been among those who suffered the most in
economic terms in the aftermath of Indian independence and the socialist atmosphere that
prevailed. The Tatas, India’s then-richest family, lost many of their business holdings to the
government, as did the Birlas and other prominent Parsi families. The community, whose
numbers have always been small, and which has never really included a working class
component,
36
began losing their social standing in an economy run on influence-peddling lines.
The product of such a background and culture, Mistry’s works besides Family Matters
also betray this anxiety of a middle-class community losing their class grounding: Mistry seems
to be arguing that the failures/issues with Indian secularism are responsible for the struggles of
the cosmopolitan class, which in turn affects the potency of Indian secularism.
The problem with this mode of looking at the world is obvious within Mistry’s works.
For all their positives, Mistry's works are limited by the Parsi, secular-cosmopolitan frame of
reference he not only invokes but also privileges. In Family Matters, this is best exemplified by
the myriad failures of Mistry's characterization: While he is quite successful in
deconstructing/questioning the power of communal voices to control individual lives within the
Parsi community, his imagination fails in his attempts to depict lives and modes of
living/confronting the world from outside the middle-class, cosmopolitan background.

36
Homi Bhabha states that “There are working-class Parsees, by objective criteria, but they're not working class
in the sense of being part of the labour process, factory workers. The poorer Parsees are protected by large
charities; so those who would slip into an Indian working class are preserved as a peculiarly protected lower-
middle class, people who work in clerical jobs fostered by Parsee industrialists” (“Between Identities” 186).

Shankar 88

LIMITATIONS OF MISTRY’S VISION: THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE UNDERCLASS
One of the reasons Chandra’s underrated Sacred Games stands out from the more
celebrated works of his fellow diasporic writers is that he is comfortable focusing on characters
outside the secular cosmopolitan elite of the writers—while both Sartaj and Gaitonde exhibit
elements of the cosmopolitan world-view, the fact that they weren’t born and raised in this
worldview is revealed by their regressiveness or unreconstructed behavior in certain areas: their
tendency to romanticize women, for example, or their discomfort and fear of nothingness and the
loss of belief. Perhaps Chandra's success in recreating the lower-middle class mentality of Sartaj
and Gaitonde is a result of his active and intensive research prior to writing the novel.
37

Whatever the reason, Chandra does a deft job of providing dimensionality to people outside the
cosmopolitan upper-class cocoon, and specifically of illustrating the agency of those who fall in
the margins of polite society. Mistry, however, is quite limited in reaching outside the world of
his experience in creating characters, and arguably this has been a constant feature of his writing.
His most celebrated work, the Booker Prize-shortlisted A Fine Balance, which was also featured
on Oprah’s Book Club, catapulted him to the same strata of celebrated Indian literary writers as
Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth, and is easily his most well critiqued and most ambitious
work—dealing with the effects of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, when democracy was suspended
for two years to reestablish “order,” on its subaltern protagonists.
While Mistry gained renown in the West for his realistic depiction of the state-inflicted
cruelties tied to the Emergency, and for his moving critique of casteism through the text's

37
Chandra took seven years to write Sacred Games, and went back and lived in Bombay for months at a time to
capture the texture of the city. Furthermore, he managed to gain one-on-one time with some of Bombay’s most
notorious underworld figures, which undoubtedly aided his realistic depictions.

Shankar 89

illustration of its corrosive effects on the lives of the protagonists Om and Ishvar, his work has
also come in for some strong criticism for its depiction of lower-caste/class agency and
subjectivity—or lack thereof. In his article “Resistance and Representation: Postcolonial Fictions
of Nations in Crisis,” Nagesh Rao contrasts the commercial and critical success of Mistry’s A
Fine Balance with the largely forgotten status of Timothy Mo’s The Redundancy of Courage, set
in an unnamed country under neo-colonial attack, also critically acclaimed and Booker-
shortlisted on its release. Rao claims that Mistry’s continued success owes at least in part to his
choice of representing the subaltern as lacking effective agency. For example, Om and Ishvar,
two of the protagonists of the novel, are forced to flee their village after Om's father, Ishvar's
brother, makes the fatal mistake of questioning the landlord's power, resulting in the rape and
murder of his family members. While this depiction alone, true to many Indian tales, cannot be
taken as patronizing to the subaltern, the novel proceeds to catalog the misfortunes that beset our
protagonists, who end up as castrated beggars. While Mistry’s intent may have been to give voice
to the forgotten victims of a repressive state, and to depict the unfeeling ways in which they are
treated, his fetishization of suffering, Rao feels, plays into the overdetermined western
stereotypes of India in general and the Indian caste-system in particular, helping him win the
privileged status of native informer.
38
Mo's novel, on the other hand, “resists incorporation into a

38
Mistry is not unaware of the criticism his works face, and there is an amusing section within Family Matters
where Vilas Rane acts as his mouthpiece, defending Mistry's work in rather self-regarding terms: “A while back, I
read a novel about the Emergency. A big book, full of horrors, real as life. But also full of life, and the laughter and
dignity of ordinary people. One hundred per cent honest—made me laugh and cry as I read it. But some reviewers
said no, no, things were not that bad. Especially foreign critics. You know how they come here for two weeks and
become experts. One poor woman whose name I can't remember made such a hash of it, she had to be a bit pagal
[mad], defending Indira, defending the Sanjay sterilization scheme, defending the entire Emergency—you felt sorry
for her even though she was a big professor at some big university in England” (181).
While Mistry displays a hilarious self-regard in having his own character praise his novel—“made me laugh and
cry”--he seems to genuinely feel that his close examination of suffering is necessary, unlike Rao.
Shankar 90

postcolonial problematic because of its affirmative vision of national liberation.” Rao perhaps
goes overboard in his argument since he doesn't take into account authorial style, narrative flow,
and other such factors which could have led to Mistry's greater popularity.
39
Nonetheless, it is
true that, like the more recent phenomenon surrounding Khalid Hosseini's success, Mistry's
initial popularity in the West sprang, to a degree, from his exotic, native informer status, and
therefore he has a greater responsibility than general fiction writers of responsibly representing
the subjectivity of the characters he depicts.
While Family Matters focuses on the travails of a middle-class Parsi family, the same
failings that Rao sees in Mistry's earlier work seem to affect this newer tome, in ways that
damage Mistry's effectiveness at critiquing the state of Indian secularism. As in the earlier novel,
Mistry catalogs the plight of the underclass. In this work, he does it indirectly through his use of
the character Vilas Rane, a Book Mart salesman and unofficial letter writer and reader for the
unlettered, who thus serves as a mediator for the reader concerning this class, whose depiction
again turn into an excess of violence and suffering. During a lunch, for example, Vilas relays the
story reported in one of the letters he'd read for a client:
[Vilas] summarized the contents penned by the village scribe: the younger brother
had been spending time with a girl from a higher caste, and this had annoyed
people in the village, especially the girl's relatives. Both had been told to stop. As
a warning, some men from the girl's family had assaulted the young man, which
only made the couple more defiant. One evening the two were found in each

39
Though he notes that Mo's work bears the markers of a postmodern text, unlike Mistry's, Rao doesn't seem to
consider that this may have been a factor in sales.

Shankar 91

other's arms. The men tore the lovers apart, beat them, pulled out their hair, ripped
their clothes off. An urgent meeting of the village panchayat was called. The
couple, bruised and bleeding, was brought before them. The boy's family said if
their son had committed a crime, the police could register a complaint. The girl's
family argued it was a village matter, requiring the traditional punishment. The
panchayat agreed. A decision was rendered in minutes: hanging, for both, after
slicing off their ears and noses. (179)
The characters here are one-dimensional, perhaps understandable since this is an anecdote told
by a minor character. However, given the fact that this anecdote is not a one-off, the reader is
left—through the repetitive images of hapless lower-class belonging—with a limited
understanding of Indian lower-class subjectivity. This tendency to see the underclass largely in
terms of victimhood also affects Mistry's depiction of plurality. The Bombay Sporting Goods
Emporium where Yezad works serves as the text's exemplar of the possibility of a truly
multicultural India. Owned by Vikram Kapur, it is manned by him, Yezad, and Husain, members
of three different faiths—Hindu, Parsi and Muslim
40
—an oasis of peace and harmony in a city
that needs both, but Mistry's attempt to make a statement is diminished by the fact that Yezad and
Mr. Kapur are more fully realized characters than Husain. Yezad himself is the type of character
Mistry was most familiar with in real life, one which recurs in most of his fiction, a westernized
middle–class Parsi male, and Bombay-obsessed Mr. Kapur, a Hindu businessman with
cosmopolitan ideas and dreams of a more religiously welcoming India, would also likely fall
within Mistry’s frame of experience. However, Husain, the third wheel in the shop, is not

40
Multiculturalism represented through the interactions of three friends of three faiths has a long history in
Bollywood. Amar Akbar Anthony, in which 3 brothers are raised in different faiths, is a prime example of this.
Shankar 92

provided the same complexity. Indeed, one can go as far as to say that Husain functions as a
caricature, a one-dimensional “good Muslim” character similar to the type that was the staple of
Bollywood movies in the 1970s, functioning only as a living reminder to readers of the riots and
its aftermath. The power imbalance between the three and Husain's infantilized state is well
illustrated in a passage that depicts their interactions, when Yezad arrives at work and finds
Husain crouched silent in a corner, leading him to call in Mr. Kapur:
[On his arrival, Mr. Kapur] hurried to the storage area, cursing under his breath
the bastards who had destroyed Husain's life and the lives of thousands like him.
'How are you, Husain miyan?' He crouched beside him in the dark corner and
patted his shoulder. 'You'll have some tea?' He took his elbow and made him rise,
bringing him to the front of the shop, into the afternoon light.
Yezad made three cups of tea and carried them to the counter. “Chalo, Husain,
we'll all drink together.”
The peon thanked him and received his cup. Mr. Kapur pointed out things in the
street, saying look at the colour of that car, and what a big truck, and there goes
so-and-so from the Jai Hind Book Mart. He entertained Husain as he would a sick
child. Yezad too made a contribution to the effort. No matter how often he
watched Mr. Kapur during these times of crises, he was touched by his employer's
gentleness as he went about mending the cracks in Husain's broken life. (129)
While Mistry's main intent in this passage is to highlight Mr. Kapur's extraordinary compassion,
Hussein also becomes fixed in our minds as childlike, because of his acquiescence to Yezad and
Mr. Kapur's treatment, a victim in need of pity and sympathy, not empathy.
Compared to, say, Chandra’s nuanced, extremely multifaceted representations of the
Shankar 93

lower-classes through characters like Wasim Zafar Ali Ahmad, the aspiring slumlord
politician/social worker, and the Badriya brothers, the right hands of two warring dons, Mistry’s
characterization of a suffering minority member of the underclass comes across as extremely
flimsy. Even the “powerless” Muslim characters in Chandra’s characters reveal a personality that
Husain lacks. For example, Aadil Ansari, the father of a murder victim, is socially powerless, and
forced into a sullen silence in the face of the statist and gangland authorities he fears, yet his
hostile silence is one that impresses Sartaj with its vehemence. Husain, on the other hand, is
heavily sentimentalized, a sop to the reader rather than a character. Even as early as Swimming
Lessons, Mistry's tendency to see the underclass as overwhelmed and incapable of affirmative
action came across as problematic: in "Lend me Your Light," a landlord's brutal murders of well-
intentioned social workers is met by the silence of the cowed peasants the workers were trying to
help. The implications of a story like this, and what it suggests about activism, are rooted in a
very middle-class perspective of lower-class subjectivity, as driven by passivity and fear.
Of course, the inability to create fully realized characters isn't criminal and one could
argue that it shouldn't take away from Mistry's critique of State secularism and minority identity
reification. However, the repeated tendency in the novel—through Husain's sentimentalized
weakness, or through Vilas' interpretive presence—to depict subalterns who cannot stand up for
themselves is problematic in its naturalization of a clichéd notion of subaltern helplessness. To
elaborate on a previous point, Mistry seems to view secularism and cosmopolitanism,
particularly as it is practiced by the Parsis and the middle and upper middle-classes, as integrally
connected: cosmopolitanism, indeed, is the precondition to secular success—Vilas, Yezad and
other right-thinking men are all members of a cosmopolitan class. The problem with this notion
is that cosmopolitanism is the privilege of a well-educated minority. Yezad, Nariman, Roxana
Shankar 94

and others may be able to endlessly quote Lear, and distinguish between the compositions of
Bach and Sarasate, but most Indians don't have access to this cultural knowledge, and viewing
cosmopolitanism and secularism as interconnected essentially prevents Mistry from conceiving
of a better response to the Crisis of Secularism. Furthermore, Yezad's own transformation shows
the limitations of cosmopolitanism to combat the lure of essentialization, and therefore Mistry
seems to undermine his own argument for a secular society.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY: MISTRY’S MIXED MESSAGE
As mentioned above, despite the limitations of his perspective, Mistry’s work stands out
from that of other Indo-Anglian writers because of his concern with the effects of minority
community power on the individual. For Rushdie’s cosmopolitan protagonists and characters, the
religious community’s influence is laughable and negligible, and Chandra’s protagonists are
loners who accede to the existence of a community they belong to, yet seem largely unformed by
them. Mistry’s protagonists, however, often face virulent pressure from the communities they
belong to, whether it is in the form of the Hindu caste system in A Fine Balance or obsession
with Parsi purity and belonging in Family Matters, Such a Long Journey and in the stories in
Swimming Lessons.
Based on his previous writings, it is easy to conclude that Mistry has little patience with
inflexible and blind fundamentalism, since his most sympathetic characters often voice strong
opposition to such stances. Even in Family Matters, Yezad's increasing religiosity and
fundamentalism are revealed as largely negative due to the strains they create within the family,
financially and emotionally. Yet Mistry doesn't seem to necessarily view a rejection of religion as
ideal either, considering the current cultural context. In the epilogue, set five years after the main
Shankar 95

events in the novel, Jehangir watches the growing divide between his older brother Murad and
his father on the question of religious orthodoxy and personal freedom. Like all young men,
Murad wants more freedom and detests his father's orthodoxy, and the first section of the
epilogue features scene after scene of father and son clashing and ridiculing each other's beliefs.
While Mistry may agree with Murad's idea that notions of purity are arbitrary, through Jehangir's
eyes we see Murad's hardline secularism as immature and disrespectful, and ultimately
counterproductive since they only force Yezad to fight his corner more fiercely.
Caught in between his father's inflexibility and brother's own hard-line secularism,
Jehangir can only watch helplessly, with the peace in the epilogue being temporary and context-
specific: father and son reunite for Murad's coming-of-age birthday. As a result, Mistry doesn't
seem to offer or see a way out of the impasse between them. Jehangir's ability to see the
limitations of both perspectives could represent Mistry's championing of a middle ground.
Indeed, it could be argued that Mistry is only reproducing a literary representation of Homi
Bhabha's notion of hybridity, since that is what Jehangir's choice boils down to—the decision to
be not this or that, but both. Yet this willingness to compromise is, narratively, what destroyed
Jehangir's grandfather's life, so Jehangir's solution, too, is far from ideal.
Furthermore, unlike in Mistry's previous works, escaping abroad isn't a solution: in
Swimming Lessons, the protagonist of the titular story, Kersi, a recurring character in the
connected collection, ends up in Canada; in A Fine Balance, while Om and Ishvar suffer, Manek
escapes to the Middle East. Though there's frequent mention made of Canadian immigration in
Family Matters, with Yezad having once viewed it as his sole hope for his family, in the end,
through Jehangir's decision to shelve his Enid Blyton books, we get a rejection of any attempt to
recreate the West in India, or to see the West as holding hope for restoring the family
Shankar 96

equilibrium. The ending, therefore, can be read as downbeat, fundamentally depicting the slow
degradation of a dying community due to its inflexibility, a result of its minoritization, both by
the dominant culture and itself. Mistry offers not a solution, but a call to arms to his audience,
asking them to reconsider the issues connected with minority identity and its problematic nature.

CONCLUSION
There are strong recurring themes and motifs and stylistic conventions in Mistry's many
works, and because of this, and because Family Matters lacks the heft of A Fine Balance, which
cast its sweeping eye over an entire society during a time of national trauma, his last novel, the
first work written after the Post-Babri Crisis of Indian Secularism, has failed to garner much
attention. Additionally, too, as we saw in the previous section, Mistry's message isn't new: like
Rushdie and Chandra, he essentially ends up championing the rational individual open to the
world, caring of others and willing to espouse hybrid values. However, he does do a better job
than them
41
of representing an India often mentioned but rarely depicted well in Indo-Anglian
works, an India of lived religious experience and strong community spirit, an India where
communities define perceptions of individuality more strongly than in the West.
42
And in
choosing Jehangir rather than Murad to serve as our eyes in the final chapter, he also reiterates
the inescapability of a relationship with faith in a culture where identity, belonging and faith are
so closely linked.

41
One could argue that Chandra's Red Earth and Pouring Rain, a novel that features the gods among its cast of
characters, does so as well, but its magical realist angle and American educated, cynical individualist protagonist
doesn't feel the same compelling connections to family and community that Mistry's characters do.

42
There are, obviously, religious and ethnic stereotypes in the West, but the general recognition of individualism
as a goal negates the powers of stereotypes to an extent; in India, on the other hand, views such as these—that Sikhs
and Muslims are martial races, that Parsis are scrupulously honest, still hold sway and Mistry himself addresses this.
Shankar 97

Furthermore, through presenting the idealized space of Bombay Sporting Goods
Emporium and depicting the actions of Vikram Kapur towards Husain, he implies that the
cosmopolitan and secular individual has a duty to those who haven't received the benefits of a
secular education and upbringing. This is further buttressed through the actions of Vilas Rane.
When Yezad questions Rane's salesmanship, considering the low rates he charges, Vilas points
out that his social service has another aim, to prevent the uneducated workers from being
incorporated into the Hindutva rhetoric by the ever-present “social” wings of Hindu
fundamentalist groups. Here Mistry acknowledges a facet of Hindutva success rarely highlighted
in artistic renditions: the democratization of fanaticism, through social service. The fact that he
doesn't note the connection between this and the democratization of secularism necessary to
ensure that secularism develops into more than a theoretical project in India is an oversight but
doesn't negate the overall contribution his work makes to literary discussions of the need to
engage critically and socially with the issue of secularism in order to ensure a more stable and
successful India.

Shankar 98

Conclusion
One of the interesting points raised in my research into the Indian Crisis of Secularism
concerns the language used to categorize the violence and to describe the State's failure to protect
minority rights. In Enlightenment in the Colony and Limiting Secularism, authors Aamir Mufti
and Priya Kumar utilize charged terms like "pogroms" and "genocide," which draw on the shared
global memory of large-scale, systematic and long-term genocidal actions against the Jewish
populations in Europe based on their conceived "otherness” to the European populace at large
43
.
Through their linguistic choices, then, Aamir Mufti and other critics implicitly equate the
treatment of Indian Muslims with that of the historical treatment of European Jews. However,
this parallel ignores the Indian context since Muslim otherness has been contested not just by
Muslim scholars but also by Hindu ones, and even avowed Hindu populists like Gandhi, who
utilized Hindu imagery and myths to mobilize the public while calling for Hindu-Muslim unity
in parallel. Furthermore, drawing this parallel between Jewish exclusion and Muslim othering
ignores the widespread dissemination of Hindu-Muslim bhai bhai or Hindu-Muslim brotherhood
rhetoric, which was as rhetorically and politically potent as Hindutva for most of India's history
(indeed, Gandhi himself drew on the poems of the seer Kabir, for example, to imply that Hindu-
Muslim amity has a historical and "natural" basis, thus casting the religious tensions pre-
Independence as "produced" and unnatural, an effect of the British Raj). Documentaries such as
Ram Ke Naam (In the Name of Ram), which focuses on the ground events and attitudes leading
up to the destruction of the Babri Masjid, reveal the degree to which Hindu-Muslim brotherhood

43
Mufti uses this purported parallel as his basis for reimagining India's perception of its own history and secular
antecedents.

Shankar 99

rhetoric had been internalized by the average Indian, with many interviewees displaying a more
jaundiced and sophisticated understanding of communal politics than one might expect.
44

Furthermore, since Pakistan's founding principle was the fear of Hindu majoritarianism,
disproving or undermining it has historically been India's default position.
45

However, at the academic level, there has been a tendency to flatten the
readings/interpretations of these historical events, or to hyperbolize the situation. Even scholars
based in India, like Ashis Nandy and T.N Madan, whose theoretical arguments largely invoke
empirical evidence, utilized cataclysmic terms like the "End of Secularism" and downbeat
language when visualizing the country's future in the immediate aftermath of the Masjid's
demolition. Most texts on the issue seem to locate in the events of Babri Masjid an "end" of
something—an idealistic national character, or worse, the Nation itself. Considering the state of
Indian politics at the advent of my project, a time when Hindutva forces had been roundly
defeated in two successive election cycles by a coalition of the vocally socialist-secular Indian
National Congress and regional parties, including the Muslim League, I had wondered whether
the reams of analysis, the hand-wringing, and Cassandran prophecies and warnings were
overblown, and whether the Babri Masjid demolition and its aftermath had been overtheorized.
In particular, the Bombay attacks of 2008 made me consider the issue more sharply since
the populace's response to these attacks was largely, to use the British call-to-arms during the
Second World War, to "Keep Calm and Carry On." I wondered whether the citizenry had

44
Of course, I'm basically taking for granted the documentary's fairness and assuming that they didn't frame
interviews to privilege a certain perspective of the common man.

45
Hindutva balances on a tightrope in this situation, insinuating that Muslim perfidy was responsible for
Pakistan's creation in order to justify its own marginalization and exclusion of Indian Muslims from the national
imaginary.
Shankar 100

become sufficiently sophisticated or perhaps wary enough to ignore the public fomenting of
violence by politicians, and whether they had begun to understand that Hindutva serves as a mere
façade for economic and political power grabbing by unprincipled politicians.
Today, India seems to have achieved a stability of sorts on the communal front, with
sporadic religious violence reduced to the pre-Babri Masjid levels and relegated to the margins
of public discourse. However, it would also be foolish and naïve to claim that the events of 6
th

December haven't left an indelible mark, particularly on the minority psyche: Muslim visibility
has increased through the increased utilization of "Muslim" markers or signifiers: women's head
coverings, beards and caps among men, and the increased use of the purdah are just some of the
visual signifiers I've seen proliferate during my trips back home. A minority's attempt to
emphasize and register their presence visually generally arises as reaction to a perceived threat of
effacement; therefore, even if, objectively, the discourse on the future of Indian secularism was
overwrought, the events and the discourse itself did have a material effect on the victimized
community. Furthermore, during the latest elections that took place earlier this year, the
Hindutva forces chose as their face Narendra Modi, the unapologetic leader of the worst violence
against Muslims in the new Millennium, the Godhra massacre, during which over 2000 largely
Muslim working-class lives were lost.
46
However, Modi has been repackaged in political
discourse as the proto-capitalist Indian leader, the only one who can bring the good times back to
a country whose growth rate has decelerated alarmingly—this juxtaposition of the seemingly
disconnected strands of primordial Hindutva and visionary economics in the same figure speaks

46
The official estimates cap the number at 1100, but since the attacks seemed to have State sanction, this number
has largely been disputed.

Shankar 101

to some of the issues raised in Chapters 1 and 3, and the degree to which economics,
communalization and minoritization are intertwined. Though the first few months of Modi's rule
have been largely peaceful, the very fact that a leader of his reputation now occupies the highest
office in the land reveals that the issue of Indian secularism and its future isn’t quite as settled as
we might imagine.
During my research, I was also faced with another question: As I read Priya Kumar's
argument about literature, Derrida, and secularism in the Indian context, I wondered if we were
overestimating the power of art, particularly Indo-Anglian literature's influence and ability to
serve as a site for influencing change. Of course, the point might be raised that we shouldn’t look
to art to provide meaning or political change, but considering the fact that this is precisely
Kumar's claim, and that writers like Rushdie have made a living as more than artists but as
national oracles and international interlocutors for India, and that artists worldwide keep
emphasizing the social meaningfulness of art, I believe the point stands.
Finally, I believe that currently there is the genuine opportunity to move beyond the
mistakes of the past. Critics like Aamir Mufti have referred to Partition as India's unclosed,
unregistered, unspoken wound. Hindutva's rise partially resulted from the Hindutva leadership's
ability to exploit the official historical silences about Partition, and draw on the repressed
resentment in certain segments of the population, by creating their own myths about the nation-
forming event, which furthered their ideological purpose of refashioning India as Hindu terrain.
The nineties, a time of economic uncertainty, regional separatism, and national suspicion of
state-controlled media, proved a fertile ground for the Hindutva upsurge. However, the situation
on the ground is vastly different today. The growth of the English-language Indian publishing
industry, the recent willingness of the three Khans to take up more 'Muslim' roles and to embody
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their Muslim identities in public, and the political coming-of-age of a new, post-Babri
generation, all prove that the opportunity exists for avoiding the mistakes of the past. The recent
revitalization of Hindutva forces reveals that the discourse on secularism had either been limited
or limiting since we seem caught in a vicious cycle, so perhaps we need to look beyond the mere
political for alternative answers.
Over the course of working on my dissertation I discovered that some of my cynicism
and doubts were unfounded. I realized that I had misunderstood/misread Kumar's argument: her
claim wasn't the rash one that Indo-Anglian fiction could serve as a panacea but the nuanced one
that it might provide alternatives for us to consider. The very form of the novel, for one, serves
an important purpose: Since both films and literature focus on figure of the individual, they
reinforce the uniqueness and complicated nature of people as individuals, rather than as members
of groups, a lesson particularly valuable in a country where family and community belonging
still serve as the fundamental building blocks of society, and where lazy, stereotypical
perceptions of "others" are still to be understood as politically incorrect or wrong.
During my research I also noticed that, perhaps because the field of postcolonial theory
had come of age at about the same time as the Indo-Anglian novel (the early 1980s), there
seemed to be some overlap between the attitudes, values, and ways of perceiving the world of the
theorists and authors involved. Amitav Ghosh, for example, while an author, is closely
associated with the Subaltern Studies Collective and Kumar and Mufti detail well how Rushdie,
among other writers, purposefully utilizes theoretical concepts like hybridity and hospitality to
further his arguments about society via narrative. However, it struck me that the writers and
theorists whose works I examined were invariably members of the Indian cosmopolitan middle-
class, and mostly based in the West. While I don't agree with the trenchant dismissal of Indo-
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Anglian writing by vernacular authors and critics who've called it inauthentic, unrooted and
lacking value (partly because I'm one!), I did wonder whether the homogeneity of these writers,
and even some of the film-makers, almost all denizens of cosmopolitan Bombay, might impede
their well-intentioned analysis and suggestions for moving beyond communal rage.
In addition to the political/thematic content, I also wanted to look at the form and
techniques used by writers, and how well they succeeded in using literary forms and techniques
to promote their ways of perceiving the world. In the foreword to Postcolonial Poetics, the
editors Patrick Crowley and Jane Hiddleston bemoans a perceived tendency in postcolonial
criticism to privilege political readings, even in the analysis of art. By providing a literary
analysis of various postcolonial texts from French-speaking colonies, Postcolonial Poetics
invites a reconsideration of the genres themselves and postcolonial literature's aesthetic
contributions and value: while postcolonial literature will always have a political slant, studying
works purely from a political angle diminishes the genre's value. Rushdie, Mistry, Chandra and
the various filmmakers mentioned in “Bollywood and the Muslim” are primarily artists, and
what I've discovered during my research is that occasionally their artistic needs/ aims can
undercut the political or larger aims. However, it's also interesting to note the narrative strategies
that do work well in terms of audience response. Even if it is flawed, from a theoretical
perspective, Mistry's Family Matters deploys sentimental tropes in a way calculated to gain the
audience's sympathy, and draws on an intimate understanding of the popular Indian regard for
sentimentalism—that is, Mistry draws on a narrative trope that Bollywood has historically
primed its audience to be moved by. Similarly in “Kama,” Vikram Chandra deconstructs the
sexless, child-focused Indian mother trope, which is yet another one of Bollywood's favorites.
The deployment of these techniques requires an understanding of the audience and the world of
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the characters, and these works are interesting from a historical perspective since they let us
know how India and Indians were viewed and viewed the world in turn at the time of writing.
Borrowing a strategy from Postcolonial Poetics, which draws on various genres and their
poetics and aesthetic strategies, a future reconsideration of my dissertation argument might also
include Indo-Anglian poetry and non-fiction, particularly autobiography, a field of growing
interest in this age of vanity publications and small, independent presses publishing
“autobiography-disguised-as-fiction” narratives. Any future study will also need to take into
account the nature of the local Indian publishing industry, since the local genre works released
by local publishers, which have a dedicated readership among India's aspirational middle-class
youth, are arguably more influential than canonical literary Indo-Anglian works today: it is
Chetan Bhagat who serves as the voice of today's generation, not Rusdhie or Mistry. A longer
study that focuses on Bollywood might also study India's unique cult of personality and its
effects on Indian youth and secularism, considering the nearly two-decade long dominance of the
"three Khans" in Bollywood. (Part of why I was interested in writing the chapter on Bollywood
had to do with the seemingly paradoxical aspect of a largely Hindu audience's hero worship of
decidedly Muslim actors even during Hindutva's heyday).
The preceding chapters reveal that where Bollywood once served as an impediment to
Muslim and minority integration, today it serves as the artistic venue most capable of
encouraging people to imagine new modes of national integration and belonging; the impact it
has had on shifting the popular ideas of Indian femininity in the last decade alone evidence this:
occasionally, you do get the throwback regressive hit, but the success of—and increased public
attention paid to—films starring female actors like Vidya Balan (The Dirty Picture, Kahaani)
illustrate that the industry and the audience are changing dramatically, and in this period of
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shifting audience tastes and attitudes, the film industry can play a role—either good or bad—in
changing attitudes towards Muslim inclusion in the national imaginary.
Similarly, for all their good intentions and nuanced analysis, the narratives of India's most
celebrated Indo-Anglian authors are limited by the very cosmopolitan attitude that drive them to
envision a more welcoming, syncretic India. Furthermore, this dissertation also reveals a critical
weakness of the perceived Indo-Anglian canon since the most celebrated authors all seem to
belong to the same contained social background and geographical space; it isn't that the
strategies they propose aren't useful, but they're self-evident, and have already been endlessly
articulated by other members of their cosmopolitan class. In essence, they're preaching to the
choir. There have been recent efforts at Indian institutions to broaden the Indo-Anglian canon,
and perhaps the inclusion of more works from the marginalized perspective can offer new
insights and ways of looking at the current problems faced by Indian secularism. However, this
still cannot change the fact that, in terms of popularity and public recognition, few can match the
Rushdie-Mistry-Seth axis. This does not mean that the works of new literary authors are without
merit, however. They can still really offer the power of their genius in creating vivid minority
characters who may, if nothing else, serve as a touching point for those whose knowledge of
other faiths come only from literature and films.
This is not a small thing. My first semester at USC, I attended the functions of the
Campus Crusaders for Christ, partly because I hoped I'd find material for a story, but mostly
because of the free food on offer. In the process I met a group of young Master's students from
Delhi, all young engineers who'd grown up in the city, which has a long Muslim-dominated
history and a significant Muslim presence. So I was shocked listen to them discuss Muslims with
a sort of anthropological curiosity, like one might discuss a chimera or a basilisk. If young men
Shankar 106

brought up in one of India's most cosmopolitan cities, with a significant Muslim population and
enough industry to promote interreligious mixing in professional spaces, were capable of this
level of ignorance, how much worse might it be in other parts? This is why, despite their
limitations, literature and film can serve a vital purpose: perhaps not of understanding the “other”
as much as helping the readers imagine him as a friend or as someone knowable. Perhaps this
way the universal humanism that lies at the heart of all great literature and films can have an
impact on the way we imagine India: a better India, one that can be Hindu, Muslim, Christian, or
anything in between and more.

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The Good in Me is Dead: Stories

Shankar 108

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

STOP ALL THE CLOCKS .........................................................................................................109

MISSING .....................................................................................................................................132

THE GOOD IN ME IS DEAD ....................................................................................................157

THE MUTAWWA KILLERS .....................................................................................................186

FENG SHUI .................................................................................................................................246

THE REPLACEMENT ................................................................................................................271

NO COUNTRY FOR WOMEN ..................................................................................................293

DRIVING LESSONS ..................................................................................................................319

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Stop All the Clocks
On New Year’s Eve, Shaju lay on his bed in his too-cold room, watching the luminous
green dials of his alarm clock as all three hands brushed together at the top for a nervy instant,
and he whispered Happy New Year to the humming air. This was his first time spending New
Year’s at home. The Malayalee set his family hung out with held ‘parties’ every year, dinners
he’d thought a little boring until he’d been told he couldn’t attend one. He huddled deeper in the
blanket—it felt wrong to be too cold in Saudi Arabia—and considered going to Sumaya’s room
to wish her at least.
His sister had sulked most when Wapa insisted they'd be staying home. It’s not fair, she’d
pouted: Her friends would be there, and a new year was to be celebrated with good food and
friends and fun, not spent locked up at home like it was any other night. Shaju had agreed and
they’d warred with Wapa at the dinner table, shoulder to shoulder, as they did whenever they
needed to bend Wapa to a common need. But seeing Wapa’s growing irritation in the set of his
jaw, Shaju softened his stance and then quieted. Sumaya, mouthier and less skilled at reading
others, had continued needling him until Umma rapped her wooden ladle against the stovetop
edge and glared. Her interference had been for the best: Wapa never beat them (unlike some of
their friends’ fathers, Umma reminded them often, and God knows you’ll be better for a belting)
yet his infrequent black moods would simmer for days and would affect everyone: little clouds
of gloom would lurk around corners in the apartment, and strike them all at odd times.
Wapa may have issued his directive last week, but Shaju knew he'd been thinking about it
since the sixth. He’d come back from work a few minutes after seven and had turned to the
radio—the only way to get fresh news from back home. Shaju had been sat sunk into the sea-
blue living room sofa that Umma wouldn’t allow them to go near normally because, she said, her
Shankar 110

children weren’t civilized enough to regularly use good furniture. But on the sixth, she’d been
busy with dinner, and he enjoyed brooding in the near darkness, in the room that smelled barely
lived in. The apartment wasn’t as large as some of his friends’—certainly nothing to Sanjay’s
Villa in Bani Malik—and soon the smell of frying cutlets snapped him out of his cushioned
daydreams and he’d been lazily considering filching some when Wapa had uttered “Damn!”
through the crackle of noise from the radio, followed by a hushed “Allah” and Shaju had known
instantly that they’d done in the Mosque.
The damned Mosque, located in a part of India he’d never even heard of, that old decrepit
building nobody had noticed for forty years until some Hindus decided it was sitting on the
birthplace of their god, Ram, taunting his divinity with its existence. The skirmish over that
stupid mosque in a backwater in the north had deepened into an all-out battle across the country,
and spilled abroad to the Middle East, where so many Indians lived and worked, to Shaju’s own
school in Saudi Arabia. Boys who visited India only intermittently and viewed the country as one
did a shameful relative rarely acknowledged, turned violently passionate, and the word Jihad had
trickled back into their vocabularies despite the beating it had taken in Saddam's war against the
Yanks.
Wapa had never been a great follower of current events outside those at work or featuring
his family. He only subscribed to the local English paper—which was censored and useless—
because Sumaya wanted the Friday children’s supplement and Shaju himself loved the comics,
Luann and Better or for Worse and Garfield—the shimmering slices of western life that, along
with Hollywood films, directed his amorphous future plans. But Wapa’s indifference had altered
around May when the Hindus made their first aborted attempt to storm the Mosque. He’d return
from work and tune in to BBC and Doordarshan radio almost obsessively. And, as India grew
Shankar 111

more heated, Wapa grew ostentatiously faithful. They’d always been good Muslims in a way,
Wapa and Umma, but rather lax as parents: While Umma and Wapa prayed regularly, they’d
never pressured Shaju and Sumaya for five a day, and Shaju had grown up believing that fervent,
embarrassing faith was the hallmark of the Urdu-speaking North Indians that populated his high
school’s halls and swore wallahi, by God, on the most mundane topics, clutching their throats
fervently, the boys who could recite the Quran thoroughly by the time they were twelve or
thirteen, said everything—the date of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing, the recipe for the Atom
Bomb, every thing—could be found in holiest of Books. So when Wapa returned from work the
day after the Mosque’s razing, saying that this or that temple had been torn down, with ugly
delight tainting his voice, Shaju had felt afraid.

In bed, he hummed thoughtlessly until he realized it was the New Year song. He heaved
off the thick blanket and swung his feet to the springy carpeted floor. So what if Wapa had
decided that it wasn’t right for good Muslims to be celebrating New Year’s with their Hindu
friends, and Umma had gone along? He could still wish Sumaya, there was no shame in that.
Though he knew he was right, he padded softly over to her bedroom. Her door was ajar, a
sliver of yellow from the nightlight slipping through the crack. She was asleep, her face slack,
mouth open, revealing the crooked teeth she took pains to hide in the daytime, hidden behind
metal wires now that she was thirteen and looks abruptly started to matter. “Sum, Oi Sum,” he
whispered. “Happy New Year.” She gave a slight whine and made gummy smacking noises with
her mouth, her hands swatting him away.
“Happy New Year.” He spoke a little louder but she rolled over onto her stomach and her
short, lank hair fell away from her neck and curtained her face.
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It was just as well. She’d be miserable. Right now, at the party they’d be eating cake, Rati
aunty, Sanjana and others. Even Sanjay. He could almost see Sanjay’s thoughtful frown behind
his glasses as he took another bite, chewing with the same abstracted air that he tackled math
problems with, and he felt a pang of loneliness. This would have been a chance for him to make
things right with Sanjay. They’d been such good friends. Best friends since childhood. Except,
two weeks earlier, the last day before the break, partnered up in bio lab, Sanjay had signaled the
yawning distance between them, and the reason for it. “Fucking Firdaus. Why do you spend so
much time with that chootiya?” He hadn’t answered (too shocked by Sanjay actually swearing in
Hindi, which everyone around them understood, instead of Malayalam; too afraid to tell him the
truth) and he’d been hoping to talk at the party, if not to explain, then at least to show him that—
Firdaus or no Firdaus—they were still what they’d always been.
It was the first time they’d really talked since the Mosque. Despite his father’s rage,
Shaju hadn’t really comprehended that the Mosque would affect his life until the next day. At
school, he learned that five buses' windshields had been cracked by angry older students, and
there was a nervous, frantic energy among his classmates that he hadn’t seen before. He’d
wanted to find Sanjay to laugh at people’s stupidity, let his drawling, superior voice tamp down
on his fears, because he was afraid—this wasn’t India or America; nobody rioted in Saudi
Arabia. They hadn’t been taught to respect authority: they knew to fear it—the sand-colored
uniform of the Saudi police, and the white thobe of the Mutawween sent you running.
But the mosque had fallen and suddenly there was a line everyone could see between
Ram and Rahman, and Sanjay and Shaju. Or perhaps there had always been and he’d missed it.
And the rest of that day, he’d noted little things, the way people sat or talked, who with, the way
conversations quieted and fired up as people passed. He’d also noticed something that had never
Shankar 113

struck him before—that in a class of thirty, the five Hindu kids occupied the first three benches
in the middle, always sat together, moved together. Sanjay and he had been joined at the hip
when younger, but when teachers began noting Sanjay’s cleverness, they’d pulled him to the
front, away from Shaju who’d always haunted the back benches in happy anonymity.
And he’d noticed that he wasn’t the only one observing people. The rivalry between
Firdaus and Sanjay had been simmering for over a year, and suddenly their mutual antipathy had
a new dimension that involved them all. After lunch, it became obvious that Firdaus wasn’t
looking for a fight, and some of the tension eased into disappointment. The next day, Hindus and
Muslims had even mixed with strained civility. But Shaju hadn’t approached Sanjay, afraid that
Sanjay, who could always read him, would realize he was embarrassed and work out why. Shaju
had pulled Firdaus aside after the morning assembly and begged: Don’t fight with him, for me.
And then two weeks had passed, and the news from India got bloodier though it cheered the
Muslim kids somewhat—the rioting, violence and religious sacrilege flowed both ways, but if
the news was to be believed it was working out in their favor. And there was a wave of new
found faith in school, with everyone remembering to wear their skull-caps, and the prayer room
was always crowded for the afternoon prayers, with teachers not even commenting at the
stragglers the way they usually did. Hesitant though he was, Shaju had been pulled along to these
by Firdaus.
So the first time they’d really talked had been in the lab, in absurd mime and furious
whispers and Sanjay hadn’t called him to talk like he usually did during the holidays and Shaju
had been looking forward to the party more than ever. Instead of being with Sanjay, though, he
was sitting here, bored, with his family dead to the world. He glanced, amazed, at his sister:
she’d wanted to go more fiercely than he had, but hadn’t bothered staying up like a sentimental
Shankar 114

fool for midnight. There was something eminently practical about her he wished he shared.
Feeling an uncommon burst of affection for her balled-up form, frail in sleep, he leaned over and
kissed her lightly on her brow, slipping away before he woke her.

The day school reopened he was running late, the late-morning sun scorching him
through his checked blue-white shirt, and the prayer was already halfway through when he made
it to the morning assembly in the U-shaped courtyard. The rows of students were arranged by
height, and tall, lanky Sanjay stood at the end of their line, determinedly staring down while the
Surah Fatiha was recited, while Firdaus, who always seemed taller than he was, stood smack dab
in the middle. Shaju had to wait in a corner till its completion and, in the pause between the
prayer and the national pledge, he quickly slid through to his spot, just behind Firdaus. As if
sensing him, Firdaus leaned back till their shirts brushed, till he could breathe in that mix of
perfume and starchy collar he knew so well.
“Good holiday?” Firdaus asked, turning to him. The rest of the line maintained the
illusion of order. A few students conversed with heads tilted sideways and back, like spies in
movies. Firdaus, however, had no use for subterfuge. In his prefect’s white shirt and black pants,
he stood out, and his casual ease was in stark contrast to the exaggerated military erectness
teachers expected, and he had a drowsy, defiant air that people loved even though he had the
grades of a swot and was beloved of the teachers.
“The pledge,” Shaju said, hushing him just as a younger boy, a sixth-grader, stepped up
to the mike with the wide, frightened eyes of a startled cat.
“India is my country,” the little boy intoned, almost in a whisper.
Shankar 115

“India is your country,” Firdaus repeated, in a bored drone that didn’t quite carry to the
teachers.
“All Indians are my brothers and sisters,” the boy continued.
“Who’re you going to fuck, then?”
Light sniggers greeted this pat, oft-repeated, reply.
Shaju strained even more upright as teachers glanced his way, past Firdaus, with irritated
looks. Always past Firdaus, he thought sorely, watching the back of the other boy’s head, the
way his golden-brown hair curled like seraphim wings.
When the pledge was done, and the little boy had scuttled off stage with barely veiled
relief, the national anthem was sung to a sullen silence by a group of five seasoned veterans. The
Hindu boys mouthed the words, but some of the Muslim kids deliberately eased themselves into
bored poses. Firdaus hummed the Pakistani anthem. As the last strains of the melody died away,
the Headmaster, Khan Sir, stepped up to the podium, said, “Remember what I said,” with
reproving emphasis and nodded at the P.E. Teacher, standing like a sentry to his right.
“Please sir, could you repeat it, couldn’t note it down,” one wag chirped up. The P.E
teacher stepped up with a snarl, but seemed to think better of acknowledging the wit.
“Assembly dismissed!” Ali Kutty, an army veteran, said, thrusting out his chest and
glaring in a way Shaju had no doubt he’d perfected around cowering cadets. His schoolmates,
however, admirably ignored the man and retreated to their air-conditioned classrooms with all
the discipline of the Iraqi army the previous year, breaking up into little groups, some hurrying
forward, others waiting and talking to old chums, exchanging hugs, lacing proprietary fingers
though the hands of close friends. Shaju followed Firdaus and his other cronies—Yasser, the
soccer star; Salman, the second class prefect; Insha, a year their junior but distantly related to
Shankar 116

Firdaus; the thug Nasser, and a few others, all school personalities in some respect—to a corner
of the courtyard.
“Always get away with everything, don’t you?” Shaju said and looked at the others, his
smile inviting them to join in. “Bloody teacher’s pet.” No one laughed.
Firdaus smirked and leaned against the wall. “You missed Cancer’s brilliant speech. The
man’s an orator, na? Born leader.” There were murmurs of mocking agreement. “Blah Blah blah,
suspensions for those who harmed our precious buses, blah blah, any repetition and culprits from
the tenth and twelfth years won’t sit for the boards, any foolish fights and suspensions.”
They were in tenth this year. In America, they’d be called sophomores, Shaju knew from
his movies, and it wasn’t really a year that mattered. In the Indian system, though, the Boards
were everything: your grades in the centralized final exams, masterminded in Delhi, would
determine whether you’d end up a doctor, an engineer, a financier, or a washerman. To threaten
to stop them taking the Boards—
“Bull! He can’t do that, can he? I mean, it’s the Boards, yaar. Can he?” Insha said.
Firdaus shrugged. “Probably not, possibly yes. You know those Hindu bastards in Delhi
will be quite happy. They can tear down our houses of worship and laugh at us. Why wouldn’t
they mess with our futures?”
“Bull!” Insha repeated, in his high, frantic voice, then gave Shaju an unfriendly look.
“You should be safe; your lot has mastered fence-sitting.” And there it was, there was Muslim
and there was Muslim: if Shaju felt the Northies were naively faithful, the Northies felt the
Southies weren't Muslim enough.
Shaju had the fleeting urge to punch the rabbity boy when Firdaus glanced his way and
only relaxed when his friend reached out and smacked Insha on the head in a liquid move.
Shankar 117

“South, North. We’re all Muslims. The mosque was ours. We all care.” There were
hesitant murmurs of agreement, some of the boys looking him over lightning fast, and Shaju
nodded when Firdaus locked eyes with him and smiled. “So we can’t do anything. Big deal. The
Hindus have already lost. They took down one Mosque and we’ve destroyed how many
temples?” The others laughed like proper minions. Shaju didn’t say anything. The news coming
out of India was confusing and unclear—some days more Muslims died, others more Hindus—
but he didn’t think either side was winning.
“You!” The P.E teacher came striding toward them. “No classes?”
Firdaus broke away from the group. “How were your holidays, Sir?” he asked, his smile
so bright and happy that Shaju felt a slight stab of resentment.
Ali Kutty relaxed slightly, then turned to them. “To your classes!”
So they fled, except Shaju. Kutty nodded at him but said nothing as Firdaus pulled the
older man aside. Kutty knew Wapa, and they got along well, the way most Malayalees did;
where the North Indians divided by faith, the South divided by language—you spoke
Malayalam, you were in. Shaju looked up at the third floor, in the direction of his class. He could
see a few checked shirts and hands over railings, but couldn’t make out faces. Was Sanjay there,
he wondered, watching him wait for Firdaus? He almost took off then—he could’ve excused
himself later—but the fair-haired boy finished with Ali Kutty and beckoned him.
“Class?” Shaju said, as they left the courtyard.
“Not yet. Asma can wait,” Firdaus said as they jogged upstairs, nodding at the few
stragglers who ‘Oi, Firdaus’ed him. Some of the youngsters gawked at him shamelessly and
Shaju knew how they felt. When Firdaus had first come up to him at the beginning of the year,
Shaju had been puzzled and dazzled. Firdaus, who was good friends with the seniors, played on
Shankar 118

the school football team, captained the debate team, and was possibly on his way to being rank-
holder. Firdaus, whom the pretty girls at the parties always asked about, whose fair face and dark
eyes he’d heard cursed uncountable times by his best friend over the last two years. That Firdaus,
seated next to him, smiling and holding out his hand to him, wanting to be friends. He’d felt
Sanjay’s gaze burning into him even as he slipped a limp hand into the other’s strong grip and
he’d spent days convincing Sanjay that he was just being polite.
He’d lied. He’d always watched Firdaus, been jealous. Not of Firdaus himself, but of the
aura that surrounded him, the golden boys that fawned over his words, his slim, strong form and
the casual arrogance that let him walk through the school halls like a nawab through his castle.
He’d envied the proud looks of the other boy’s father at P.T.A. meetings. He’d been jealous that
even his sister, who was just starting to notice boys, asked of him sometimes. He’d resented the
fact that the boy was both intelligent and sunny, while his genius best friend brooded like a
communist. And Sanjay had taken to hanging about with the other nerdy Hindu boys even during
lunch, discussing the intricacies of FORTRAN and assembly language cycles and other things
Shaju didn’t care to understand. Shaju was always invited along, but he felt like an alien in that
setting, their discussions always just beyond his understanding, their fastidiousness and religious
vegetarianism marking out his difference. So when Firdaus had caught him again on the way to
the cafeteria one lunch period and asked Shaju to join his group for Rusbukhari in the school
parking lot, he’d agreed. And the other boys—the monitors and jocks and thugs and party
animals—whose gazes had always passed him over in class and in the hallways and on the
football field, smiled at him when introduced and shared the yellow rice dish they’d cut class to
buy. Sitting there, tearing chunks off whole chickens and eating rice off a communal plate like
Arabs, laughing and talking about the latest football scores and Insha’s ill-fated romance with a
Shankar 119

neighboring girl, Shaju had first felt the delirious, wisp of pleasure at belonging to something.
He’d begun spending time around Firdaus, pulsing at first at the periphery, but Firdaus had taken
a shine to him. And though others like Insha still kept a wary distance from the Southerner who
spoke mostly English, and he didn’t quite belong, he understood them better than Sanjay’s
friends.
Which was why he was jogging with Firdaus to the boy’s bathroom while Asma Ma’am
was taking roll, probably ready to ask them for their holiday homework and reminding people
there were only four months to the Boards (Boards! Boards!).
They stood in the bathroom, Shaju leaning gingerly against the wall next to the stalls,
Firdaus inspecting himself in the mirror. Shaju could never understand Firdaus’ fascination with
reflections: sometimes, Firdaus would drag him from his spot against the wall and stare at the
mirror, watching their entwined hands and Shaju’s fidgety figure gazing back at them. Sumaya
spent hours in front of her mirror, throwing Umma’s shawls on her head and sending coy smiles
and batting her eyelashes at her image. But Sumaya, fiery, loyal Sumaya wasn’t (though Shaju
would never admit it aloud) as perfectly molded as Firdaus, didn’t have the dark eyes or fierce
cheekbones or the consciously lazy smile, didn’t have fingers that fit perfectly in Shaju’s or
whichever boy was lucky enough to be Firdaus’ chosen companion.
“Talked to your old friend yet?”
Funny, the way Firdaus avoided using Sanjay’s name while Sanjay was always bringing
his up and cursing it. “I’ve been with you this whole time.”
“Did you tell him what you did? What I did? A lot of guys wanted to kick his ass, you
know. He pisses people off, thinks he’s better than us. Bloody Brahmin twat.”
Shankar 120

Shaju breathed out, and watched his breath ruffle Firdaus’ curls. That wasn’t fair, but he
couldn’t make Firdaus understand that Sanjay’s arrogance had nothing to do with his faith and
everything to do with his notions of self—he wasn’t even a Brahmin after all, though he had the
ascetic look down, and he led the Brahmin boys. “No one hurts him,” he said, wanting to sound
ferocious but his reedy voice broke a little. Firdaus clutched his hand tighter.
“I’ll make sure they don’t,” Firdaus said. “For you.”
Their gazes met in the reflection and Shaju nodded gratefully.
“But he’s a Hindu snake and he’ll bite you when you least expect it.”
Firdaus absently ran a hand over Shaju’s arm, and watching their reflections, dark and
light, and Firdaus’ smaller, pawlike hand muss the hair on his, Shaju trembled.
Firdaus, it seemed, didn’t notice.

Shaju hunted Sanjay down at lunch. The Hindu boys had congregated in a corridor on the
fourth floor of the building, which housed the sixth and seventh graders, and were awkwardly
playing football with a crushed Pepsi can. Sanjay wasn’t playing; he crouched in a corner,
watching, commentating, and commenting.
“Almost as bad with a fucking can as you are with a ball, Divesh,” he said, and
scandalized giggles at the obscenity erupted from the sixth graders running by.
Divesh just grinned and tried unsuccessfully to flick the can to a teammate. There was an
easy, beta-male camaraderie here between these boys. In Firdaus’ group fights would break out
at such ‘insults’; these boys would be as good at fighting as his sister, and Shaju felt that
protective pang of fear once more.
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“Hey,” Shaju said and waved at the other boys. Divesh ‘Oi’ed him and promptly got the
can picked off his toe.
Sanjay looked up at him, then exaggeratedly away. “The prodigal friend returns. Divesh,
gut our best camel, roast it over the fire. Bring out the non-alcoholic beer.”
Shaju thought this rather unfair since it was Sanjay who’d avoided his eyes in class all
day. From his vantage point at the back of the class, he had watched them, Sanjay and Firdaus.
They sat differently, he’d noticed. Firdaus sat next to Salman the monitor, leaning back
expansively, as if he were home, Sanjay shriveled in the pose of a bitter Thinker, hunched with
fist to mouth. Firdaus always reaching languidly for the air when the teacher asked a question,
with his cocky, pleasing smile, while Sanjay answered if spoken to with abrupt, almost irritated
tones. He hated attention, Shaju knew, having watched him jerkily step up at the assembly to
collect award after award, always wincing slightly as his name was called. But the teachers
called on him despite the cool contempt in his eyes, and the way he would sometimes correct
them—no, no, it wasn’t Tipu, it was his father —with an unspoken you idiot hanging in the air. It
was this, this almost solid contempt and condescending air he possessed that made the other boys
actively dislike him.
“I got called Hanuman’s ass today. Hanuman’s ass. Monkey worshiper. By your new best
friend’s goon, Insha. You’d think I personally took down that damned mosque stone by stone.”
Shaju scuffed his toe on the floor, marking out an invisible line, over and again. Firdaus
had only promised no physical violence, and he couldn’t nanny idiots like Insha. They’d always
insulted Sanjay, only now the jock versus nerd battle had transmuted into a religious struggle and
it was only to be expected that Sanjay’s gods would be brought into it, against Firdaus’ own. My
Shankar 122

own, came the fleeting thought, and he quashed that almost immediately. He sat himself down
next to Sanjay, close enough that their shoulders touched, and he pressed in further.
“Fucking Babri,” Sanjay muttered, and Shaju felt guilty when he caught himself nodding.
“Didn’t those fools have anything better to do on a public holiday?” Shaju looked at him blankly.
“They tore down the mosque on a Sunday, the lazy bastards. Sunday’s a holiday in India.”
Shaju had forgotten. He was used to the weekends in the Kingdom, Thursday and Friday.
Sunday was a holiday back home, but Wapa worked and he had gone to school and he’d never
wondered why so many people had congregated outside a shrine on a working day. Sunday was
a holiday in a foreign world. India was further away than ever before: it was all so absurd.
“That’s probably why they were able to tear it down so quick,” Sanjay said. “The poor
policewallas and the armywallas were probably confused. Imagine—government employees
working on a weekend!” His smile was the bitter, mocking one he often wore when talking about
something he found incongruously amusing.
Shaju ran his eyes over his Sanjay’s thin wrists and palms as if measuring them in his
mind. “Firdaus didn’t send Insha, Sanju. Insha’s got a mind of his own.”
“He hides it really well.” The can came their way, landed beneath Sanjay’s legs and he
picked it up and tossed it back, catching it between thumb and forefinger, like a teacup. Nothing
like Firdaus’ fluid movements.
“I’ll see you at your sister’s birthday. Sumaya’s been talking about nothing else.”
“So you still celebrate birthdays. It’s just the New Year that’s no longer people worthy?”
He didn’t want to bring up Wapa, or Wapa’s words, or his fear that Wapa was no longer
acting like an adult. Instead he blurted what was on his mind. “I want to be friends, with both
you and Firdaus. It’s childish the way you behave. You’re too young to have a nemesis.”
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“With both of us,” Sanjay said, looking suddenly furious. “Me and that nikamma? What
the fuck is wrong with you? You’re not one of them.” He waved his hands widely as if
encapsulating the whole school, the whole country in it.
“You’re speaking Hindi again.”
“Thought you might have picked it up, hanging around him. Go back to effin Firdaus and
stay away from me.”
“Sanju,” he pleaded.
“Want me to pretend it’s all right? I don’t get it. What did I ever do that you’d go make
friends with him? ”
He rose up in jerky movements and brushed off his pants. “Divesh, I want in,” he said.
Divesh stabbed the can towards him and it smacked against Shaju’s thigh and fell still at his feet.
Sanjay didn’t even look at him as he scraped it along with his foot then stabbed at it viciously
with his toe, sending it hurtling toward the other boys.

Shaju got to Khalid Sir’s apartment building for his Chemistry lesson feeling
frustrated—he’d gotten nowhere with Sanjay in the past few days. Firdaus let him in. When
Shaju had mentioned his academic problems earlier that year, Firdaus had suggested their
chemistry teacher. Shaju hadn’t understood how private lessons with a teacher whose
explanations he couldn’t grasp would help, but Firdaus explained that it wasn’t about getting
better, really: it was about his grade getting better. After all, when the time came to take the
Boards, the Practicals were only part of their grade the school could influence, and Firdaus had
let him in on a not-so secret: only the students who attended tuition classes did well on the
practical. Shaju had joined, and his grades in the internal exams had improved dramatically.
Shankar 124

Sanjay had mocked him for following that cheater Firdaus. He was getting better, though, since
Khalid sir, who taught the ninth and tenth graders together, usually let Firdaus lead his
classmates, and Firdaus was better and more patient with explanations.
Khalid Sir’s apartment was smaller than his own, with both the living and dining rooms
visible through the doorway. The other areas of the house, where Khalid Sir’s wife and daughters
maintained a silent vigil through his classes, were curtained off. Shaju had strained himself many
times but never heard a peep, no indication that they existed. He tried to imagine Sumaya’s
explosiveness stilled to where even the rustling of her clothes wasn’t heard, and he couldn’t. He
was reminded again that, despite Firdaus’ protestations, North, South, Muslims were different.
Firdaus led him to the dining table where a dozen students were already seated, those of
his grade to one side, their juniors, the ninth-graders, ranged against them. Khalid Sir nodded as
he seated himself next to Firdaus, to the teacher’s right. “Where’s Insha?” Sir said, looking at the
other side with disapproval. “Boy has no sense. Chal, we’ll start without him.”
They’d covered Bernoulli’s theorem—that is, Sir described it in textbook terms then
asked Firdaus to help the others through the problems while he tackled the ninth-graders—when
the doorbell rang again, and Sir himself went to answer the door, muttering softly about idiot
boys not learning to tell time, but instead of the expected harangue, they heard his surprised—
and polite—tones and following that, the grave tones of Mr.Naqvi, Insha’s father.
Insha walked in to the room, bristling. Sir still stood at the door, talking to Mr.Naqvi.
“Riots,” whispered Insha as he took his seat, and gripped the table, hard. “Bombay, the
Shiv Sena.” His nervous face shone with rage, and he sat back only when Sir reentered the room.
Shankar 125

“Well,” said Khalid sir, shaking his head and tut-tutting as he took his seat. “Back to our
lessons.” He looked them all over with an inscrutable expression. “Be glad you’re all in a good
Muslim country.”
“Glad? Why should we be glad?” It was something out of a slightly disturbing nightmare,
hearing Firdaus’ voice raised combatively against a teacher’s. “We’re second-class citizens here.
The Arabs—”
“Are much better to us than the Hindus are.” Khalid Sir had recovered from the shock of
his favorite’s disagreement. “They mock us, they see us as inferior.” He leaned forward,
shoulders bunching and rapped the table with his finger, over and again, as if telegraphing his
point. “But they will not set our homes on fire. With us in them.”
“But it isn’t our home, is it? India is, and we should fight. We ruled these Hindus for a
thousand years, why should we cower now, hide away here?”
Shaju couldn’t look away, and he wanted to. To see them like this, Sir and Firdaus—he
had only ever been intimate enough with Sanjay to see him this way, angry, bruised, shorn of
decorum. They were still leaning forward, eying one another, when Insha nervously cleared his
throat and they seemed to recall themselves.
Khalid sir drew back and looked around the table at them. “Insha beta, let’s get you
caught up.” His grave face tempered further discussion, and Shaju only half-listened as Firdaus
haltingly picked up his explanations. .
After classes, the students congregated outside, next to the gate. Most, like Firdaus, lived
nearby, but Shaju and a few others had to wait to be picked up. Usually, the neighborhood boys
dispersed as soon as the class was done, eager to be home, to play football in the sandy grounds
behind their buildings. But the angry excitement carried over from the class and they milled
Shankar 126

about, like their fathers did at embassy gatherings and P.T.A meetings, talking in vague terms
about the second-hand rumors Insha had heard. The Hindus had finally begun retaliating in
Bombay, Insha said, though Shaju couldn’t understand what had set them off after weeks.
“The Hindu dogs have gone rabid. Girls, picked up off the street,” Insha said. “They tore
off their—their hijabs.” He didn’t say what else they tore off, but they could guess. “Hunting
around for Muslims, asking people to drop their pants and prove their faith.”
They ruminated on this for a minute and Shaju thought of quiet hijabi girls like Khalid
Sir’s daughters being plucked from their homes, feeling glad he was from a different place, had a
sister who didn’t care for the hijab or even Allah much.
“What we need is Jihad,” Firdaus said. Jihad, some others whispered. People in India,
Hindus and Muslims, were being torn apart, and, Shaju saw, his friends were drunk on Jihad.
At home, Wapa’s displeasure at the dinner table was even more pronounced. “Talked to
RK today, before all this news came out” he said, and Shaju sat up straighter at the mention of
Sanjay’s father. Wapa’s glowering look made his heart sink. “Going on and on about how we’re
overreacting to the Mosque, making much ado about nothing. Much ado! Did you read what
Thackeray said? Said India needs a Hitler to take care of the Muslim problem.”
Umma frowned at that and whispered, “The children.”
Wapa waved his hand impatiently. “We can’t hide the world from them, especially if the
world is hell bent on exterminating them,” he said.
“Does that mean we can’t go to Sidhant’s birthday party? I promised Sanjana I’d be
there,” Sumaya said.
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Wapa frowned and looked over at him. Shaju felt Sumaya’s fierce gaze willing him not to
back down this time. “Sanjay asked me to come,” he said. “He asked why we didn’t show for
New Year’s. It’s not as if uncle and aunty destroyed Babri.”
Umma laid a light hand on Wapa’s, and though he showed no indication of having felt it,
hi frown eased. “They’re children,” she said.
“Fine. Fine, of course we can go. They’re your friends,” he said, then talked about other
unconfirmed news reports and rumors he had heard. Umma looking a little worried, hoped her
niece, who lived and worked in Bombay, was O.K and Wapa did a complete volta-face and
scolded her for worrying too much, so Sumaya scolded him for the about-face and Shaju pinched
her forearm, and she punched him on the shoulder hard, and their nascent brawl turned into a
full-fledged but good-natured family argument. It felt a little like before the Mosque.

Later next afternoon, P.E found Shaju stuck in a stall in the boy’s bathroom, leaning
against the wall and trying to avoid touching as much of it as possible, and viewing the
imaginative, obscene and possibly erroneous contributions of his schoolmates to his biological
knowledge, as Firdaus sat with his feet on the seat of the toilet and smoked, emitting sporadic,
guilty little coughs, when two boys walked in speaking Malayalam.
He recognized the low tones of his best friend. Funny the way Sanjay’s voice changed:
When speaking English, it was precise but colorless, transforming him into the robotic swot of
their classmates’ imagination. In Malayalam, he sounded confident, alive and charismatic and
Shaju could tell why some boys might follow him.
“…laughing,” the other boy—Divesh, he recognized—said. “Bloody paki-lovers.”
Shankar 128

Shaju stilled himself against the wall, wondering what rumors would spread if they saw
him ensconced in a stall with Firdaus, what Sanjay would say. Firdaus continued coughing
lightly, oblivious to the danger to their reputations, and smirked up at him with drowsy eyes,
looking like an angel.
“These Mukkalas will pay,” Sanjay said carelessly, and that shut Divesh up. “Kings here,
paupers there. That’s still our country, we give them space to live. You watch. Thackeray’s right;
Hitler had the right idea.” Divesh laughed, and Sanjay sang a derogatory little ditty.
“Oh, and what about Shaju?” Divesh asked. “He thinks you’re still friends.”
“He’s not like that, not like them. He’s mine. I meant Firdaus and his like.”
All Shaju’s worries—about being caught, about what people would think, and about
Firdaus’ worrying indifference—stilled when he heard Sanjay say mukkala. Firdaus stopped
smoking long enough to give him a quizzical glance and he knew he’d let the shock show.
“What did he say?” Firdaus asked after they’d left. “Something about me?”
“Nothing”, he said, shaking his head.

Sumaya went alone to the party that weekend. “You should’ve come,” she said matter-of-
factly when she returned clutching three bulky packages, carefully wrapped, containing the gifts
she’d won. “Sanjay sulked all night. Told us to shut it so many times, too.” She clucked like a
disapproving mini-Umma. “Doesn’t know how to behave, that one. Didn’t even ask why you
didn’t come.” She smiled at him inquisitively; They’d been surprised at his gruff refusal to go,
but Wapa and Umma hadn’t pressed for reasons. They had seemed preoccupied all weekend, and
spent a long time on the phone and listening to the news, which was getting scarier. Even if they
Shankar 129

hadn’t been worried, he doubted his parents would have questioned him. No one but his sister
had the audacity to pry.
“Anyone ask about your braces?” he asked, to shut her up. It did the trick. She shut her
lips self-consciously, huffed “eeediot,” and walked to her bedroom with her treasures. What
could he tell her? That he’d heard his best friend use a word, a word he had heard just once
before, used by some low driver on a vacation in India, the only time he’d seen Wapa looking
lost and small. A word tossed off casually, the way others might say Zionist or Nigger. But
Sanjay had also said that Shaju was his, so did it not matter?

He got up Saturday still nursing a headache, to find his father home. Wapa usually left for
work around seven, dropping Sumaya off at the same time. Wapa and Umma sat in the living
room, whispering agitatedly, the phone cradled on Wapa’s lap.
Sumaya, he thought, something must have happened in school. “What’s wrong?”
Wapa looked over at Umma and shook his head lightly, but she spoke anyway. “Your
cousin, Babi, the one in Bombay. She’s missing.”
Shaju remembered Babi well. He had met her once, a few years earlier when they’d been
passing through Bombay on their way to Kerala, and Sumaya had taken an instant shine to her.
Loud, opinionated, and willful, just like his sister. They’d stayed at her Bombay apartment for a
week and Wapa had spent every night telling her that it wasn’t right for a girl in her mid-twenties
to be unmarried or even living in a big city by herself. People will talk, Wapa had said. She’d
smiled sweetly, turned to Sumaya and told her never to marry a man that Wapa chose. “Find
your own,” she said. Sumaya, who at nine thought all boys horrible, had solemnly said that she
never listened to Wapa anyway.
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“Missing, how?” he said.
“You don’t worry—“Wapa said, but Umma glared at him.
“Allah knows what is happening in Bombay. We warned her, we warned her to leave, but
she just laughed it off.”
“I told her, it isn’t safe for a young girl to be living alone in Bombay,” Wapa said.
“But Wapa, how would they know she was Muslim? She doesn’t dress like one.”
Wapa gave him a look of overwhelming pity. “I’m sure her neighbors knew.”
But the neighbors were her friends, Shaju almost said. She was theirs.
He realized he’d spoken the last part out loud when Wapa replied, sharp as a whip,
“Don’t be naïve! You children, you think hundreds of years of history can be washed away with
a song and dance, like life is a film. Just because you don’t act Muslim doesn’t mean you aren’t
one, in their eyes. She was theirs, up until the moment they remembered that she wasn’t.”
Umma reached over to him and pulled his right hand, held it clasped between her warm,
slightly shaky ones. “You don’t worry about it. Go to school, study. It will be all right, God
willing. Everything will be all right. ” She kissed his hand and told him to go get ready.

If Sanjay marked the cold indifference with which Shaju treated him, he hid it well,
behind a façade of cheerful, giddy indifference; the roles had reversed in the weeks since school
reopened; with the news from India getting worse, the Muslim boys looked ashen, and the
Hindus were smirking. Asma Ma’am scolded Sanjay and Divesh for their furious whispers the
first hour. From his seat, Shaju noticed them glance Firdaus’ way occasionally. At lunch, as
Firdaus left the room he flung an obscenity Sanjay’s way but instead of letting it pass, Sanjay
replied. Shaju was too far away to hear it, he only saw Firdaus’ amazed face as he turned back to
Shankar 131

glance at Sanjay, then him. Sanjay stood up and Shaju watched them dark, light; thin and tall,
strong and small; separate for an instant before Sanjay threw himself at Firdaus, who was still
staring at Shaju with that dazed expression.
Shaju was up on his feet in an instant, but the rest of the class was faster and he had to
push his way to the center of the scuffle, where Firdaus stood clutching Sanjay’s collar in his
right hand like an angry butcher, left hand raised with the promise of a blow that never arrived.
He pushed ahead right to the two of them, meaning to put a stop to it, only Sanjay, who hadn’t
seen him, said fucking Mukkala again while struggling. His expression was part shame-faced,
part defiant, and part mocking, and a part of Shaju’s mind knew that Firdaus didn’t understand
the word, that Sanjay didn’t mean him, but he thought of Babi and Babri and his father’s words.
So Shaju punched him, so hard that his hand hurt and it was only when Sanjay’s head
cracked against a table that he realized what he’d done.
He could hear the catcalls and the exhortations in the background—“show the hanuman-
fucker”; “give him one more”--but faintly, because of the buzz in his head, because of the look
on Sanjay’s face. Then Firdaus flew at Sanjay, and others followed, and Sanjay was lost in a rush
of feet and arms.
When it was over one of the Hindu boys moved to Sanjay’s side and helped him up. His
glasses were broken, and his face was smeared with tears, and there was the mark of a shoe far
too close to his right eye. Firdaus came up to Shaju and laid a hand across his shoulder—
“C’mon”—but he stood, waiting, watching until Sanjay looked at him and in his teary,
humiliated eyes Shaju saw a look he had never thought he’d see.

Shankar 132

MISSING
He got home from work to find his wife missing. Das had pushed open the door gently,
puzzled at not hearing thunderous Bollywood bhangra beats or soulful Malayalam melodies—
was her stereo broken?—and only dimly registered that the lights were off.
He called out her name. “Mollu?” and stumbled over something, a shoe, as he stepped
inside, his hand scrabbling for the light. The insistent hum of the air-conditioner blunted his
sense of the abnormal. He peered at the large mahogany table that occupied the center of the
living room for a note of any kind, I’ve gone out, back in 5; off to visit friends. It was stupid:
where could she go unaccompanied in this country? Had the driver forgotten to pick her up, the
stupid boy? But she would have tried to reach him in that case. She had to be in the bedroom,
asleep no doubt, nursing one of those migraines which had become all too common these past
few months. He switched the light on and the room flashed into still life: her glossy magazines
and compilation cassette tapes were strewn over the table, and he sighed a little at the mess, one
foot working the shoe off the other, his eyes swinging over the room, and it took him a minute to
take in what his trawling gaze had stopped at, the little shoe-shelf at the far end of the room,
beneath the pass-through from the kitchen.
Her shoes were gone, all of them, the brown sandals she’d bought just last week from the
Bab Makkah Souk, the cheap rubber ones she wore at home because her feet were always cold,
and all the rest, the incomprehensible, colorful expenses whose necessity he didn’t understand.
“Mollu! Mollu!” He stumbled through the living room, his dangling shoe peeling from
his right foot, and tore through the corridor that led to their bedroom. The door was open, the bed
was made and empty. He rushed back outside, loped down the steps to the watchman’s quarters,
a detached little orange construction, and panted, winded even from this slight distance.
Shankar 133

It took two minutes of insistent knocking before the Harris opened up. Short and plump
like Das, he was stouter and darker still, the Bangladeshi. He wore a soiled undershirt, and his
grudging, irritated look shifted into a hesitant smile on seeing Das. Das and Mollu were the sole
Indians in this building, the rest non-Saudi Arabs—no locals here—and the Bangladeshi had
latched onto them. On the rare occasions they had company over with Mollu in the mood to
cook, Das would carry over samples of curries for the man, who hadn’t been home in eight years.
Nervousness made Das start in English. “Have you seen my wife?”
“Ghar main? House?” The man flicked his chin towards the ground floor apartment.
Das shook his head. “Did she come back from work? Did you see the driver dropping her
off?” The driver was a Pakistani boy Das had hired on Mollu’s insistence, and he and the Harris
often talked: they had more in common after all, both working class, both Muslim desis.
The guilty look his face telegraphed meant the man had been nowhere near the gate, had
probably been napping. “I was—upstairs.” The watchman seemed to sense the rebuke in Das'
look. “I've told the owner a hundred times we should have a camera outside the gate. Just
because this is Saudi doesn't mean it's always safe.” The mundane comment further skewed
Das's sense of reality: surely they should be acting, not arguing about whose fault it was, as if
this was a minor fender-bender and they were testing each other's willingness to compromise.
“Do you know Arabic well? We have to call the police.”
“Police?” the man said.
“She’s not at home, she didn't call me, the police have to be called.”
“Police,” the man repeated dumbly. “Have you tried her friends, sir? The driver? I saw
him briefly this morning—around eleven.”
Shankar 134

“Around eleven?” That made no sense, the school didn’t let off till half past twelve. The
man had to be lying.
But the Harris seemed surer of his footing now. “He was carrying some bags out of your
apartment, said Maydum wanted him to bring them to school.” He stood for a second clutching
the doorway, rocking back and forth. “He’s always around, Sir. I’ve told you before.”
Das ignored the insinuation. He and Mollu had fought about this, her tendency to be
trusting and open with strangers. The driver was a smooth talker and a good singer with a
fondness for Bollywood songs, which had won him a friend for life in Mollu, so she’d give him
the occasional meal, wrapped and taken away, of course, and sometimes he’d do little chores for
her, and she found it hilarious that he called her Malbari Madam, because to Pakistanis all South
Indians were Malbaris. She ignored Das’ protests that in this country, with its religious police,
she was taking stupid risks by being this friendly with an unrelated man. Das did not dislike the
boy despite his familiarity and occasional obnoxiousness, but the fact that he’d been by at
eleven, in the empty apartment, alarmed him. How had he gotten inside? Had he stolen the key?
Forced her somehow? She was too trusting, too reckless, and these men were poor and desperate.
“You should call the boy, Sir. First talk to him, yes.”
“Do you know Arabic?” Das asked once more. Sir, the man called him. He was
frightened, and though Das had never given it a thought, he realized that the watchman was
likely an illegal, one of the thousands who came over for the Hajj, conscientiously circled the
Kaaba, possibly praying for help evading the authorities, and slipped through the crowds on their
way back to become one of the many faceless illegals scraping by.
“A little,” the man mumbled. The Harris was of no use, Das had to call RK.
“I'll call the driver, yes,” Das said, in placating tones.
Shankar 135

The watchman looked relieved to see him leave. Das had left his door open in rushing
downstairs, but it didn't matter—at least he'd believed that up until that moment—this was Saudi
Arabia, and you'd have to be mad or desperate to thieve here.
Because he'd always believed this—that Jeddah was safe, that robbery, murders,
disappearances were an aberration here—there was a part of him that still didn't fully appreciate
his situation, so he called the school, just in case, but no one picked up at the main office. He
hadn’t expected them to: it was a small school, recently sprouted, and Mollu was one of the few
qualified teachers they had. He picked up the phonebook, embossed with the Kanoo company
logo, and flipped through the pages, looking for her careful, round, childlike lettering. He knew
the teachers she worked with by sight, but not their full names or numbers, and he was intent on
spotting every one. And so he almost failed to notice the paper piece he’d sent fluttering from
beneath the book. It was the glint of the ring that fell beside it that caught his attention.
He picked up the paper. It was in Hindi, and it was a song—no a poem—about the death
of love and some such rubbish. The ring was the double of the one he wore on his right index
finger, made for a daintier finger, 24-carat gold and something no thief would leave behind.
And this let him know she hadn't been kidnapped.

He’d picked BComm in college because he dreamed of ending up in the Gulf—the idea
had been birthed much earlier, though, during his childhood when he’d seen relatives and
neighbors disappear for months, even years, and return for periodic visits with the sheen of new
wealth and confidence. Like his uncle: Vellu maman had been a standing joke in the family
before he made his way abroad as a driver, but after his first visit back from Dubai even Father
spoke of him with a grudging, resentful admiration. And his gifts: The blocky Sony VCR on
Shankar 136

which Ma taped her serials, the branded clothes Das wore (Polo! Lacoste!), the varieties of
perfumes and other items for his sister, were reminders of the life Das did not have. His father
was a teacher, and respected in the village, but respect didn’t get you endless tins of Danish
butter style cookies and Cadburys, or Reebok pumps that made your classmates glare enviously
though you were a dumpy, plain boy that didn’t stand out.
Das was a mediocre student, so he was never going to be a doctor or engineer, and if he
could only make it to the Gulf, he’d be all right—better than all right—he was sure. If there was
ever anyone born to be an accountant, it was him. He had a careful mind and a cautious way with
money, a talent that didn't go over well with the boys he'd roomed with after graduation. He’d
ended up in Bombay, working in the accounting department of a small shipping company, living
with five other Malayalee boys in a flat owned by one of their uncles, RK. They were all like
him, transplants from the South, newly arrived, surrounded by things they'd only had below-
blanket dreams about in their staid backwater homes where everyone knew everyone else, and
everything you did would get back to your families.
They worked hard, spent evenings playing cricket badly, or egging each other on to eve-
tease passing girls who paid them no mind, and on occasions they visited nightclubs and stood
diffidently off to the sides in their ill-fitting, uncomfortable clothes, watching the big-city boys
and girls, better dressed, better-coiffed, burnished with the arrogance of those native to Bombay,
playing out their fantasies on the dance floor. Then they got drunk off of cheap domestic liquor,
toddy or coconut arrack, and visited Bombay's infamous red-light district. Das never joined in
for the last but once, feigning piety though he wasn't sure his roommates ever bought it, but the
girls in the red light district made him sad and irritable, with their scrawny arms and legs and flat
Shankar 137

busts and cynical, measuring glances. He dreamed of creamy skin, of plump yet toned arms, and
the heady confidence and laughter of those born beautiful and knowing.
The Malayalee network in the Middle East was probably the densest in Dubai and it was
Dubai that Das had set his sights on, but RK worked in Saudi Arabia and that was where he
ended up. RK, who managed the accounts division of a newly formed joint venture between
Kanoo and the P&O shipping company, had originally wanted to recruit his nephew, but the boy
had refused, telling his uncle he wasn’t ready to move abroad—especially not to that sexless
place, he told his friends—but that Das was most interested. So Das had met RK for lunch during
one of his recruiting trips, and afterward he’d attended the interview, where he sat with other
sweltering applicants in the company's Borivilli branch, beneath a whining, rickety fan, and
commiserated about the impossibility of getting plum positions like this without connections,
luxuriating in the knowledge that the bastard they were all complaining about and hating was
him.
He'd made it to the Gulf, the first in his three-step life plan: save money as a bachelor; get
married, have children and send the kids back home to boarding school; save even more money,
enough to start a business back home and for some land in case the business failed. Though
people thought him merely money-motivated, incapable of enjoying life, the fact was that Das
was enjoying himself. It was the little things that filled him with bubbling joy, the day-to-day
comparisons between his life here and back home, the pleasure he took in an air-conditioned
apartment, in driving an automatic company-leased car on smooth roads without potholes, in
being RK’s right hand. And his reward for the success he'd made of his life despite his
ordinariness in looks and brains—Mollu.
Shankar 138

He was straightforward when it came time to choose a bride, a good six years after his
move to Jeddah, when he was already the owner of an acre of prime real estate in Chelakkara
and a half-finished building in the village center. When his mother asked him what he wanted in
a girl, he’d said. “She must be beautiful.” Mollu came from a good middle-class home and she
was beautiful, fair and plump with the sharp features and fawn black eyes of a 70's film heroine.
That she was educated had been a bonus; that she had a useful degree—a B.Ed rather than an
Engineering one—one that could actually get a woman employed in Saudi, had been an aspect he
hadn’t even considered until after he’d brought her over and grown tired of her complaints of
boredom. She was, he'd preened, his crowning glory.

If Das had been less dazed, he would have been shocked at the utter apathy of the police.
Like most foreigners he lived in respectful trepidation of the Saudi cops and their adjuncts, the
religious police. In this totalitarian state, he'd assumed they would be close to omnipotent. And
this, the case of a woman who'd likely eloped, should have incensed them, the men who got off
on harassing couples at beaches or supermarkets, asking for proof of marriage, of moral probity.
When RK arrived with Adam al-Salah, the Saudi who handled legal matters, Das was
told that the police wouldn't investigate until he'd registered a complaint. They'd hurried off to
the nearest station, where, as Adam translated, the bored Saudi officer they'd been palmed off to
paid Das the same off-handed attention as the average customs official flipping through his
passport on his returns from vacation. The King's portrait beamed benevolently at Das from
behind the policeman, overhead the white fans swished energetically in a useless attempt to
compete with the air-conditioners, and the station was relatively empty, with more furniture than
officers, but Das felt as he always did in the presence of Saudi authority: a discomfort, a fear that
Shankar 139

he'd be hauled away at a whim by the morose man listening to Adam. When Adam was finished,
the policeman brusquely motioned for Mollu's note with his hand, and he stared hard at the Hindi
words before barking a few words beyond Das' rudimentary grasp of Arabic.
“He wants to know what it says,” Adam said. "Tell me and I'll translate." Das did as
asked though he wondered whether in the process of translation—from the Hindi of the note to
English to Adam’s fluent Arabic—much remained of the original.
“He says they'll send people over soon. To go home and wait for them.”
That was it. They hadn't even asked for the driver's phone number, the model of his car,
nothing. Das brought it up, and Adam shrugged then repeated the question to the officer, and
said, “Write it down for him.”
There was something in the indifferent, put-upon air of the policeman that reminded Das
disquietingly of the policemen back home, who only cared for their paychecks and the side-
checks you could offer them. But these men were plump and rested and he'd often see them
driving the latest model Chevrolets, screaming past regular traffic. They were well paid,
respected and had to be good at their jobs. Finally, the man spoke directly to Das: Driver’s
name?
It took Das a second to recollect it—he’d always referred to him as the driver, though he
recalled with a sharp stab that Mollu called him Bilal.
` “Do you know where he lives?” Adam asked.
No he didn’t. When Mollu began working, the school had let them know that their van
service didn’t extend to teachers living over five kilometers from school. They had to find their
own transportation, so he’d asked Kabeer, the company's head driver to find him someone
reliable. And the boy had shown up, vouched for by Kabeer, the nephew of a friend.
Shankar 140

As they left the police station, Adam and RK kept reassuring Das that everything would
be all right with the hale-hearty air of doctors equivocating to patients. They dropped Adam
home first, and Das was surprised that he lived in an apartment building much like his own. He'd
always assumed that as a Saudi, Adam was much better compensated than he was, and unlike
some of the younger natives in the office, who acted as if they owned the country—and they did,
in a way—Adam was a Saudi who actually did do work. RK and he were quiet on the way back.
Das kept thinking, the driver! She was smarter than that. Smarter than to fall for his obvious
chatter, like one of those silly teenage girls he'd despised growing up, the ones who foolishly fell
in love with roadside Romeos and broke their families' hearts and social standings
As if reading his thoughts, RK spoke, “Das, did something happen—”
“We weren't fighting. She was happy.”
They'd had their share of fights, of course. She'd complained endlessly about being stuck
at home by the end of the first year, but he'd finally wangled a job for her with RK's wife help at
one of the new primary schools. Despite having trained to teach high school, she'd been
relatively happy there, and he'd thought it would be good preparation for when they had children.
She'd been happier this past year, they'd been happier. Now their dinner table
conversations weren't just about people back home—she hadn't taken to the wives of his
acquaintances, and she detested Revathi chechi in particular, since RK's wife had the habit of
thoughtlessly dominating conversation, of dismissing views that didn't agree with hers—or the
movies she'd seen, but of her days, the things the children had done, the cattiness of the other
teachers. Yes, they still had problems: she complained about his cautious way with money, his
reluctance to step outside his comfort zone; he resented the fact that she made no effort to get
along with people who mattered to him professionally. Now that he thought about it, she’d had
Shankar 141

more frequent migraines these past few months, and they'd reached out for one another in bed
less often, and she hadn't spoken as much about Bilal. He hadn’t connected the dots. Bilal, long-
faced and long-limbed with hair that looked more hennaed than naturally brown, whose stooped
form and heavy features made him appear older than he actually was. The first time they’d met,
Das hadn’t realized how young he was until he spoke. He’d seemed brash but Kabeer had
vouched for him, and even though Das had casually disdained Pakistanis back home, having
grown up through one real war and a long cold one, here they were all Hindi, all brothers, since
the Saudis despised them all equally, the little brown brown-nosing shits that ran about like dung
beetles, like whipped slaves, doing the shit jobs. Das had even grown to like the boy a little.
He slapped his cheeks twice, as if to wake himself up, and RK reached over and gripped
his shoulder, hard. “We should talk to Kabeer, he suggested the boy for the job,” Das said.
“I’ll take care of it, don’t worry,” RK said, grimly. “Do you want to stay at ours?”
“I have to be home. In case,” Das said. RK didn’t press.
After RK left, Das settled in front of the television, keeping the telephone in his line of
sight. The only English Channel, Channel 2, stopped transmission at midnight. He was unable to
fall asleep so he went back to the bedroom, and searched through the drawers cataloging what
was gone. She’d taken clothes, and her wedding gold, but none of the jewelry he’d bought her.
How moral! During his search, he chanced upon the drawer lined with photo albums. With her
first month’s salary she’d bought a rather expensive camera. He hadn’t protested. She was a
good photographer he could tell, as naturally gifted at this as she was at drawing, at singing.
And, reading over her farewell note, he’d learned, at poetry. Near the bottom of a row of albums,
he came across the one he’d both been expecting and dreading: Their wedding album. A large
photograph of the two of them, leaning into one another, weighed down by the heavy white
Shankar 142

garlands, adorned the cover. He'd been exhausted and sweaty when they'd taken this photograph,
tired of standing, bowing, smiling, for people he only half-remembered, under the warm white
glare of the photographers' lighting umbrellas. He'd been a little cross with the photographers,
each of whom kept demanding he look their way and she'd pinched him lightly on the arm to
catch his attention, leaned nearer and said, “At least you're not lugging four kilos of gold.” He'd
looked at her dimpled smile, the dark laughing eyes, the casual intimacy of her closeness, and
felt like the luckiest man on earth.

RK handled it all: calling her parents and his, and Das spoke to his briefly, but he had no
memory of what was said. RK brought over food for him the next two days, called the bosses
and arranged for a couple of days off—he was grateful for that. He was in no condition to go
back to work even after two days, and RK had to coax him into his clothes, and drove him over.
The police had come by unannounced when Adam wasn’t available, and they’d carried
out their ‘investigation’ with Das seated in his own living room, an uncomfortable spectator,
communicating in mime. As they were finally leaving he had to remind them to fingerprint him
for their files, and they did without any trace of embarrassment at their incompetence.
RK called him later to say that there was no trace of the driver or Mollu, that the car’s
owner, Bilal’s uncle, claimed he didn’t know where the boy was, that Kabeer had cooperated
fully, had gone in for questioning and had nothing useful to offer. Das should have been doing
something himself but he was gripped by a lassitude so strong that he only realized how strange
his apathy looked when RK dropped by his desk his third day back, with more bad news.
“Her parents have filed a writ of Habeas Corpus. They claim you're illegally detaining
her, or that you’ve hurt her.”
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Hebaeas Corpus. He knew what they meant, those Latin words. They thought he'd hurt
her. He called them Father, Mother, Sister, her family. Four months earlier they'd cajoled him
and Mollu to give them grandchildren. He'd lavished them with gifts, bought his father-in-law
his favored half-sleeved silk shirts from brands even a clothes-horse like RK considered
unnecessarily expensive. He'd quietly assured the old man that he would help cover Mollu's
sister's wedding costs, and had felt quite proud of his thoughtfulness.
He looked at RK. “I didn't do anything to her. I didn't.”
“Of course you didn't,” RK said brusquely. “Some fool must have suggested it to them—
Habeas corpus, indeed! You need to know where the bloody person is.”
So now, RK said, it was even more urgent to find her. As they sat waiting for word from
the police, from the people they'd felt out, back home rumors were flying from ear to ear,
tainting people's views of himself and his family.
It was that—his father's angry call, demanding he talk to that girl's insane family and get
them to stop ruining his good name—that finally brought him out of his haze.
When he called her home that night, her mother answered with her polite, uncertain
“hello,” the tone of one who’d never gotten used to telephones. He told her who it was and the
silence built on itself before she answered. “Is Mollu there—”
“No,” he said. “Is Father there?”
The conversation with his father-in-law proved even more awkward, blocks of silences
punctuated by halting speech. He'd always liked Mollu's father, felt it natural that the other man
called him son, so when the man addressed him curtly, without a title, he felt lost. He should
have been angry but he felt injured. Like a good middle-class son he kept calm, ignored the
Shankar 144

unpleasantness at the heart of their conversation up until the older man said, “Where is my
daughter, Das?”
To be addressed by his first name, like a stranger. The tight ball of injured pride and
humiliation that had built in him for days tore through the wall of decorum he'd built up all week.
“I didn't hurt her,” he said, straining to keep his tone civil. “She ran off. Ran off with
some driver.”
Silence. Then— “I raised her right. She wouldn't do that. Where is she, Das?”
“I don't know! The police are searching.” Uselessly.
“And what are you doing? What sort of man are you?”
What sort of man was he? He wondered if the people he ran into daily asked themselves
this question. Polite, solicitous co-workers who asked him in convoluted ways whether he was
all right. Even RK, his Saudi bosses or the cabal of Pakistani drivers that congregated each
evening in the shadows of the Kanoo building, did they examine him, searching for why he was
such a non-man. Did the Pakistanis, earning less than a quarter his pay, living in cramped
conditions, did they look at him and smirk, thinking I wouldn't be that wimp, that cuckold for all
the money in the world? Did she laugh at him, she and the driver, did they lie entwined on the
bed he'd paid for, the sheets he'd selected with her? Had the Harris always known?
He'd never thought that the insulation from insecurity he'd build up with position and
money could be ripped apart so easily.

The next day was a half-day and RK caught him just as he was leaving work. “Listen,
that Kabeer, he feels terrible. He said he’d personally ask around and try to find news about her,
or the boy. He’s a Pakistani, there’s more chance of one of them talking to him, yes? Why don't
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you come over for lunch and we'll go see him later?” He agreed, listlessly, carried along more by
RK's force than his own interest.
Revathi chechi greeted him at the door with false cheer, her smile ready to collapse at his
signal. The children slouched behind her like bored sentries welcoming a minor VIP, and the
discomfort he’d felt at meeting people over the past few days, a feeling which had dulled, flared
sharply once more. He wondered what they thought of all this, whether they pitied him, and he
wanted to snatch his hand back from the slim, dry grip of the eldest.
“Hi, uncle,” Sanjay said. The boy was only a dozen or so years younger than him, but his
marriage had changed him from a chettan, an older brother, to an uncle, and Mollu from a chechi
to an aunty. The younger boy gave him an uncomplicated smile. Getting home after their first
visit to RK’s family, Mollu had sat on their new sofa wearily massaging the arch of her right
foot, and he’d asked her what she thought of the family. She shrugged. “The second boy is very
striking,” she’s said. “Like a movie star. He has his father’s looks and height but his mother’s
build.” It was true: RK was tall, handsome and narrow, Revathi chechi short and broad and
pleasant-looking, and Sidhant had been gifted the best of both. It was the first time he'd heard her
noting male beauty. Now he thought back to that moment he hadn't noticed—no, that was a lie,
he had noted it, and dismissed it, because she was his, after all. He had her, even without beauty.
“Come in, come in.” Revathi chechi fussed about him, anxiously, and Das felt both
humiliated and grateful. He missed being catered to, being the center of someone's existence, the
way he and his father had been for his mother, the way he'd assumed he was for Mollu.
RK and he sat in the living room while Revathi chechi and the kids set up the table. He
watched them, surreptitiously. They glanced his way once or twice, the children, but the glances
were merely habitual. He heard a peal of laughter from the girl and looked over; her brothers
Shankar 146

were smacking each other with the table cloths, but the horsing about stopped as soon as Revathi
chechi stepped back into the room. He’d seen scenes like this from the very first time he’d
visited a half-dozen years earlier, when the children had been smaller and slightly more
interested in him because he'd bring them bribes in the form of Kit Kats and Bounty, and
whenever he’d visited with Mollu he’d picture himself in their parents' place, only he’d be the
stern father since Mollu’s moods were too quicksilver to be consistent.
Only the adults ate in the dining room. The children treated the table like a buffet, filling
up their plates and hurrying back to the room that housed the T.V. Revathi chechi waited until
the children had bustled off before speaking, at first asking him if he needed anything else—why
don't you have some thoran?—before leading up to the topic they'd been avoiding.
“So, he tells me her parents have filed for habeas corpus.”
“Drama, that's all it is,” RK said. “They've been married for two years. Do they think he
suddenly went mad and killed her?”
“They're probably just scared,” Das said, but he felt pleased at RK's vehemence.
“Drama,” RK said decisively, pushing a bowl of curry towards Das. “Take, take.” And
then— “You think she hasn't called them already? Some people will do anything to save face.
You know Bala from accounts? His daughter's marriage was fixed to a nice engineer. Well, the
engagement was called off. The girl's family says the boy's a sex maniac. The boy says she's got
a lover in college. Which is more likely, that the girl's got a lover or that nice Nair boy's a sex
maniac? People don't raise girls properly, but they don't want to admit it so they blame others.”
Das blindly spooned some more curry onto his plate—it was some form of meat—just to
avoid speaking. It wasn't RK's fault: he was trying, as he always did at work, to protect one of his
own. RK hadn't heard Mollu's father's voice, the anger, the raw confusion in it. The man wasn't
Shankar 147

doing this to save face—he sincerely blamed Das, but whether it was suspicion that Das had hurt
his daughter or failed as a husband, he didn't know.
“How do we know?” Revathi chechi's voice broke into his thoughts, a little of the usual
stridency seeping back into it.
“Eh?” RK said, distractedly coaxing Das to try something else.
“How do we know who's at fault? How do we know Bala isn't telling the truth? You men
do the worst things but when it comes to any story like this, you assume the woman is at fault.”
Das' head jerked up. Surely she didn't mean—
“Das, you talked to her father. Did he sound like he was acting?” Her voice was
interrogative, demanding, and Das recalled how off putting Mollu found this tone.
“How would he know?” RK cut in. “It was over the phone.”
“He sounded sad, concerned,” Das said.
“Drama,” RK repeated.
“Oh yes,” Revathi chechi said. “Her father's Bachchan, is it? National Award Winner?”
“What is the point of all of this? So what if the father doesn't know where she is?”
“Perhaps he doesn't know because she hasn't contacted him. Because she can't—”
“Oh, and why can’t she?” RK said.
“Because she didn’t elope, because she was taken,” Revathi chechi ended triumphantly.
RK’s freshly slapped expression mirrored Das’ lurching feeling. He recalled the
instantaneous fear he’d felt when he’d found her missing and learned the driver had been there; it
had lasted up until he’d found the ring and her note.
“She left a note, chechi,” Das said dully.
“And why was it in Hindi? So that he could make sure she wasn’t sending you a hint.”
Shankar 148

She never liked you, Das almost said. So stop defending her. But a part of him wanted
desperately to believe. It could be, he thought, ignoring every fact that said otherwise. Poor
Mollu, waiting for him to save her, and here he was suspecting her like Rama with Sita.
“Even here, we get calls sometimes, obscene calls and you can tell from the accents that
it’s one of them, Pakistani-Afghani. They spend all these years working with no women, so….”
Yes, it could be. He could see it. Mollu had always been soft on the boy. He probably
asked for a glass of water or to use the bathroom and she'd let him in. Ignore the fact that her
bags had already been packed, been taken out of the apartment at eleven. She'd let him in and
Bilal had pulled out a flashing knife and thrust a shocked Mollu against the wall. Ignore the fact
that there was no proof she'd ever returned to the apartment. It had all been so sudden which
was why there was no signs of struggle—
“Ayyo, my mad woman, dialing a random number and breathing heavily down the line is
one thing, kidnapping a woman another,” RK said. “I'm not saying it couldn't have happened but
it seems very unlikely, no?”
He'd been pulled out of his castle-building by RK's reasonable tone but as the couple
bickered next to him Das paid no attention. He was shocked by how strongly he bought into
Revathi chechi's supposition.

An hour after lunch, after peace had been restored between husband and wife through the
medium of custard and jello, RK and Das left to go meet Kabeer. Sanjay tagged along since
peace had been bought at the cost of RK getting his oldest a haircut. When they reached Kabeer's
place, RK pulled over to a side and went to get the man.
Shankar 149

Left alone in the car, Das and Sanjay glanced at one another with the wary
embarrassment of the vaguely acquainted.
“I didn't know chechi wrote poetry,” Sanjay said, finally. “Amma said you found a
poem?”
The boy himself was a budding poet, Das recalled. RK had proudly shown him a few of
his publications in the teen section of Arab News. “She left a poem, in the living room,
explaining why she was leaving.” He started reciting the first few lines carefully, feeling a
frisson of pride in the words, despite the hurt they'd caused him.
Sanjay stared at him blankly for a second, and then burst out laughing. It wasn't a nice
laugh, both mocking and supercilious.
“That—that's what she left?” Sanjay raised his palms to his face. “Uncle, those are song
lyrics. “ The boy started singing in a tune Das didn't recognize, not just the words Das had
recited but the others he'd memorized from the sheet. “She really must think she's living in a
film.” He looked over at Das still grinning, but quickly sobered up at Das' expression.
“A song.”
“It's an old song: I've got it in one of those golden oldie tapes.”
“I thought—I thought it was a message to me.” He felt cheated. He'd taken this as
evidence, damning evidence, against himself. Could he blame her for leaving him when he hadn't
even known how gifted she was? To forgive her, he'd burdened himself with the blame. And
now, to know that she hadn't even cared enough to leave him a simple message of her own.
The boy was watching him curiously. “You aren't going to take her back, are you?”
Shankar 150

“No!” The word escaped him before he even thought about it. Just a few minutes before
he'd been hoping—he didn't know what for, but he had been dreaming of reconciliation, a new
beginning. And now, she'd humiliated him all over again.
“That's the last thing we need. “
The boy's we made Das stare at him through the rear-view mirror.
“This happens all the time doesn't it? Our girls running off with the mukkalas.”
Das looked at him, shocked. He didn't even know how the boy had learned that slur, one
no one would dare use in this Muslim country any more than they would question the Prophet.
“You don't see it much the other way round, do you? They'd kill their daughters. We're so
tolerant, so forward thinking, and they know it and they use it against us, with their love jihad
and converting our girls. I just wish we were back home and not here in mukkala land.”
“You don't believe that,” Das said. “We have a nice life here. What do we have back
home? Besides, Hindu, Muslim, we're all humans.”
The boy threw him a contemptuous look. “Musalmanon ke do hi sthan, Pakistan ya
Kabristan.”
Oh yes, the Hindutva slogan. Muslims, you have two choices: Pakistan or the Grave. He
didn't know RK's children well, but he knew RK and Revathi chechi and he knew that the boy
hadn't learned this from them. Some casual bigotry, possibly, but hate? Comfort, money,
property, and health: these were Das' sole interests. He hadn't really understood till Mollu left
that people needed more in life outside of films, felt more. Here was a boy he'd thought he
knew—studious, quiet, and obedient—the sort of boy he'd have liked for a son himself, spouting
fascist nonsense, perhaps because he needed to feel something bigger than himself.
“And you think I should leave Mollu with those people?”
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“We don't even know that she's with him anymore,” the boy said, shrugging. “He may
have sold her. They do that, you know. They're animals, really. The hypocrites, talking about
Allah and justice, and treating us like dirt. Even their prophet was a pedophile.”
He was grateful when RK returned with Kabeer.
The older Pakistani man seemed embarrassed in his presence. “No worries, Das Sir. That
manhoos, he's looted my honor, and I'll find him, wallahi.”
Through the mirror Das saw the boy's sardonic smile.
“Thank you, Kabeer bhai,” Das said firmly. Bhai, brother, the term was automatic.
By Allah, the boy mouthed silently in the back.

RK dropped him off outside his building and Das hesitated beside the gate, looking
toward the beckoning doorway leading to the cool and empty apartment. He swiveled away.
He’d lived there for two years now and he’d only ever walked in the neighborhood on Mollu’s
insistence, when they’d first moved in. Before he’d got her the job she would get restless cooped
up in the apartment until his return and most nights she’d insist on going somewhere. Sometimes
they’d visited the old souks, the mini-malls, and he’d taken great pleasure in watching her
amazed expression as she took in the varieties of everything on offer in those souks and stores,
so unlike the lean offerings in stores back home. Other nights they’d just step out for a stroll,
even if the neighborhood consisted mostly of silent building crouching next to silent building.
They’d pass boys in track-pants chasing after a frayed ball in numbers, and sometimes come
across clusters of bored watchmen, drivers and other workers dawdling outside the buildings
some were meant to be guard. Some of the boys and all of the watchmen would eye Mollu,
glances flickering to the uncovered face, the slim hand grasping his pudgy one, and he was sure
Shankar 152

as they walked away that the men were all watching the dark abaya billowing around her, their
eyes greedily hoping for that precise gust of wind in which her figure would be revealed.
He, who has no interest outside of work, movies and property acquisition, had asked
around, learned about the more interesting family-friendly spots in the city, the old souks with
the wiliest traders, the souks famous for their quality jewelry, for their spices, for their Arab
authenticity, and he’d taken her about, leading her like a guide with a prized tourist.
She was the most beautiful thing in the world and he'd given her this city. It had meant
something to him—financial freedom, and familial and social pride—and he’d wanted her to
understand, but she didn’t fancy the things he did, so he'd appealed to her love for beauty.
He should have hired an uglier driver.
His hands were in his pockets and he could feel his skin through the thin cloth lining his
pocket. He passed by some boys playing football who gave him no more than a glance.
The oldest boy was about 16, tall and broad, with an eagling Arab nose, and quick,
dancing feet. Despite his size he skipped though others' tackles, springing from one end of the
field to the other, ball stuck to his feet. The oppressively warm evening air didn’t affect the boy.
Das could feel the dampness beneath his arms, the sweat along his waistline. The boy
was built nothing like the driver, but he brought him to mind. Had she ever noticed the boy,
glanced at him the way the men glanced at her? He stood watching the game for a few moments
feeling nondescript and forgettable and then turned for home.

He stripped down in front of the mirror. Off came the shirt with the pop-up collar (in the
early days of their marriage, Mollu used to happily select his clothes, with the semi-seriousness
absorption of a child playing House). The cotton undershirt clinging lightly to his skin gave up
Shankar 153

its hold almost languorously. The belt unsnapped with a pop and spooled down on to the floor.
The pants left their imprint on his skin at the waist, where they’d been tightest. He unbent and
stared: a rotund man in sensible underwear sporting a gaudy gold-colored wristwatch eyed him
back curiously. For the first time he saw himself as she must have.
He moved closer, eyes roving over the doughy face, the cheeks cratered with the marks
of childhood acne, the flat wide nose, the too-thick lips. He breathed in deeply, pulling in his
stomach, his hands moving for his underwear. The rat-a-tat at the front door made him stop.
Mollu! He almost screamed because he’d been thinking about her, but that was stupid. It
had to be the watchman; the knock repeated. There was something about its curtness, its
peremptory nature that stilled him. He moved quietly to the window and brushed the curtain
aside—the watchman’s quarters had someone moving within.
A voice was at the door, and though he couldn't make out the words at first, the timbre
was definitely male. He gingerly made his way to the living room.
“Malbari!O Malbari! You inside or what?” The words were in Urdu but not in the
accented and ingratiating tones of the watchman.
“You hear us, Malbari? You hear us?”
Conscious of his state of undress, Das crept up to the door. Pakistanis, no doubt. Was this
one of the men Kabeer had met? Had his search borne fruit? When he peered through the
keyhole, he couldn't see them, but with his ears against the door he heard their muffled whispers.
“Malbari! Forget her.”
His momentary excitement fizzled. So they hadn't come to help. He leaned his face
against the door which creaked lightly but certainly. Another whispered consultation.
“She isn't yours, Malbari.” The voice seemed lighter, reasonable.
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“Not anymore,” said the younger, laughing voice he recognized and had hated for a week
now and Das almost tore the door open.
Him! The bastard! But Das was aware, even in the heat of his anger, that he looked
comical in only his underwear. And there was only one of him.
“I'm going to call the police, you bastards.”
The first voice spoke again. “Forget her Malbari. Why would you want to remember?”
“I need to see her! Talk to her, know she's safe. How do I know you didn't force her to--”
“Oh, she's safe.” Bilal's dancing, contemptuous voice once more.
“Open the door, Malbari. We can speak inside.” Again that reasonable first voice, and he
was almost tempted to do that. Sanjay's voice: they're animals, really. Animals, hypocrites.
“Does she know her parents have filed a case against me? They think I've killed her.”
Another whispered consultation. “You don't worry about that, Malbari. You worry about
yourself. We know where you live, Malbari. We know when you go to work.”
“The police—”
“You think we didn't think of that? Forget her. The next time we won't ask so nicely.”
And they'd come where he lived, not fearing that someone from another flat might see
them, not fearing that the police might be waiting—they didn't know, as Das did, that the police
were useless. He didn't understand this sort of mad recklessness, this utter lack of inhibition.
Das ran to the bedroom, and cautiously made his way to the window. Two long, lean
silhouettes hurried out the gate, turning left, opposite the path he'd walked just an hour earlier.
He could follow them. They wouldn't expect that level of boldness from him and they'd
lead him right to his wife.
And then?—
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She didn't want him. She'd left freely, with a driver, a boy, a Pakistani at that.
He could head back to the living room. The phone was just a minute away. He could pick
it up, dial the police, or call RK.
And then?—
Perhaps the boy, Sanjay, was right. Maybe the reason the police seemed to care so little
was that it was some kafir girl who'd run away. Run away with a good Muslim boy, too.
By the time he'd managed to tabulate the pros and cons of each action, it was too late.

Three days later, his father called him at work and let him know that Mollu's family had
withdrawn the case. It didn't stop the rumors, Father said ruefully. People were now saying
they’d paid off the girl’s parents,that Das had prostituted her to some Pakistanis, and they'd
spirited her away. He’d need to wait a year to get a no-fault divorce.
“So, that's that,” RK said when Das told him the news. “What are you going to do?”
Das shrugged. “I’ve got the Bin Kanoo files to go through—”
“Someone else can handle that. You take it easy for a few days.”
He told RK he’d rather work, it made him happy. It gave him an excuse to not be home,
to forget, for hours at a stretch.
“I know how it feels,” RK said, lying baldly, “But time heals all wounds. You haven’t
done anything wrong, and you shouldn’t suffer. So work if you have to. But forget about her.”
He intended to. He’d realized the night of the Pakis’ visit that he lacked something—if it
was courage, passion or stupidity he didn’t know—and he had to make a choice: to be content
with himself or change into the sort of reckless man who'd run off with a married woman in a
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country where immorality meant prison and even death, the sort of man who did first and
thought later, the sort of passionate, fearless, beautiful scoundrel Molly might have loved.

Two years later he married again: His second wife was plain, unimaginative and a social
climber to boot. She didn’t cause him much sorrow.

Shankar 157

The Good In Me Is Dead
Out the corner of my eye I watch my uncle weep disconsolately as, in front of us, the
thing that was my father burns on the funeral pyre. Around me voices, including my mother’s
tear-weary ones, chant Hare Rama, Hare Krishna Rama Rama Hare Hare. We are at our
ancestral home, the rolling three acres passed down by my grandfather, taken over by his eldest
son, Big-father, who’d sold it for a pittance then reclaimed it with Father’s money.
Big-father weeps, loudly, sucking in his breath like a child that’s lost a favorite toy—he’s
sixty five, and built like a bull that has forever left. Father didn't make sixty.
Big-father sobs and the well-wishers rustle in discomfort—it isn’t manly, this railing
against fate—and some watch me with clear approval. I am behaving like a man, despite being a
boy, not yet twenty, coddled by parents and older sister. Because she was a sister, not a brother,
it is I who drenched myself in water and, shivering in wet-white clothes, took the kerosene-
soaked, stinging white cloth wound on hefty wood fatter than my grip and set fire to the thing
that was my father.
When they brought him here last night, washed, wrapped in white, cotton in his nostrils,
my mother beat her breast, his breast, wailed a wail as broad and black as the night sky. My
sister huddled next to her like a shivering chick, wailing along in one voice, half-soothing her in
another. But I'd looked at what used to be my father and felt wonder, and rage: the little grief had
wrung from me. I’d felt only despairing love for him in his last moments, on his bed in our
home, when I’d tipped his trembling face up to receive the water that would gain him heaven,
from the hands of a son, but that drained slab of meat didn't cause me grief.
At the pyre Big-father’s tears are still streaming when his son, my brother in name, lays a
hand on my shoulders, so much narrower than my father's, and I shiver despite the heat from the
Shankar 158

wild flames stinging my face. He misunderstands and digs his reassuring, lying fingers into my
wet shoulder. His smile is closed and unfamiliar now, not the quicksilver flashes Father was so
fond of. That smile never lied, couldn’t: it was the smile of an inconstant, tempestuous do-
nothing—a smile that broke many a girl’s heart, more of teeth than intent. But it fooled people
into believing there was more to him or that there was less dankness in his soul than there was.
It certainly fooled Father. My uncle weeps shallow tears, my brother holds me in false
empathy, my father is now no more substantial than the strength of my memories and I, I feel a
wave of sullen tiredness, despair and resentment against all.
When everything is done, as the last embers cool in the evening air, my mother and sister
are whisked off to the bedrooms, where the private griefs of women can be tended.
I am shuttled into the living room, with the new television and sofa set, and guided to a
chair opposite Big-father, as select well-wishers, Big-father's men, adjust themselves on the sofa.
Big-brother's wife shuffles through with tea, and their daughter importantly carries in a plate of
mixture and chips, her smile wide and uncomplicated by our grieving propriety. Big-brother
settles in next to me and nods them away, in that patronizing way he learned from Big-father.
People sip tea and speak in murmurs, waiting, I feel, for my lead. I never get the chance.
“You are the head of the family now,” Big-father says, sententiously. “We are always
here to help out, of course, but it'll be your responsibility to provide for them.”
“The boy has to finish his course,” says Big-brother, playing the affectionate brother in
public.
“Yes,” Big-father says, “take your studies seriously. Remember your responsibilities.”
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Responsibilities—You can start, I think, by giving back what you took from him, what
you stole from us. We don't need anything but what's rightfully ours. But my father's last
injunction, and my breeding, prevent me from saying anything.
Grandfather would have been pleased. My mother's father always said, be cautious, be
politic. Only a fool speaks his mind all the time. Father would be pleased. Be respectful,
remember that he is your elder, he would have said. Mother will be slightly pleased. Don't bring
shame upon the name, she always says.
While Big-father speaks my eyes roam the room. When Big-father sold the place in his
peremptory way without consulting his siblings, all who had a stake in it, it had been torn down,
a new home built in its place. And years later my father, flush with money he sweated out in the
Gulf, bought back the property, but in Big-Father's name.
This house should belong to me.
I catch Big-brother watching my assessing gaze. He senses my disquiet because he starts
complaining how terrible the rubber crop has been this season and how much the prices have
dropped and I tune him out because the rubber estate, yes, even that should be part mine.
I avert my head and see the small, garlanded photograph of Small-father, Father's
younger brother, above the main doorway. Big-father has chain-smoked, boozed and womanized
his way to outliving his good brothers.
On cue, Big-father flicks a beedi between his lips, coughing, and the pungent stink of
tobacco invades the room.
Big-brother fidgets, irritated, then says, “Can't you go one day without those blasted
things—” but freezes as Big-father snarls, the ever-present, simmering rage rushing to a boil.
Shankar 160

“Smoking leads to cancer.” I don’t want them to demean this day with their pettiness.
When I blurt this Big-father claps his mouth shut, looks at me unsurely. The last time I'd been
here it had been this silent my father had lost his head, his inheritance, and wept on the way
home.
“It is wrong,” Big-father says, taking a long thoughtful drag on the poisonous brown nub
between his lips. “What a stupid disease, this cancer.”
Cruel yes, but not so stupid—it had taken all but his youngest sister, the sly bastard,
never striking the same place twice—burrowing into Small-father's pancreas, Big-aunt's flat,
weary breasts, the kidney of another. And my poor father, a man whose one vice, one joy, was
food—the bastard clawed into his intestines, killed his pleasure, gnawed him into a husk, before
taking his life.
In the end he wanted to die, this man who'd suffered so much uncomplainingly, taken
every push and shunt as his due. Watching his will drain away, his mountainous endurance
wither, Mother railed against his fate, and her father merely said, “It's Kaliyuga, the age of vice,
it must be endured.”
Mother's rage wilted quickly, of course. Unlike Mother, whose rage is like a firecracker,
incandescent and quicksilver in duration, Father rarely got angry. The only time I ever saw him
speak curtly was with Grandfather, about Big-father.
I was eleven, wrapped up in my narrow child-world, despite father's return on his
infrequent holiday from the lands I'd only read about in big colorful books featuring sand-
colored camels and severe, implacable men and dusky-eyed veiled women. Father and
grandfather were speaking in adult whispers and I half-listened on my way to the kitchen.
“--your children will be left on the streets,” Grandfather said.
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I would have passed but for the set of Father's shoulders, that of a dog bristling in bad
temper.
“I'm not saying you shouldn't help him, that's a good thing, but what he's asking now…At
least have him sign a guarantee, get something in writing. Remember you have two children.”
Mother nodded along, punctuating Grandfather's last words by plastering me to her side.
I smiled at Father, because Sister and I always lightened his mood, but his gaze was fixed
on Grandfather, his handsome face set in an ugly line.
“I can't be like you, so cynical. I trust my brother.”
“Trust is only a word. What if something happens to you tomorrow, god forbid? Think of
the children, if not my daughter.”
“My brother will help,” Father said. “Blood is thicker than water.”
"And what is he, too, is gone, then? Will his son feel the same way?"
Father turned his glare onto mother. "You've been saying something about the boy? He
just needs to settle down. There's a lot of good in him, why don’t you see it?"
It was the last time they discussed the issue. Grandfather had seen that my usually
tractable father wouldn't be moved, and Mother stopped trying to fight by proxy, continuing to
register her complaints, but within the confines of us four, our family.
Big-Father subsides, too, my reminder of the family cancer making him crush his beedi,
and he spends the next few minutes flicking at his teeth like something's lodged in them. Soon,
bereft of his loud direction, the others cease speaking and we sit in a silence that bothers me
alone. Then one of the men mentions a local happening, and Big-father comes alive immediately.
They start discussing something about politics I don't understand. My father is forgotten and I
feel propriety has been observed long enough, and get up to leave.
Shankar 162

The others stand too, and take turns clasping my hands uncomfortably long, like the
length of the clasp would reveal the depth of their sorrow. Brother accompanies me from the
living room. Just outside that room Brother’s daughter sits hunched over a comic, her thin brown
legs crossed carelessly over the threshold bar. Close up, she’s reading an Amar Chitra Katha
comic, one of the volumes I'd carelessly left behind during summer visits here.
She glances at me, a little shyly, and her father gives her a teasing swipe as we pass.
“Come say goodbye—they’re about to leave.” She obediently gets up, and trots past us to the
door that leads to the storeroom, and past that, to the kitchen. The comic dangles from her hand.
Grandfather’s words come back to me, resonant, a warning: Ramayan at dusk, peace in
the home: Bharatam at sunset, dissent spreads from the tome.
This was a house of fragile peace: Big-Father and Brother always fought, over money, or
respect in the shape of money; Big-Mother wept at her husband’s open carousing with low
women, and Big-Sister, unhappy, educated housewife who'd failed to give birth to a son, she
threatened to kill herself time and again. And now my niece was reading Bharatam, the story of
brothers killing one another, of men avenging dead fathers by murdering unborn children, of the
age of Evil. I don't say anything. Father had considered this his home because Big-Father was his
older brother and he'd been raised on this land and blood was thicker than water. But he's dead
and it is no longer our house.
So I collect my mother and sister and leave.

Blood is thicker than water.
Shankar 163

A week following the funeral mother sits at the dining table going through the aged bank
diary that serves as her ledger. Usually so sure and precise, her fingers hover over each line
uncertainly now.
Mother pauses and frowns as she deciphers her own writing.
“Your father never needed to write anything down. He could trap everything up here,”
she says fondly, touching her temple, near strands of graying hair.
I say nothing. In some ways nothing has changed. She ran the household even before
Father's illness since he was mostly abroad. But she always ran everything by Father, every
major choice, every minor consideration as if his sanction anchored her choices. She's unmoored
now, a woman without a husband just guiding her children and marking her time.
My sister approaches and Mother's gaze swings to her, anxiously studying her gait, the
firmness of her stride, her pinched wary face.
Mother and Grandfather blamed Big-father for her weakness. Father had called them
irrational though he'd half-believed them, felt guilty. When Father and Small-father bought back
the property in Big-father's name after he'd sold it to some Christians, that great communist built
a new home with their money and demolished the idols in the grove, devoted to the family gods,
the grove even the Nazranis hadn’t disturbed. In order to prove he wasn't afraid of them, didn't
credit their existence, he angered the gods.
So the gods put us in our place.
The first event in the new house wasn't a birth or marriage: it was the arrival of Small-
father's corpse.
Then Father's father, sure-footed and goat-like even at his age, fell and broke his hip,
wasted away and died.
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Their youngest sister eloped, with a drunk and wife-beater.
And then my sister was born.
Mother never stopped blaming Big-Father: After some time, everyone had recognized the
source of our luck. Neighbors warned us not to ignore the signs. My mother, using Big-mother as
intermediary, begged Big-father to satiate the gods but he refused. Finally, with Big-father away
for a Party demonstration during Father's vacation, Father invited a renowned mantrik to conduct
purifying rituals. I was born soon after, and Mother often speaks of her anxiety leading up to my
birth, her fear the gods hadn't been satisfied, that I too would be ill or deformed in some way.

Things are better now. But Sister still bears the mark of Big-father's false pride. Mother's
worried gaze shadows her and I know her thoughts. I've heard her whisper them to Father and
Grandfather often enough. What will become of her, oh gods? Who will take care of her when
we're gone? If we find some boy good enough to take her, how will his family treat her?
We’d been lucky to finally find a suitable groom, a young man working in construction in
Qatar, which pleased Mother since it took his family out of the equation. The marriage was fixed
for May, the most auspicious time and also pleasingly close to Father’s birthday. He’d been in
remission then, and set his sights on this day as some kind of landmark.
And now Father is dead and the wedding will be put off for a year as decorum demands,
only putting it off this one year could mean putting it off forever—the boy’s family is unlikely to
wait, and of course, there’s what the astrologer said and what mother fears.
It was as my sister was writing her final paper that we went to see the astrologer,
Grandfather, Mother and I. The astrologer’s fingers trembled as he unplucked the coarse, ropey
thread about the thin sheets of paper that held the secrets of my sister's birth and her future. Then
Shankar 165

he did the same to mine and Father’s. He was an old-school member of the priestly caste, pale,
ascetic and formidable. In the cramped old room we sat in, with its faint smell of incense and
camphor, and the ghostly remnants of the chalked squares of the astrological charts on the black
floor, he appeared even more mysterious and knowing.
We sat like penitents in front of him, as he looked over the papers with deliberation. His
hands hovered over my sister’s star-chart and my mother leaned forward eagerly.
“The girl,” my mother said. “Her health—”
“I know,” the astrologer said peremptorily, cutting her off. “She’s been under
dashasandhya for a long time, since the moment of her birth, yet the girl has always had the
touch of luck. She has thrived as well as one could expect. And better times are coming for her.”
He darted a quick glance to mine. “Here’s one with more good fortune to come.
Professionally, I see nothing but success. And he’ll study, he’ll study a lot.”
Mother glanced at me with worried affection. “He wants to go for post-graduation but I
say he should look for a job.”
The astrologer made a derisive noise. “Those who can study, should. And when is
knowledge ever a waste? He will learn. He must learn.”
I worried that mother would bring up our entire family saga, that Father’s job in the Gulf
was untenable, that we needed my earnings, so I looked at Grandfather in mute appeal.
“The girl—you were saying?” Grandfather said.
The Namboodiri raised the charts, grasped a handful of the little shells lying at the center
of the chalky square and cast them onto the floor. He murmured to himself as he read the signs.
“It’s really her marriage we’re looking at,” Mother says anxiously. “She’s finishing up
her exams and we’re looking for a good boy from a good family. I just worry…”
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The Namboodiri scattered a few more tiny shells about. “She will have good luck as I
said. Her health will improve, slowly. But the marriage—there is something you must be aware
of. Her marriage with either be arranged within the next two years, or else you must wait another
seven from that point for a good alliance.”
My mother twisted the ends of her saree. By that point Sister would be much too old for
any alliance.
“Is there any pariharam?” Grandfather said. Pariharam, a way of adjusting the fates, sops
to win the favor of the gods.
“Not for this,” the astrologer murmured, but he was no longer looking at Sister’s chart
but Father’s. Mother was too caught up in her worry to notice his quick frown.
When he’d finished, Mother thanked the Namboodiri, placed the dakshina, a few hundred
rupees, in his hands without touching him and thanked him over and again while withdrawing.
She looked as she often did after these meetings, inexplicably happier because she now had
something to press back against.
The Namboodiri’s gentle squeeze on my arm arrested my move to follow her.
Grandfather stopped beside me. “I didn’t mention your Father’s fate.”
The look on his face made my spine stiffen. Grandfather said Rama.
“One more year of good fortune, then suffering, quick and unrelenting.” He looked
unapologetic. “He will not live to see your good fortune.”

So now, two years later, Mother watches Sister because Father is dead and she has to
balance the books, and wants to convince the boy’s family that we are not being untoward in
pushing forward with the marriage, and she has to convince Sister.
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When my mother tentatively brings up the issue of her wedding, my sister simply says
Father's dead. Mother looks over at me in appeal, which my sister sees and she flashes a look of
such irritation that I feel like I'm seeing her face anew, this express alien to her face. Despite her
frequent illnesses and frail health she has always been the one who takes after him.
“I am not getting married just yet,” she says. “Father just died. Tell them to wait, Mother,
they'll understand.”
“But if they say no?” And this is how my mother lives, worrying about barriers that may
not even exist.
My sister shrugs. “If they say no, they aren't the sort of family I want to join. If they
disrespect my father before the wedding what will it be like after?”
“Yes, but—“ Mother says, and she can't bring herself to utter the other thoughts needling
her mind: no other proposal will come over our year of mourning. And the astrologer who had
known my father would die had also said that no worthwhile proposal would come for another
seven years.
And yet Sister was right: even beyond grief, there is propriety to be observed, things that
aren't done. What girl wants to start her new life with the shadow of grief and guilt over her?
Mother realizes that she's losing, so she tries the other tack—guilt. “Your father never
lived for himself,” she says. “He never did anything for himself. The poor man, he killed himself
working just so we could live well, and this is what you want to do? Honor him by causing him
more pain, wherever he is now?”
This sort of thing would wear me down, but Sister proves more resilient despite her
seeming frailty or perhaps it only works on men, because she dodges mother's arrows, parries
Shankar 168

with her own—selfish, thoughtless, words she'd never used. In the end, they both weep,
clutching one another, and it is agreed: we will ask the boy's family to hold off.
It falls on me, of course, as man of the house. And the boy's father is understanding—
Your Father was a good man—and kind, his words silky, with the blade a layer beneath—they
will wait, for their son likes my sister despite her deficiencies, but there is a price. After all, their
son has a good job, prospects, and no one will blame them for a broken engagement in the
circumstances. They don't come out and demand it, of course, for they're an educated lot but the
gold, the gifts, the ways in which the boy is to be bought, have all gone up.
When I tell mother she sighs and tells me it could be worse. “We'll take out a loan.
Everyone does it. We've put aside money, of course, little by little, ever since your sister was a
child, but we made mistakes, too. We should have put it aside as gold. When I got married gold
was four hundred a gram, now it's twenty four thousand.” She toys with her faded gold chain as
she says this, the one which holds her mangalsutra, the symbol of her married status.
Taking out a loan will mean one thing for certain—the end of my dreams of further
studies, because dowry does not officially exist, and you the only people to provide the sort of
liquid cash we'll need won't be banks.
“It isn't fair to you, I know,” Mother says. “If we had our lands we could sell that: if they
at least gave us some part of what that land's worth, even that might be enough. Your father, he
created these messes and left us all jolly at being the good brother. And we have to pay the
price.” Yesterday she'd been praising him as a saint, today he was the destroyer of her children's
ambitions.
We don't talk about the increased demands in front of Sister: she will say no. I ask
Mother why she won't ask Big-father for the land back but she demurs. For all that she criticized
Shankar 169

Father for his passivity she has been no better herself at times, my Mother, who dislikes
confrontation outside the family whose lives she anxiously tries to control. But I wonder why,
yes, why don't we ask for it back? What do I have to lose? It was mine and if the old man has a
lick of the goodness my Father believed, he will give me restitution.
When he was ill in the hospital when we all pretending everything was going to be fine
when we knew it wasn't, I would sit at Father's bedside in the early evenings so Mother could get
some rest—rest she never wanted. We would force her to go, Sister and I, and as my Father lay
there I would try hard not to be caught staring, to contain the waves of frustration and rage and
sadness at seeing him, my all-powerful father, looking so papery thin, so gray, so broken.
He talked then, of his childhood, and it was strange to hear because he'd never been a
particularly introspective man. Death makes us all search for meaning. He must have seen
something on my face when he mentioned Big-Father because he called me closer and said, your
mother's a good woman but she's learned from her Father that all that matters are husband and
children, her family. She's got few faults but she doesn't know my brother, the good in him. He
took care of us all, even though he was only a few years older, he was the one who acted more
like a father than my father. When I finished tenth, my poor father, an uneducated man, went to
the village Nair and asked him to set up a job for me as a railway peon. I was first in school, and
that was the best future he could see for me. But Big-Father, he said no, he said, Sankara is too
smart to end his studies now—though he'd quit school—he said Sankara will go to college, must
go to college. We didn't have much money then, and my father would have preferred I was
earning but he was meek before Big-Father and let me finish twelfth.
Father's eyes pooled with tears as he said this, and I felt embarrassment and envy, for
Big-Father. And after twelfth, I had my grades, and at that time there were only two hundred
Shankar 170

seats in Engineering Colleges in Kerala, two hundred from a population of ten million. I wasn't
quite good enough to come near the top, but they offered me a seat anyway. They said, if I could
come up with 10,000 rupees, then the boy ahead of me would give me his seat—he needed it
desperately. We didn't have ten thousand.
I was working the fields that monsoon season; I'd shaved my head and I was in charge of
herding the bullocks. I remember it always, I was in the fields, the brown water marking me in
mud, the bullocks were being their stupid recalcitrant selves, and I was watching Father who
was in another part of the field laughing and talking with the day laborers, and I recalled the
times I'd used to come and watch Father here as a child, in the evenings, bringing him tiffin and
watching him and the boys rest after their work was done, playing cards, drinking arrack—they
taught me to play, you know. I only stopped because of your mother. I was working in the fields,
unsure of what would happen in my life when my brother came up to me and said we had to talk.
He said, we'll sell it, as much of it as needed for ten thousand. It'll be good for the family
to have an Engineer in it. And you can make good money, get a respectable job and start taking
care of the others, too. Would Father agree, I asked him. I'll make him agree, he said. And I
dreamt about it in that moment—I lived it. Going to Engineering college, working hard, being
the first in the family to get a degree. Then Big-Father wouldn't have to take on all the
responsibility, we could share them. It was a beautiful dream, and as he stood there watching me
expectantly, I wanted to say yes so badly. But there were sisters to get married, and what if I
didn't get a good job, god forbid, what if I failed them? I said no and he tried all summer to get
me to change my mind. And when I refused for the final time, he said you're still going to college
so I went and joined for Commerce, and yes, I never got the respect or the position I wanted in
Shankar 171

life but I was able to take care of them a little. I was able to ease his burdens a little, and I was
able to raise you in relative comfort, so I've been happy.
Your mother says I don't owe my brother anything, that he's lived selfishly but he has a
big heart, your Big-Father, he will always do anything for you. Remember that. Don't relegate
people into black and white like your mother does. She doesn't know enough of the world.
He was extremely ill, and the nostalgia afforded some relief from his pain and
uncertainty, so I didn’t remind him what had happened his last visit to Big-Father. When he’d
realized that his treatment had depleted our savings, that Chittan’s wedding would require more
money, Father had—after much cajoling on Mother’s part—visited Big-father, with me in tow.
All the way over, I worried for him because he seemed quite confident, certain that Big-
father would give him what he wanted. I asked what he would do if Big-father refused.
"Stop swallowing your mother’s words like they’re the whole truth. She thinks everyone
in the world is like her." He was leaning against me, seated on the bus' aisle seat, though he
preferred the open window because Mother had warned me that the wind wasn't to strike him.
"My Brother is a good man. Everything will be all right." And he slapped my knee reassuringly
and shot me the tired smile that made me recall his strength and life with a pang.
Outside the bus, we stumbled across Big-brother holding court in the shade of the large
banyan trees that most jobless men, young and old, congregated beneath like ants near a sweet-
sticky stain. He sprang up immediately and jogged over, every inch the concerned nephew.
"Father sent me to get you. I've got my bike," he said.
Father looked alarmed. He had a middle-aged suspicion of two-wheelers but I had been
wanting to buy my own, though the cost of Father's treatment had put paid to that. My last visit
Shankar 172

I'd laid my palm on the cool blue engine of Brother's Kawazaki in the open-air garage and
wondered how he'd convinced Big-father into buying this, given he still had no steady job.
Seeing Father vacillate, Brother flashed the familiar smile, boyish, rakish and calming.
“There's nothing to be afraid of. I'll be careful, Uncle, you can trust me” Then, at me. “I'd take
you side-saddle but it's easier with two people only.” Father looked even less willing now.
“We'll walk,” Father said.
“If you walk, I won't hear the end of it,” Brother said. “Tell your father it's okay.”
With that Brother ran to get the bike, and Father said, “So I'll get on the bike, shall I?” He
grinned but his eyes held the same shadow they gained whenever Sister's wedding or Mother's
future was mentioned. He was afraid, I realized, and ashamed, of having to press for his property
back, and he needed me there despite his words on the bus.
“I'll get there soon,” I promised, and as soon as they left, a production of sound and
smoke trailing behind, I set off on a tearing run. It still took me fifteen minutes to reach their
gate. And inside I was greeted by Big-sister, who stood in the canopy of coconut trees that dotted
the compound, overseeing a servant counting downed coconuts. There was no need for this, of
course, but Mother had noted offhand a few times that Big-sister avoided her mother-in-law's
presence as much as possible. Poor girl, Mother always said, so smart and studious, and her luck
to have him for a husband and them for in-laws. She's better than he deserves and they treat her
like dirt because she's only given them a granddaughter.
Looking back I sometimes wonder if Big-sister had been placed there on purpose, to
delay me, a move by Brother. But then I think that despite their avarice and selfishness, they
aren't quite that cunning, and that it had just been fate that I should escape Big-sister's clutches
and enter the house only to find my Father already losing the battle.
Shankar 173

It was a production inside, Big-father playing the shocked, wronged and blindsided older
brother, Big-brother his irate son, and Father had somehow become a greedy, avaricious villain,
the money grubber, the slithery snake in an Edenic family.
I never expected this of you...All I've done...All these years...Making me a fool...the
words spilled from Big-father's stern mouth, turning the story, changing the world.
At least my arrival buttressed Father. He shot me a pained, hurt smile, and sat hunched in
on himself as Big-father and Big-brother rained down their complaints, and then I entered and he
began fighting his case, mildly, cautiously, still wanting not to hurt them. And my hovering
seemed to deflate Big-Father somewhat too, as he kept cutting his eyes my way every so often.
Perhaps because he wanted to remain Big-Father's golden boy Father said, "I've never
said anything, brother, not all these years, when my wife complained and complained I was
being foolish, delusional in trusting you. Don't make me look a fool in front of her."
It was the most openly vulnerable my Father had ever been and Big-Father shifted
uncomfortably.
And that's when Big-Brother lost it.
"Your wife, your wife, always your wife. "
Later I'd learn he'd spread stories before, that whenever he lost his temper he lost his
tongue and reason and worse, class, and he'd abused my mother, demeaned her, in front of his
snickering friends and lackeys and Big-father said nothing.
He said: "Of course it's that woman's doing! She thinks she's better than us. But how good
is she? You've been gone all this while and the children are always off at school. How do you
know what she was—"
I knew what he was insinuating before the worlds tumbled out his mouth.
Shankar 174

Father struggled to his feet as soon as Big brother spoke but before he could do anything
Big-father had reached his son and slapped him. Big-brother's confused invectives ground to a
halt and a sudden, suffocating silence slipped over the room.
And then my father wept. Big-father looked appalled. “Brother,” he said, but Father
hurried outside wordlessly and I followed as he slipped on his slippers, tears still streaming,
hiccuping, and Big-father came to hover at the door as we left. That boy, Father said, when we
stood at the bus stop, that boy, and I could see he was shaking all over with rage.
I don't think they planned that either—insulting Mother to derail Father. But it worked
out for them.
The very next day Big-father visited to placate Father and since Father hadn't told Mother
why he'd returned despondent, they left the house to talk. When I returned from school, Big-
father had left and Father seemed more chipper. Big-father had told him that they'd been wrong,
it seemed, and promised to transfer property to Father, soon.
"I told you your mother worried for no reason," Father said. He never mentioned Big-
brother.
Perhaps Big-father had meant what he said but then Father fell ill again and he kept
putting off the transfer saying we should wait till you're better and then Father stopped asking,
perhaps because he wanted desperately to hold onto his illusions.

It's two hours after leaving home, a little after noon, that I arrive in the village, the bus
dropping me off at the village circle, with the stout banyan trees towering and shading the stalls
and village police station. There's no sign of Big Brother today, but I, a stranger here for most
Shankar 175

my life, am recognized by a couple of passersby, who stop me to murmur commiserations. They
ask after my mother and sister almost as if they're more than passing acquaintances whose names
I don't recall. How are they holding up, it was a shame, so young, that sort of thing and for the
first time since my unthinking childhood I feel a sense of my place in this dirt Father had loved
so.
“Off to visit your Big-Father? Give him our regards,” they say, and I feel something sour
in my mouth, the same as during the post-funeral conversation in Big-Father's house, the sense of
being a minor player in Big-Father's tragedy. Father had gone off to slave for Arabs and take care
of his family, while Big Father had played local leader and pillar of the community with his
money. Father had treasured his memories of this land, but to the people here, he was a near
stranger, like me.
I assure the men I'll let Big-father know. I feel them watching as I walk away.
Big-father doesn't arrive for lunch. Neither does Big-brother. Big-mother and Big-sister
make empty apologies—who knows where these men are, they're never home when you
expect—and pull me to the table, where I dine alone, while they hover in the background,
throwing questions at me one at a time, about what exactly Sister's situation is, what the boy's
family said, all of which I deflect politely. They seem different, too, more relaxed with one
another than they have been in years.
When my niece returns home and dumps her schoolbag wearily on the chair nearest the
door, I am by myself in the living room, watching television blindly, avoiding the newly
mounted photograph of a much younger Father next to Small-father's. Her mother, of some
instinct, steps through the filmy separator curtain, saying, you've come, go clean up, stop
Shankar 176

bothering your uncle. “It isn't a problem,” I say but the girl has already followed her mother to
the kitchen area.
A few minutes later, though, prompted either by manners or more likely the television,
she's back, still in the same clothes, clutching a glass of tea, and drops onto the sofa beside m. I
hand the remote over and she flips channels listlessly, finally settling on cartoons.
She doesn't speak then, but after the cartoon's over, and she's left changing channels with
increasingly impatient sighs, she gives me the calculating look of children. “Do you want to
know a secret?”
“Sure,” I say, expecting something adequately childish. She glances up at the separating
curtain to make certain no one's listening.
"I'm going to have a brother," she says, importantly, and I'm left wordless for a second,
certain the girl had overhead her parents' conversation and misconstrued something. Then I recall
how in-sync Big-mother and Big-sister had seemed, and I believe her.
"How do you know it'll be a boy?" I ask, to make certain.
"The doctor told them," she says glibly—and why would she not? She doesn't know it's
illegal to ascertain the child's gender before birth. But they had done it, I know, and I wonder
given my niece's age if this truly is their first attempt since her birth….
"Everyone's happy," she says, and I detect the slightest grudging note to her words. A
little while later, her mother calls her in to take a shower.
Bored, I end up, unwillingly, beneath Father's photograph, one of him long before any of
us, those who loved him best, Mother, me or Sister, knew him. Big-mother steps into the room as
I'm examining the photograph of this stranger.
"Do you like it? It's a favorite of your Big-father's. Took it for his first passport."
Shankar 177

Big-sister who's followed her, comes close. "It's strange, he's barely recognizable, isn’t it?
So handsome."
“It's nice,” I say. “Niece just told me about your news. A child.”
I'll give this to Big-sister; she hides her shock well. She smiles, close-mouthed and
accepts my congratulations, doesn't say it's a boy, but now I see the protective, proud way Big-
mother hovers next to her and I understand why there's such amity between them.
"We haven't told anyone," Big-mother says. "Avoiding the evil eye, no?"
Then Sister speaks. "I thought of telling your mother and sister, but with everything—
how could I?" They look a little awkwardly at me. "Please tell them, of course."
Big-mother sighs. "It's good. This house needs some good news." Like the loss of my
father could be unmade by their heir, like their happiness was the equal of our misery. But I
smile and smile like their joy is my own.

I give up after another half hour, in which I entertain my newly-bathed niece, who
narrates the story of a school race, but reveals no more secrets. When she's cajoled to study by
her mother, I finally decide to leave. They make weak remonstrance, asking me to stay, saying
Big-father would come soon, but they look relieved to see me go. Outside the sky has the
tranquil beauty of dusk, Father's favorite time of day, when he'd love to just sit and watch the
wind whisper through the grasses and the trees, and sometimes recollect stories of his childhood.
Instead of following the route back to the village center I waver and take off towards the family
fields, and that's how I run into Big Father, standing plumb in the middle of our lands.
Shankar 178

Big Father stands on a narrow path bisecting the two acres of water-logged paddy,
frowning as his eyes take in the bundles of young rice plants stacked against the path. He is
startled when I approach him.
"Ah," he says glibly. "You came."
"You said you'd return for lunch," I say. He grunts and looks back out at the fields.
"Ready to plant?"
"Where? It's a losing business, farming," he says. "Not like the old days. And you can't do
anything else with this land, can you? Law won't let you sell it for real estate. I'm thinking about
firming it for rubber."
"Too much water," I say knowingly, and he grins, bearing a shadow of his son's devilish
attractiveness. I'd never worked the fields, but Father had talked about his own experiences
enough for me to pick this up. My hospital conversation with Father rears up in my head, and I
see him closer to what he was in the mounted photograph in their home than in my memories, a
young man, feet soaked in the muddy, standing water of these fields, the leaf blades caressing
him with the murmur of wind. Then Big-father invades my waking dream, stealing even that
bittersweet pleasure from me.
"Where am I going to find people to work this?" He says. "Will have to find some Tamils
or Biharis, as usual."
I don't say anything, but let him ramble and make an unwelcome discovery: I have more
of my parents—their weakness—in me than I'd realized, because I feel embarrassed and unsure
about bringing up my reasons for coming.
So I'm a little gruff when I tell him what I'm here about, and the easy manner he'd clothed
himself in stiffens, tightens, until his face is etched with a slight scowl.
Shankar 179

"You promised him that you'd do what's right," I say and it tears me up that I've got to
call up Father's ghost for fairness. I resent Big-father for forcing me to invoke Father's ghost.
"The land's mine," he says. "Mine and my son's and grandson's—" He stops as if he's said
too much and I don't say I already know, and I wonder if the tangible vision of a grandson's
behind his new reluctance. "The land here's land I bought in my name."
"With money from the ancestral property. And from money Father and uncle sent you."
He snorts. "I never sold any land without my brothers' consent. And they chose to send
me money. I didn't ask. I don't know what your mother's been telling you. She even poisoned
him, my brother!"
"Leave my mother out of it," I shout. He stills, growls, and steps up to me and I'm keenly
made aware that he's still stronger and bigger than me, that I've always been to genteel, too
conscious of others, to fight but this man has been handing out beatings since his youth.
"You will show me respect."
Your son showed my father none, I think. I say, "I'll take it to the courts."
He laughs, and it's an easy, carefree laugh and with it, his sudden rage melts like away,
like milkweed in the wind. "Take me to the courts. I've done nothing illegal," he says, and I
know he's right—unethical and wrong isn’t the same as illegal": while the courts might pity me,
they wouldn't side with me.
"The gods won't forgive you," I say.
"I'm a Communist, remember," he says, then sighs. "You're like my own child, but I
won't let you take advantage of my emotions."
There's nothing I can say to that—that level of self-delusion and audacity.
"The gods are watching," I say. "My father is watching."
Shankar 180

"Your father is mud," he says, scanning the skies with a frown. "And there are no gods,
only men."
He's still watching the sky as I walk away, raging, unable to get beneath his granite
certainty.

The tantrik is not what I expect, a soft man in his sixties, with the rolling plumpness
borne of self-indulgence. He wears a rich, cream buttonless top, a conspicuous gold watch whose
heft is indicated in the size of its unnumbered face on his left hand, and dark threads on his right.
But his fingers are long, thin and well-shaped, like an artist's, and as I sit there watching him, he
keeps tapping his bent knee, nodding his head like he's listening to music. His lips smile but his
eyes watch me with languorous calculation.
He has a reputation—a powerful reputation that has seen him travel on business not just
to other citites or other states, but to other countries—rich businessmen use him to destroy their
rivals, jealous wives to hurt their husband's lovers, or their husbands; and some use him to settle
scores with family members.
When I tell him that I'm a student, that my father is dead and then stammer out the words
concerning our money problems he draws back into himself, leans away from me. I can see in
his glance the estimation of our penury. I quickly turn my head, the rage and despair almost a
tangible weight pressing me down. I don't deserve to be judged this way. “There used to be a
curse on the house,” I say, and tell him about Big-father, the vengeance of the gods, my uncle's
deaths, my sister's illness, all of it, how I was cheated out of my birthright, how good my Father
had been, and for what?
Shankar 181

“So you've lost your father, your property, your sister's health. And now you'll lose your
dreams.” He says this with some relish.
I spring up off my seat. It was a mistake, this madness. “Sit, sit,” he says placating. He
cups his face in his palm and watched me, the amusement still marking his face. “ You are a
child, still. No, sit! You are a child and I am going to give you something I don't give others, a
chance to think it over. You think this is a game? I can get you revenge, yes, but there will be a
cost, someday.”
I sit back down. “That's generous of you, this advice. Would you say the same if I were
richer?”
The older man shakes his head, ruefully. “My grandfather practiced magic of a sort: he
worked mostly on small potions, little things, rather innocent, not like me. But once, only once
he used it to harm a creature—his son, my father, had been bitten by a snake, and he was sick
and fevered and dying. So when my grandmother begged him to save her son, he used his magic
to call back the snake, to force it to draw its own poison from the body. Do you know what
happens when a snake takes back its venom? It suffers, it suffers and dies. My father was saved,
and my grandfather carried on living well, but when his time came, I remember, his body was
covered in puncture marks, and he suffered dreadfully before dying. So know this, if you choose
this path, you will suffer for what you do.”
I think of my father on his sickbed; I remember his enervating pain, the shameful
pleading for death. I remember his tears, my mother's. “We all suffer. I want to have earned it.”
The tantrik no longer smiles as he looks at me. “Very well,” he says. “This coming
karutha vavu, the moonless night, we will do—what is it you want done? A curse on your uncle?
Your cousin? The curse on your house again?”
Shankar 182

“My sister is part of that house,” I say. “I am, too.”
“So what is it you want to do?”
Do you remember, I ask him, the story of Ashwathama? I'm disappointed to see that it
takes him a minute to understand, and when he does he shakes his head, weary.
“I see I was a fool to try and save you."

A week after the karutha vavu, I'm lying in bed, unwilling to wake when Sister bustles
into the room calling my name. I keep my eyes shut hoping she'll leave. Instead, she flips open
the curtains so that the morning sunlight turns the inside of my eyes a bright red. Red....the liquid
red robes the tantrik wore that night. Red...the alarmed clucks of the bird, the spurt of its blood,
the smear on his clothing, on my hands. Red....the heat pouring through my own veins, the fiery
red of the sword on the forge, of my sharp and unfettered rage...the haze through which I
traveled in the middle of the night to Big-father's house.
I shut my eyes tighter try to make it dark...black...as the night sky on a moonless night, as
the shadows that taunted me as I tried to find my way on the property, fearing that every step,
every breath would give me away, would be greeted with the outer lights being turned on and my
being discovered with the seeds of this house's destruction in my bloodied hands.
I'd planned to bury it close to the gate, in the open patch where my Father had been
cremated but after I'd climbed the wall, I'd recalled my Father's peaceful face in repose as he was
laid on the mat for all to see, the moans of my mother and the tears of Big-father and felt my
certainty waver. Some instinct told me, no, not here, because my hate was no match for his love.
And as I made my way past the house past the open, barred windows of the room in
which Big-brother lay asleep and complacent, twined with his wife, I felt my assurance slip back
Shankar 183

into me like a well-worn cloth, a magic tunic from the tales, the kavacha kundala of Radheya,
the jewel in the forehead of Ashwatthama to protect him against the world. Black magic depends
on hate, on spite, the writhing heaving rage of those who channel it, and where my father might
try to circumvent my revenge, the gods had good reason to cut Big-father at the knees. Once I'd
passed the house, I turned on my torch and the pale light guided me towards the woods. To its
side, there was a pile of dull red bricks stacked up like toy bricks, left over from some addition to
the house, that I'd heard Big-sister warning her daughter against approaching for fear of snakes.
I thought of the snakes and the soft rustling noises beneath the desolate warbling of frogs
and the insistent chirruping of crickets, and I should have been afraid but the recklessness that
led me past that wall hasn't let go of me and my leaping blood pulled me forward, into the grove,
to the home of our gods. Mother had always warned me against coming here—why let raging
eyes fix on you, after all? Here I saw the heights of Big-father's arrogance—in the pale light of
the torch I saw the remains of the idols, half broken, one missing half his face, another just a
torso, unseeing—he hadn't even bothered to move the remains, just smashed them like they were
pottery, and left them there, beneath his contempt. Beneath that site I placed my torch and bag
and began digging. Once I looked up in the midst of my work, and in the torchlight, I thought I
saw a smile on the ruined, silent faces watching me.
And now I lie here in bed weeks later, and my sister sits down heavily by my side. “Are
you awake?”She says somberly. “Big-father called. There's some terrible news.” She reaches out
and touches me and I feel the trembling of her hands and will my eyes open. "What's wrong? Are
you ill?"
I have to force myself to keep my face implacable.

Shankar 184

Before I meet the tantric I say goodbye to my father. On the tenth day after a funeral, we
collect whatever is left of the one who has vanished in a mud pot, and the oldest son takes it to
the nearest holy site, a river, and helps the spirit to float away, to leave this place for good.
So on the tenth day we gather outside the house once more, Big-Father, his son, the other
male members of our family and they watch as I collect my father, or what I think is him. Big-
Father maintains his hale and hearty avuncular act around people, but Big-Brother and I have no
use for pretense: we ignore one another. Mother is too lost in her grief to care. Big-mother
hovers about Big-sister, who's inched close to my sister and mother. Combing through the
ground, collecting sand, I wonder how much of this is my Father, how much common mud.
The ride to the river I am quiet but people notice nothing amiss; perhaps they think it is
grief. Outside we whip off our shirts, tie neat white mundus about our waists, begin chanting as I
carry the pot down to the river. Big-brother and Big-sister stand along my path leaning into one
another, in love, happy, his hand against her side curving towards her belly. Big-father glances at
them, too, and I think sons and grandsons, how I'd love to wipe that surety off your face. Niece
stands vibrating with the impatience of those forced to behave, and I recall her sitting spindly-
legged on the threshold reading Bharatam at dusk, saying, a brother. A prince, a future king.
I place the pot on my head as I step into the waters; the river looks muddy today, its
waters low and shallow in the early summer. My father's dust, and the bones that refused to turn
into dust, they weigh down on my head. There are others like me here today, sons, and around
me, the old chants rise in the air.
Big-father once more looks like he might cry, like he's turned once more into the man my
Father loved. But in minutes, we'll be done and my family and I will continue suffering while he
and his enjoy the fruits that should be ours. Big-brother moves into my sights, his hand still
Shankar 185

clutching his pregnant wife. That child, that idea of a child has made them far too strong for me.
I think of Ashwatthama, the only one cursed by the gods to immortality, for seeking vengeance
not against the men who'd wronged him, but against the whole of their line, a man who'd tried to
murder an unborn child and I understand, finally, how such hate can fill you.
I try to let go of my angry thoughts, the rage I feel at their standing there like they cared
for him truly. Because my rage will hurt Father and he deserves better.
I hold the pot to my head as I try to think pure thoughts; I hear the resonant murmur of
prayers as I dip below the water, praying myself, once, twice, three times. Then I uncover the
pot, look at the grains that were my father, and ignoring the sights and sounds that try to impress
themselves upon my senses from land—Big-Father's hypocritical prayers, Big-Brother's
mournful face, my mother's naked grief, I tilt the clay weight, let it pour out, greedy to escape.
As the dust that was my father floats away, becomes indistinguishable from the river, I
think Goodbye Father. I love you. And I feel as if a weight has been lifted as I turn toward land
and the men that cheated me: instead it is Big-sister I see, her hand curving clutching her saree's
pallu, unintentionally, against her still flat belly and the thoughts that rush to my mind, I know I
am free of my father, that I will accept annihilation to destroy their peace.
The good in me is dead.

Shankar 186

The Mutawwa Killers
I
The plan, the way Pummy put it, was to trail a member of the Religious Police till we
caught him alone, surround him, then bludgeon him, over and again, on the head till his slick
blood matted his hair, punch him till the shears hidden beneath his white thobe clawed into his
flesh, carry on hitting and kicking him till he begged—not to Allah or the Prophet, but to us—
and to slice his head off when he’d finally been humbled.
You want to know, Sir, why four sixteen-year olds conjured up so horrible a plan in this
Holy land, home of the Faith. The papers are having a field day, no? We prove their shrill
warnings true: the morally depraved spawn of ungrateful guest workers, taking advantage of the
bounty of Saudis and corrupting their pure land. But even you, a diplomat, in your posh tie and
sharp suit, with your aash-poosh English and bureaucratic power, even you know their bounty is
a lie: you’re brown like me, desi: Hindustani, Pakistani, Afghani. And we’re all rubbish, less
than them, almost animals.
Oh, stop watching the door. They are not going to arrest you for listening to me.
I didn’t really think about things till Pummy brought hell down on our heads, but the past
few weeks, confined here, it's all I've done. But you don’t care why, really, do you? You just
want to know how to explain us to the Saudis. Why some of your flock turned rabid.

It started the way things always did, with one of Pummy’s disastrous ideas. He’d wanted
to go to the beach, his father being out of town, driving the boss some place cooler; and his
permanently exhausted mother, belly swollen her seventh time, willfully blind to his doings. So
instead of waiting till lunch as usual, we cornered a few sheep—sixth graders with good pocket
Shankar 187

money—the hour before to arrange funds, and we’d scaled school—all four of us, Pummy,
Khalid, Salah, and me—and were on our way to Pummy’s building, through the heart of
Aziziyah. We strode past the ashen buildings that proclaim GOD IS GREAT in black, flowing
script on the side, with cafes, water stores, and other businesses on the ground floor, and
dilapidated apartments on the others, past the few dried-out stragglers braving the cutting heat of
a Jeddah noon.

Ever been outside that time of day? Probably only in your nice, Embassy-sanctioned car.
I bet, like my mother, you hate the broiling sun and, sitting in your A.C. car, you daydream about
des, home, the land where rivers swell with monsoons and children emit watery giggles in the
cool rain, where you don’t pay for water to drink, to cook with, to wash hands and feet in
preparation for prayer. We’d walk fifteen minutes each way, lugging water cans as large as
suitcases from the water stores, because the taps in our houses worked only sporadically, and
sweating in the mid-morning heat, weighed down by water-weight, I don’t recall ever dreaming
of des. We’re different that way. I understand the heat. I was born here and the sun does not dry
me out but feeds the burn, the love, the life within me. You have never seen the air shimmer like
molten glass, and things in the distance take wondrous, liquid shape, like shimmering
possibilities.

The sun burned so bright that I couldn’t raise my eyes heavenward. We staked out the
narrow sidewalk by height, Khalid’s long frame closest to the stores and me, the smallest, at the
edge where I could feel the vibrations from the cars roaring by too close every few minutes.
Pummy, a step ahead of us, was unnaturally quiet, smiling wolfishly at the cracked pavement—
Shankar 188

probably savoring the thought of driving his father’s rusty old Mazda without the old man’s
knowledge—and next to me Salah, who had girly hair really, long and straight and tied up in a
ponytail, kept sweeping stray, damp locks back from his eyes . Khalid alone strutted, hands in
pockets, whistling while studying the brown passersby of our mostly desi ghetto with the same
curiosity they showed us, four boys dressed in the checked blue uniform of the Indian school, so
obviously cutting class. Khalid could strut (he didn’t live in Aziziyah like us), but I kept hoping
no one recognized me and tattled to my father. Once out of Aziziyah—that ugly mini-desistan,
chock-full of water-starved apartments and dried-out people with shriveled hearts and dreams—
we would be okay; no one cared. Saudi cops never noticed us. Who would? We weren’t Arab or
White. But this was our ghetto, and those passersby believed themselves our brothers, so they
stared and censured us in their narrow minds.
We passed the Rusbhukhari cafe, and the bastard Afghanis had chickens on rolling spits
outside, sizzling golden in the noon heat, and the succulent aroma brought water to my mouth. I
said, why not get something to eat—make a picnic of the trip. Just think, us seated on a blanket,
like the happy families that gather at the beach on weekends, with boiled yellow rice and
seasoned chicken spread out before us. The spicy red sauce that gives the bhukhari-rice its sting
drowning the yellow grain. And us, hunched over, eating shoulder to shoulder, with the sun
baking our necks and hands, laughing and tearing at the food, swallowing in great gulps because
the desert sand tries to join in, become part of the feast. Sounds nice, no? But Pummy sneered
and said, “Bloody idiot.” And the others laughed. Well, Khalid laughed. Salah giggled.
Though it was my own fault—I had lived next to Pummy all my life; why had I
mentioned happy families?—I went quiet and sullen by the time we turned south at the four-way
intersection that divides Aziziyah into the little areas of influence—north, Paki; south, Indian—
Shankar 189

and hurried past the empty sandy lot the length of two football fields, where we played cricket in
the evenings when the sand wouldn’t scorch our feet. We were just ten minutes away from
Pummy’s house, swear by God, when we ran into the Filipina, walking in our direction on the
sidewalk, with no one else in sight.
I don’t know when Pummy first saw her, he never said. Just, one day we were talking
about girls and he said, “There’s this Filipina I’ve seen around, an ayah or something. Very
trim.” And he smiled his cocky, crazy smile, where his eyes crinkled and his brown pupils
danced and he looked all friendly except for the pointed canines that gave him this snarling look,
the look that makes me stop sometimes and think, just who is this Pummy? That sharp, vicious
smile had gotten us out of trouble countless times, and into it even more. Like when Salah’s
brother, Ali, the wannabe mujahedin, tried harassing me when I was teaching this bratty seventh-
grader manners (foolish Ali, flanked by his moral warriors, telling me I was a bad Muslim, but I
was teaching that little brat Islam: Submission: The way of things). Pummy just stalked up to us
with his smile and Ali hurried away, mid-rant, with his wispy-bearded followers. Scared, the
fuckers, like everyone else, which pleased Pummy. But Salah told me later that Ali thrashed him
in return.
Pummy had said he was sure the Filipina would do it; after all, Filipinas are whores. No
choice, really, poor trollops. They come over as nurses and servants, without their men around,
and if the Arab boss tells them to get on their knees, what are they to do? At least they get to
make money; our poor desi laborers—garbagemen, greengrocers, the clerks—the Arab fuck
them all the time and don’t pay for months on end, and those fools just bleat and look
heavenward with watering eyes, Ya Allah, Ya Allah, my God, my God.…
Shankar 190

Yes, my story. She stood some ten feet from us, in this long, fluttering black cloak that
hid everything but her throat and face, butterscotch fair and small-featured, and Pummy turned to
us, grinned (it’s sad you’ll never see him smile. He had a beautiful smile—it made my heart
surge with assurance and sometimes, love) and said he’d ask her to do us—all of us. He had said
this the other time too, talking about her. Khalid had laughed then and Pummy had punched him
so hard that Khalid hadn’t uttered a yip afterward, or spoken to Pummy for days. So when
Pummy said this with the Filipina in sight, Khalid kept quiet, and Pummy kept glancing at the
woman and grinning back at us like we should thank him. “Well?” he said to all of us, but he was
staring at me: slow Salah never questioned him; Khalid always did, as a rule, testing for
weakness.
“Pummy, this is wrong,” I began. “How will you feel—”
“Feel? Really good. You’re not my conscience, Muslim,” he said, his grin now a closed
smirk, laughing at my name now.
God knows what my mother was thinking, saddling me with that name. All my life, it has
been my bane: Ammi coddling me as she whispered that God has a special place in his heart for
his little Muslim, friends mock-calling me “great believer,” disapproving teachers who’d caught
us making trouble always looking me over with resigned eyes. If you’re the good one, God help
us. I tried, you know. To be the good one. But Pummy led our pack, and though Pummy didn’t
always muzzle me—because he knew I was never questioning him, the way Khalid did, only the
strength of the plan—he demanded submission in the end.
When Pummy mocked me, I blushed, and he bounded off, leaving us standing there.
Khalid mumbled something under his breath—a curse I think, nothing serious, just the usual
“motherfucker”—and said Pummy was posing, there was no way he’d go through with it. Salah
Shankar 191

told him to shut up, said Pummy would (you just watch!). So we watched Pummy, and he had no
sense of space, just got in your face, close like, till you could feel his fiery warmth and smell his
peppery breath, and he did the same so that the woman jerked back with a startled look,
clutching her cloak in tight little fists. I tensed, my muscles readying for flight the moment she
screamed, but she didn’t. Instead, Pummy’s firm brown hand grazed her little fists as he leaned
in even closer, the way I had only ever in dreams with any girl, his sun-paled checked-blue shirt
brushing her black cloak, his words a rough whisper I couldn’t make out, and I wondered if he
worried about her smelling his sweat or seeing the skin peeling away from his nostril wings, and
whether he could glimpse the hollow of her throat or smell her perfume—rosewater, I imagined,
because it tastes so pure, so sweet, because it was what Hagar fed dying Ishmael when Ibrahim
abandoned them on God’s orders in Mekkah. After two minutes at most, the Filipina said
something sharp and indistinct, gazed over at us with almondy eyes, then turned back the way
she had come, to the row of buildings in the distance.
Ya Allah, I thought, aching with relief and disappointment, until Pummy turned with a
smile and an upturned thumb, and motioned us forward. “See,” Salah said, with that smug
loyalist’s smile.
“She’ll be back. Has to make sure her boss won’t miss her,” Pummy said and clapped
Salah’s shoulder. So we stood baking in our pressed uniforms—who decided long-sleeves were
brilliant for the desert?—sweat dampening our backs, our arms, our thighs, everywhere they
touched skin or cloth. We all sweated freely, except Pummy; he never held much water inside.
Khalid’s hands hung limp by his side, as if he didn’t know quite what to do with them, but when
he noticed me watching, he tightened them into fists, tapped them together, and glared to prove
he could be as calm as Pummy. Salah. Salah avoided my gaze and never took his eye off
Shankar 192

Pummy. He didn’t even bother brushing off the fat drops of perspiration rolling down his lean
cheeks. I knew then he was a virgin like me.
I tried not to show it but I felt a little sick to my stomach, wondering if I could get out of
it, hoping the Filipina wouldn’t show, (hoping she would), knowing Pummy would get his way,
and thinking about the niggling details. You know, like where exactly Pummy planned to take
this. No hotel was going to check us in. His mother was home, as were mine and Salah’s.
Besides, we all lived right there. Khalid was the only one who had a working mother and empty
house, in a compound far from Aziziyah, where no one knew us. He realized this too because he
stopped hitting his fists together like a prizefighter and turned as gray as Salah.
I tried not to imagine all four of us doing it, but I couldn’t help looking over at Pummy, at
his football-hard body and how he alone didn’t sweat much. Salah, despite being more pretty
than any man should be, had girls cooing over him, even my sisters. And though Khalid’s
eagling nose dominated his face, he had a deep, filmi voice—a superstar’s cocky voice—more
money than us, and parents who indulged him in everything, even love. And then there was me,
barely looking like I had hit puberty, shorter than most seventh graders, mistaken for one often.
Pummy would go first, he was always first. Khalid was next: where he lived girls didn’t
cloak themselves or cover their hair and sometimes not even their pale arms or long golden legs,
and he was never tongue-tied about girls, never nervous. Then Salah, and then me. And we
didn’t have protection.
I was worrying about how to bring this up when Pummy said, “Here she comes.” Salah
stopped looking like throwing up, long enough to swing his head that way. And we all saw the
danger at the same time. But it was Khalid who spoke.
Shankar 193

“Mutawwa,” he whispered, and though I had been skittish and sweating and worried
before—about the details, about Allah knowing, about burning in hellfire for betraying my name,
Muslim—I stopped that second. Stopped, completely. Being worried, being skittish, being. My
bloody heart came to a thumping halt; all the heat left my body.
A few feet behind the poor, unaware Filipina hurrying our way, his simple angel-white
thobe flaring just above the ankles, so innocuous looking, God’s hand walked. Tall, haughty,
full-bearded, with deep-set moral gaze accentuated by his aquiline nose, a religious Enforcer my
father’s age, his mantle of righteousness and the thin cane he struck surely before him his only
uniform.
“Chalo, Let’s get out of here,” Khalid said. “C’mon, Pummy.”
Pummy just shook his head, as if he could will trouble away. “He’s no Mutawwa. Just
some Saudi,” he said. “It’ll be okay.” Salah looked like he wanted to pass out but he'd never
move without Pummy’s say so. I glanced at his dangerously long ponytail and back at the
Enforcer of Virtues. Pummy was right about one thing. Usually the Mutawwa’een traveled in
packs, and this one was alone. But no ordinary Saudi would fix his implacable gaze on the long
brush of offending, feminine hair on Salah’s head, bristling to run his shears, hidden beneath his
thobe, through it. An ordinary Saudi would shield his ankles from the sun, not display it to the
heat in the Prophet’s way. And no ordinary Saudi had reason to roam our streets.
“He is a Mutawwa,” I hissed. Pummy said nothing, his gaze fixed on the Filipina till she
was close enough for us to make out the sharp angles of her small, pointed face. Her gaze kept
darting to each of us in turn, and then she moved her head forward slightly and at the same
moment the Mutawwa pursed his lips and stared deliberately past us, but when Khalid uttered an
Shankar 194

involuntary oath, the Mutawwa stopped pretending. “You, come here,” the Mutawwa said, his
stride firming and Khalid cursed again.
“She fucking sold us out,” Khalid said, as we stood frozen, our insides parched with fear.
“Do something, Pummy.”
Run. The whisper came so low I almost didn’t hear it.
“Run, you bastards,” Pummy said, and just like that, with his voice prompting, menacing,
some survival instinct kicked in the rest of us. Khalid tore back down the way we’d come. Salah,
who’d ask “how high” when Pummy said jump, ran straight past the startled Enforcer, whose
grasping fingers closed a second too late, and ponytail flapping with his steps, Salah headed into
the maze of buildings ahead of us, our ghetto. My heart, all dried up, had just pumped back to
life and it took a third, vehement “Run” from Pummy to get me moving.
However, the Mutawwa was already upon us, the bitch Filipina standing a few feet
behind, sly as a mouse, watching with greedy eyes. I am not sure why, perhaps because Pummy
showed no signs of fleeing, but the Mutawwa reached for my throat first.
Dead. I knew I was dead. When my father found out what I had been caught for, not
Allah, not the Prophet, nothing would save me. They always sided with Abbi, after all. Allah
knows, boy, I have tried my best. God knows, a dog’s tail can never be straightened. The Devil
and his djinns take you.
The Mutawwa raised me like a rag doll, his hold bruising my Adam’s apple, making me
whimper, bracing for the imminent pain. Then something heavy slammed into my side and tore
me from the Enforcer’s grasp. As I fell, the Mutawwa’s face, so stoic and sure the minute before,
looked momentarily vulnerable, like my father’s when startled. I felt Pummy at my side, pushing
Shankar 195

against me. “Run,” he said, as he swayed to his feet before me and took a swing—a swing!—at
the Mutawwa.

Perhaps it was because I had heard that command so many times, or because I had
already been poised for a getaway, but this time I did run. Just pawed off the ground and loped
forward and I swear I felt a gust of air whipping behind me, like someone slashed at me. I didn’t
look back until I was sure I was safe. Pummy—cool, calm Pummy—lay writhing and cringing
about on the ground, trying to get away from the Mutawwa, who stood over him, cane in hand,
bashing him like a stray dog.
I wanted to help Pummy, I did, especially because he’d saved me. But he’d told me to
run. And there’s no helping someone who had fallen to an Enforcer. Really.

Like a headles chicken, I ran straight back to school, and in some heated part of my
brain—teeming with Bollywood chase scenes and khakhi-wearing men with handlebar
moustaches howling “Surrender yourself to the police”—I was certain I would hear sirens shatter
the air with their screams, and see gleaming white Chevrolets with “Police” across the side
screech to a halt ahead of me. Or worse, the rusty old Ford trucks the Mutaween rode in, with the
Mutawwa and his brethren tracking me down, and I feared that more than cops. But I reached
school safe, and found Khalid there, panting and wild-eyed and even a little euphoric at our near-
escape, and we howled out laughs of desperate relief, and kept telling each other, what a story,
yaar. When Pummy and Salah didn’t show all day, however, my giddiness lessened, though
Khalid seemed unaffected. “That bloody Pummy”, he said. “He'll act like none of it happened,
you watch.” But they didn't even show up outside my home that evening, like they often did.
Shankar 196

And in the evening, the sharp trill of the telephone had me jerking each time, and Abbi
narrowed his gaze and asked, “What have you done, you son-of-a?” while running a meditative
hand through his beard. I said nothing. That night, I dreamed of brown-shirted policemen
pounding the door down and rushing inside, surrounding the lean mattress where I slept, with the
Mutawwa and the meek-as-a-mouse Filipina grinning expectantly just outside the door. I
dreamed of a bloody Pummy at their side, cringing, apologetic, un-Pummy like, saying, “Sorry, I
couldn’t hold out.” And, “I shouldn’t have hit him, I shouldn't have done anything, I'm sorry.”
When I awoke, still struggling to escape the unyielding grip of the phantom policemen, it
took me a moment to realize I was alone. I told myself it was a dream, and that Pummy wouldn’t
rat me out. But then I remembered Pummy had hit a Mutawwa, and I hadn’t expected that either.

Salah panicked when Pummy didn’t saunter up to our usual spot before classes, just
outside the school in the small gardeney ground, with its three swings and monkey bars that
Pummy liked to hang off of. “Think he’s okay?” Salah said. He'd run straight home, hadn’t
stopped to think why that was a bad idea, chicken-shit-for-brains, and hadn't come to me because
Pummy hadn't answered his calls.
Khalid, camped out on one of the swings to the consternation of the younger kids,
shrugged. “Was his own fault, wasn’t it?” He added “What?” when Salah glared, and pushed off
from the ground. When Pummy didn’t make the assembly, I started worrying. Salah kept
craning his neck about, until finally that busybody Asma, our class teacher, stepped up and
scolded him. This is an assembly, not your living room. The rules are meant for everyone.
Shankar 197

We half-ran to class, Salah muttering what happened, what-has-happened all the while. I
can’t describe the relief when I saw Pummy in his usual seat in the back, cap on his head, face
bruised like a plum. Salah laughed a gasping, nervous laugh, ran and tumbled next to him.
“Did you tell? About us?” Khalid said as we took our seats, just ahead those two. Pummy
said nothing, just glared. Up close, the bruises were large and clear—far clearer than the marks
his father occasionally planted—and his jaw was swollen like he had the mumps. Salah reached
over, soft-like, to trace the bruises, a look in his eyes like my mother's when I was still a loving
child.
“Beat you, did he?” I said, stupidly.
“Bet he thought you’d rat out easy. But you wouldn’t, would you? Did you?” Khalid said.
Pummy shied away from Salah’s caress when he reached for the hat. His mouth was stern and
thin.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” I said, almost wishing I had stopped to help him. “Bloody Mutawwa.”
Asma entered the class then, and Khalid and I had to turn and face her. She glowered at
us four, then really looked at Pummy and asked in her sharp tone, “What happened to you?
Stupid, attention-seeking child. I've always say you’ll bite off more than you can chew. What
happened?”
Idiot woman. One knows better than to ask such questions. I mean, yes Pummy got beat
by a Mutawwa, but she didn’t know that. More likely his father had been angry about something
and punched him, kicked him, belted him, and you don’t ask about that, don’t ask sons to shame
fathers in public.
Pummy didn’t answer, so Khalid said, “Fight, Ma’am, with some bloody Pakis.”
Shankar 198

Risky strategy that: most of us have family in Pakistan, but this was Pummy so our
classmates cheered—Kicked their asses, no? Of course, this is Pummy yaar. Destroyed them.
Asma scolded Khalid for swearing and promptly forgot Pummy because the boys, with their
usual instinct for chaos, started drumming the table to chants of Pummy, Pummy, like when he
dove into snarling fights in corridors.
Khalid smiled, leaned back and winked at the cheering mob but Pummy ignored them.
None of the other teachers asked questions—it wasn't as if any of them cared. But by
lunch, Pummy hadn’t said a word, Salah was laughing and talking way too loud so our
classmates wouldn’t scent any problems, and I wondered what we were supposed to do. Pummy
always decided what younger student had the honor of paying for our meals, so it was a relief
when, a few minutes after the bell when we were the only ones in class, he gestured for us to
follow him.

You’ve been to the school—I remember you giving a speech there last year—so you
know what it looks like. The main U-shaped building and the empty little yellow portable cabins
at the ends of the U, where the Arts classes and the woodcutting sessions were held years ago,
until the Embassy decided to tighten the budgets and got rid of these extras. Well, we went
behind those cabins; that’s usually where we go to jump school or smoke because behind the
cabins the ground is all sand, and smokes disappear better in sand than in garbage, and the air-
conditioning units jut out of the cabins, so you can use them as a foothold to climb onto the wall
and out the compound.

Shankar 199

We didn’t jump over though. Pummy clambered up the wall in a single fluid movement,
like a pull-up, till he had his feet on the wall and he hunched down on the balls of his feet,
regarding us from above. Then he flipped his hat off.
Khalid laughed.
Pummy’s defiantly curly black hair was shorn clean through the middle, leaving a stripe
of swelling redness. Salah winced and tugged at his own ponytail.
“Think it is funny, do you?” Pummy asked Khalid with a smile that didn’t make it past
his sharp teeth, and Khalid just grinned like a fool.
“What did he do to you?” I asked. After all, we know the Mutaw’een’s powers; in the
streets they could ask passing young men with women for marriage licenses, during prayer times
they'd look for stragglers not inside mosques, in Dammam, they beat someone to death on the
street for making alcohol; the police always deferred to them; even the King wouldn’t stop them.
The only ones they couldn’t touch were Westerners. And Pummy beat one!
Pummy crouched lower and sized up the three of us. “What does that matter? I didn’t
matter to him.” I looked up at him, uncomprehending. “After he was done with me, his brothers
came swooping by, and they dragged me into their truck and took me to the station. I'd hit him,
I'd punched him, I'd shown them I wasn't afraid. But I didn't matter, they treated me like refuse,
like road trash. Just threw me aside and forgot. I’m going to show him his mistake. Every dog
has its day, after all.”
And that’s when we first heard the plan
—as it stood then.
“I want to follow him each day, everyday. See how he does things, when no one will miss
him. Then we’ll get him alone. We corner him and—” He jumped off the wall and landed in
Shankar 200

front of us, kicking up little clouds of burning sand. Now I could see his head close up, see that
the Mutawwa hadn’t been careful: a long blood-red gash clawed into his skull near the back, like
the scissors had caught skin instead of hair.
“Stalk a Mutawwa? You’re mad,” Khalid said, and Pummy slammed his open palm
against Khalid’s throat and clutched, choking till Khalid stumbled out of his grasp and onto the
ground.
“Then we kick him,” Pummy said. Khalid howled when Pummy's shoe met his ribs, the
sound flat and dull. Again, then again. “Kick him till he begs. No, kick him on the head till he
bleeds.” He kicked Khalid on the head now, and Khalid’s head snapped back like he’d been shot.
“Carry on hurting him till he begs.” Khalid begged and Pummy stopped, stepped away. Khalid
curled up head-to-knee, like he was praying sideways. Pummy knelt down beside him and
grabbed his hair back, forcing Khalid to meet his eyes. “Still think it’s funny?”
Khalid said nothing. I started forward, but Salah grabbed my shoulder with a worried
look. Pummy walked up to us, and we could see each cut on his face, the bruises that burned
with blood.
“Till he begs for mercy, not from the Prophet or God, but us.” Then he smiled that crazy
smile—after uttering this heresy—but it didn’t reach his dulled eyes. He looked from my face to
Salah’s and we nodded, numb, staring past him at Khalid, and he shook his head in satisfaction
and walked past me, Salah trailing after him while I went to Khalid.
“You okay?” I asked, watching as Pummy and Salah disappeared. We'd had
disagreements before, but Pummy had never raised his hand against one of his. I knelt next to
Khalid and tried laying a hand on his arm but he shrugged me off.
I heard him mutter, “Kick him, punch him, hurt him, fucking hurt the bastard.”
Shankar 201

You think, why did we go along with this? After all, Pummy was fine and all that had
been bruised was his ego. I don't know. We were so used to Pummy leading that we didn't think
to question him. Beside, at this point, all Pummy wanted to do was give him a beating and I
think, in my heart of hearts, I didn't really believe he'd go through with it.

So the hunt started, though it wasn’t easy. We live in fear of the Mutawwa, you know.
Every cricket game, long-haired boys peer about distractedly and we can never have them
fielding infield, only outer, because there is less chance they’ll miss balls spitting furiously their
way, but it makes it harder for them to run if a Mutawwa does emerge to grab and shear the
repellent locks. While shopping, we’ve to be careful not to devour the sights too long; God
forbid we do something evil like stare while a girl’s cheeks stain red at your bold gaze, or study
the tendrils of dark hair that escape the hijab, to imagine what that whole head of hair might look
like, might feel like. Prayer times, we had better not be playing outside or dawdling because they
will cart us off to the nearest Mosque and we can’t refuse, ever refuse. Which is why Pummy
hitting that Mutawwa was amazing, which is why I think they hurt more than just his pride,
though he never said.
Yes, come prayer time and they’re everywhere, the Mutaw’een, ranging sternly through
streets in simple, fluttering white thobes, or hurtling around corners in their rusty trucks, keen
eyes tracking down those failing God. But when you seek one—well, God protects his, even if
they hurt children.
The first day Pummy, Salah, and I—Khalid was home in Saudia City, working diligently
on his homework, no doubt, explaining to his concerned father how he’d bruised his head
Shankar 202

playing football—didn’t play cricket as usual after school. Instead, we dawdled outside the stores
until prayer-time, waiting for the deluge of Enforcers. Salah and I were trembling a little, to think
that we were voluntarily awaiting a Mutawwa, but we were more frightened of disappointing
Pummy. They came, but we didn’t see the one we wanted, so we dodged those Mutaw'een who
came, waiting for him. All we did was miss prayers. The second day Pummy had Khalid tell his
parents he was staying over with friends, and we prowled the streets, but nothing. The third day
we jumped after lunch and retraced our route. But this time there was no bitch Filipina and no
Mutawwa.
The next day Khalid pulled me aside as lunch ended. Pummy hadn’t worn his hat, and
before lunch he had bloodied three idiots fool enough to wisecrack about his hair. He’d just sat
behind us and grinned his feral grin—the smile never reaching his eyes—when the first kid
bleated something inane. Like he had been waiting for it. And now he was off snarling through
the halls with Salah for backup, wanting someone to laugh at him so he could redecorate their
faces.
“Abbi heard something,” Khalid said, affecting boredom. “Seems Pummy’s mother got
this call late, telling her that he'd been arrested. Since his dad's out of town she called a neighbor
and they called the Principal. So Khan Sir and some Embassy guy had to go talk the police into
releasing him. The Mutawwa let the police ‘treat’ Pummy after he was done. They didn’t want to
let him go despite his age. Cuz the Mutawwa he hit? A war hero. Fought the jihad against the
Russians. They had to beg.”

Were you that Embassy guy? You must regret wasting a good begging for one of us. But
it’s good practice, you know. That’s all you so-called men are good for, all the adults huddling
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together and cowering before Saudis. Please, please forgive us poor desis, here let us lick your
shoes for you, clean your assholes with our tongues. It’s a miracle you got him out; you people
are usually so inept. They had him for six hours, and they broke him, not because they hurt him,
really, but because they tried to make him bend, like they've made you bend, and instead he just
snapped in two.

Another week of patrolling the scorching streets and we were no closer to finding our
Mutawwa. I must admit I was frightened. Talking about beating a Mutawwa was fine until I
realized that it wasn’t just Pummy’s rage speaking; he meant to go through with it. I mean,
Pummy, the Pummy we knew, had no patience, really, and here he wouldn’t let this go. And it
wasn’t as if getting flogged was a new thing to him, and even though he’d called his father a
miserable bastard every time he came to school bruised, he’d never talked of wanting to hurt
him.
I kept waiting for him to lose interest, to shift to worrying about anything else. I even
helped him work out his rage on the smaller children, his attacks more vicious now, more
arbitrary, the way he would drag one against a wall and draw out the hurt, until he could glimpse
something in their eyes, perhaps hate. But that didn’t satisfy him or shift his attention from the
Mutawwa. Instead, he actually started thinking things through.

That’s why the Friday the second week, Khalid came over a little before noon and we
headed over to the mosque on Medina street, the mother lode, the small mosque with the chop-
chop block, where the Enforcers usually gathered on Fridays before heading out to herd God-
shirkers. We made it in time for Jumma. The Khadi was Saudi, unlike the one at Aziziyah, and
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his sermon was mostly incomprehensible—Pummy was the only one of us whose Arabic was
more than the Quran.
After prayers, we trailed after the other worshipers, but instead of scattering, they milled
outside, their excited whispers humming about us in the courtyard. “What’s going on? Someone
die?” Khalid said, adding with a note of hope, “Maybe our Mutawwa.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Pummy said, and he slipped into the crowd, quick as a dog on a scent,
leaving us gaping. The crowd was one you find only at prayers—Arabs, young and old, and
immigrants, mostly desis, mixing freely, equally. A few minutes later, Pummy extracted himself
from the throng. “Boys, we’re blessed.” He looked over at the growing gathering, like ants
around food, and curled his lips in contempt at the desis. “Bloody sheep have developed a taste
for blood.”
“He here?” Khalid said in a low voice. “The Mutawwa.”
“No, but we get to see an execution.”
“What?” Salah said.
Pummy slashed a hand across his neck, his thumb grazing his Adam’s apple.
“Let’s go,” Khalid said, and Salah quickly agreed. I opened my mouth but Pummy spoke
first.
“We’re staying,” Pummy said. He wanted to watch, the damned fool, wanted to watch
some bastard meet his Maker.
I’d never been to an execution, none of us had. You listen to the news and you think you
can’t miss it, there's almost always a segment at the end announcing the executions of the day:
so-and-so was executed for murder, and later so-and-so joined him for selling drugs, sex, rock
and roll. You expect to step outside your house and stumble across one. But you could go your
Shankar 205

whole life here without seeing one. That is how I know some power guided us there. We had
never thought to kill until that afternoon.
I had never thought my submission wrong before.

I gathered up my courage and said, “Pummy, let’s go.” But he just fixed his deadened
gaze on me. Salah nudged me to ask again, but I didn’t risk my neck: if Salah had wanted to
leave that bad, he should have said something. (Poor Salah, I didn't realize till later what he was,
always afraid, blindly obedient, and loving Pummy silently and sorrowfully. He loved us, too,
but different. I hope he gets heaven.)
We waited ten minutes, maybe fifteen or twenty, I don’t recall. Pummy led us into the
belly of the crowd, and warm flesh pressed up against and around us, smelling of sweat, and dust
and grime and fear. Into the middle of the courtyard stepped this takrooni, this brawny black man
in a white thobe that didn’t reach his ankles, with large arms like tree trunks swinging freely at
his sides, the right one grazing the golden scabbard that hung there.
“Executioner,” Pummy said, like we couldn’t guess. The man walked to this big
rectangular block, black, like a perverse little Kaaba.
“Come on,” Pummy said, pulling my sleeve. “Move up front.” He took the lead, pushing
past people, easing through them, but where they usually ignored us, now they jostled back,
cursed: everyone wanted prime real estate. Salah cringed when one angry old Arab raised a hand
at him, but Pummy stepped in between them and caught that arm.
“Pummy,” Khalid said, “don’t be crazy. He’s a fucking Saudi.”
And we were desis, I thought, looking over at the takrooni, envisioning the mob turning
on us, bleating for our blood.
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But a miracle happened. You know these old Arabs, thinking they own us because we're
poor, brown and in their country. But this Arab backed off. He stepped back one step, two, said
Shaitan in a hiss and sank back into the crowd.
First Pummy beat a Mutawwa, then he scared an Arab. I told you I owed Pummy for
saving me from the Mutawwa. Well, now I owed him twice because he stood up to an Arab and
won and trust me, by God, heaven and the Prophet, this doesn’t happen. I felt like I’d caught the
hidden tear in the universe and a glimpse of the bold world beyond.
We got to the front. From there I could see the block had this smooth curved chunk,
where the head would go. The takrooni unsheathed his sword, repeated a low swiping motion
over and over, testing his arm, contemplating the block all the while. When he revealed his
sword, those herded around him shook free from their trance: the excited murmurs crested once
again. Near the front we saw a few eager yet disapproving pale faces, Westerners, no doubt
allowed to pass through unmolested. Front row seats without fighting or receiving abuse so
they can go home and tell report on how the barbarians behave.
Finally, just when the chatter turned into lazy grumbling on the part of the Arabs, up
rumbled a van, nothing marking it as special, followed by one smeared with a red crescent.
The crowd parted. The first van backed up towards the block and two of the cops standing
about to control the crowd sprang forward animatedly. The back doors of the van swung open
and out tumbled a man clothed in sandy brown, followed by two policemen, who gazed about
in a desultory fashion before hopping down and shutting the van doors behind them.
He was tied up like a lamb at Eid, the prisoner, and he didn’t seem to mind being on
the ground, so the two cops who’d sprung forward moved either side of him and helped him
up, then half-carried him to the block. They had to carry him. He was out of it, and I could see
Shankar 207

his vacant eyes, older than his face — the face of someone with only a few years on us, not a
proper man still. The poor bastard was fair and sandy-haired and slightly built, and despite
the deadened eyes I could see he was handsome, and more importantly, he was one of us, a
desi. They carried him gently to the block — the only time they’re gentle to us.
Pummy's eyes had a pensive look, and then, to my horror, he smiled. Salah watched like
he had seen a djinn and I could tell why. The man, when they set him down with his head on the
block facing us, had features lean and long and fair and a soft sort of beauty, like a painting of a
woman, like Salah’s.
The takrooni stopped his ritual swings, and the cops, after they had finished arranging
our brother on the block, stepped back respectfully. Then the loudspeakers of the Mosque came
alive and a voice, the same voice that summoned us to prayer, began to recite something in
Arabic.
“What is it?” Salah asked Pummy.

“Name, age, crime. Drug courier. A mule.” Then he motioned for us to shut it, his gaze
shifting between the cops and the crowd. Just a few words, and I knew the whole story: Some
poor village kid who probably didn’t even know he was hefting drugs, had been trying hard for
a Gulf visa so he could feed his family, who had spent money he didn't have to buy the visa
from some unscrupulous agent. That same agent would have asked him to deliver a packet for
him, and he, the innocent, had agreed, never knowing he was hefting his own death. Or
perhaps the agent had told him what it was, but had assured him in his smooth way that no
harm would come to him, reminded him that he owed him. Honor is something we value. So
he'd have done it. But he was no drug lord, I was sure, because those ones were safe
somewhere, playing chess with the lives of lesser men.
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The big takrooni bent and whispered in the boy’s ear, telling him to ask for God’s
forgiveness, to recite the shahada, but the poor fuck, with his eyes glazed, didn’t seem to hear.
“He doesn’t even know what’s going on,” Pummy said. My blood rushed straight into
my head: to die without knowing He was coming, without being able to ask for forgiveness.
The takrooni straightened, stepped back, brought his sword up to his forehead, and then
swung down.
Three hacks to kill that poor bastard. The first swipe cut through quite a bit, but the head
was still attached to the torso. The second went through everything but some clingy membrane;
the body slumped to the ground, and the head — attached by a skin sliver—almost dragged
down with it. The third blow split head and torso, and the head rolled uneasily away, ending up
near a gutter drain.
Salah retched after the first blow, Khalid whispered “fuck” and turned after the second,
but I saw it through to the end. Dimly, I comprehended that the people nearest us had shifted
back thanks to Salah's retching, but I kept reciting the kalma, over and again — there is no god
but God, no god but God, no god but God — in place of the boy. Maybe it was the drugs or
whatever they gave to get him so meek, but there was very little blood. I have seen lambs
slaughtered at Eid before and believe me, blood flows as slick as water.
Then the takrooni stepped back, still grave, not watching the crowd at all, reconciling
with his Maker perhaps, and three desi sweepers stepped from behind, heads bowed and
unobtrusive, to clean up the little blood and maybe the puke from Salah.
The two cops now moved up to the chop-chop block, and the van doors opened, ready to
cart away the parts. The red crescent van, too, rumbled to life and Pummy turned and waved
Shankar 209

airily to leave. The old Arab Pummy had run into earlier stood in our path. He glared at us and
nodded in the direction of the beheading and Pummy said, “Fuck you, too, ghoosad bhude, you
fucking old man,” and knocked him with his shoulder as he stalked past. “He's saying it should
be us, we're ruining this country. Fucking boy-fuckers wouldn't know how to wipe their asses if
we left.” And he grew angrier with each word and made to turn back but Khalid caught him and
pulled forward. I didn't say anything, I was still with the boy that had died.
We remained silent until we were back safely in Aziziyah, though Pummy huffed from
having to heft an exhausted and half-delirious Salah by the end. By some fortune, we reached the
spot this had all begun, where we'd first run into the Mutawwa. Khalid spoke. “Pummy,
please, we're done with the whole Mutawwa thing. Right?”
Pummy didn’t say anything. He had his head against Salah’s chest, and I wondered if
he was trying to back out gracefully. “Did you watch them?” he said abruptly. “Those whites
and Arabs, looking so fascinated, watching so closely. Bet it’s the first time the sahibs have
really noticed us.” He breathed in once, twice, deep, as if he couldn’t get enough air. “We’re
not stopping now."
Salah moaned and only Pummy’s arm around him kept him from kissing the ground.
“We’ll die,” Khalid said. “We beat an Enforcer and they’ll kill us like they killed him.” I must
have made a noise, because Pummy glared at me, not Khalid.
“We’ll die anyway, someday,” Pummy said, still watching me, his free hand caressing
Salah’s face. “Time one of them died for a change.”
“Died? Died?” I shivered, despite the afternoon sun scorching my back, and thought
of the head rolling sadly near the gutter drain.
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“They never see us, never notice. About time they did.”

“Died?” I repeated. The bastard takrooni whispering in that boy’s ears, knowing full
well he couldn’t fathom a word, damning his soul to hell.
“We’re not going to stop at a beating, are we? See how they chopped that boy’s head
off? Looked just like Salah, didn’t he?” He turned into Salah and brought his hands up to cup
Salah’s face, then rested his warm forehead against Salah’s. “He was a man, made a choice not
to be a coward like our fathers and he died for it." When we didn’t say anything, he shrugged.
"You don’t have to come. I’ll do it alone.”
“No,” Salah whispered.

Khalid shook his head, furious and exasperated, as we watched them, Pummy and
Salah, foreheads melded, conversing with eyes alone. “Not alone,” Salah said, with growing
firmness. Pummy smiled, then turned to us, hands still cupping Salah’s face, brows raised.
I was silent.

Shankar 211

II

The next day, I got to the park before school, and Khalid was already there. Pummy and
Salah were late and I felt worry and guilt rake my chest. We hadn't answered Pummy.
“This weekend,” Khalid said. “You're all coming over to mine.”
We hadn't been invited to his place in a few months, nor had we asked. It wasn't that we
didn't like Khalid's home, we did. There are a lot of little compounds in this city, walled off little
villages for high-class people, the bosses of our fathers' bosses, the whites, the well-off Middle
Easterners and Indians who sent their children to firangi schools, but Saudia City was different,
almost a city in itself, for Saudia Airlines staff like Khalid's dad, an Engineer who did god-
knows-what for the airline. While we lived in our cramped apartments, Khalid lounged about in
a two-bedroom, two-bath villa with a cobbled walkway and a small space for a garden behind it.
Our first few visits we had stayed in the house itself. Khalid had wanted to show off the
swimming pools and tennis courts, but we refused. We were content inside, to his puzzled
disappointment. How could he, an only child, understand that to us his home alone was heaven—
the thought of our own rooms, pockets of space that weren't continually invaded by raucous
siblings or parents, large shelves to store our things alone, dressers with attached mirrors, the
latest electronic gadgets strewn about with the careless assurance that there would be
replacements, all of it was better than a daydream. We just nested on the couch and played
Nintendo till his parents returned, then traipsed outside, marveling at how different it was, a
whole world away from ours in just a few miles. Young girls in tops and shorts that revealed
acres of golden arms and legs pedaled by gleefully on colorful bicycles, calling out for each
other in accented English, sparing us short, sharp glances. Older couples trod the sidewalks
Shankar 212

purposefully, even desi aunties and uncles, wearing sweatpants and determined gazes,
exercising, I guessed, something our parents had no time or inclination for. Occasionally, we'd
pass the concrete halls that housed the swimming pools, so-called rec centers, transformed into
party locations on weekends, since you could hear unbridled laughter seep through the walls and
see uniformed little waiters and sparkly young children dashing about.
Then, after we'd wandered for an hour or so, through the little parks containing jungle
gyms that didn't smell of rust like we were used to, trying them out as impatient children and
even more impatient parents watched resentfully, and we'd trooped back to his home and
Khalid's mother had fed us the best samosas and cutlet we'd had, his dad drove us back to
Aziziyah and the sights and smells we knew as well as our own stink.
Ultimately it proved depressing, supping on this little taste of something better, only to
return to our shabby lives. We stopped badgering Khalid to ask us over, and Khalid stopped
issuing invitations, because in Aziziyah we actually did things.
Now Khalid wanted us back but not for nothing. “Listen, I've been thinking. You know
what got us into trouble in the first place?”
“The Mutawwa—”
“Fuck the Mutawwa. What really got us in trouble was Pummy—no, shut up! If he hadn't
approached that stupid woman like a fool, we'd never have run into that Mutawwa and—”
“And you wouldn't have gotten a kicking,” I said sympathetically, and he glared.
“And we wouldn't have had to see—” He grimaced and mimed slashing at his throat.
“The boy get killed.” I had been seeing him in my dreams. In life, his eyes had been
glazed over, unaware of the shifting swathes of people about him, their words and judgment and
blood lust, their undirected rage and casual indifference to his plight. In my dreams, though, he
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glared at us four, and I felt guilty because I was: somehow, in the dream we'd betrayed him and
were responsible for his head on the chopping block. In the dream, he was lucid enough to have
recited the kalma, but he didn't, he wasted his last breath cursing us.
And I'd awaken feeling guilty until the world trickled back into me and I remembered
that we'd never seen him before.
Khalid had obviously not shared my dream. He shrugged indifferently. “I know law has
to be maintained, but I didn’t have to see it.”
“What's happened has happened. We can't undo the past.” That's what I'd told myself
when I tore myself from my nightmares, to keep from crying: the boy was dead, just remember
the Mutawwa, his judging, remorseless eyes now the ghoulishly curious yet indifferent eyes of
the watching crowd.
“No, you're right, we can't change the past. We can keep ourselves from doing something
even stupider, though. I really thought Pummy'd forget about this. But he's just gotten crazier.
First, it was all let's beat a Mutawwa, which was crazy in itself, and now it's kill him? Do you
want to get beheaded? Because the way we're headed, next time it'll be us on that block. We need
to get his mind off this. We have to help him forget.”
“Oh, help him forget. That simple? Got a magic pill, have you?”
He smirked, like he knew a secret. “We get him laid.”
“Laid?”
Khalid rolled his eyes. “Fucked. Shagged." And as I stood gaping at his assertion, he laid
out his plan. “The thing is we went into it assuming the Filipina was a pro. Assumptions, my
friend, will make an ass out of you and an ass out of me." He stilled and nodded as if he'd made a
particularly good point. "What we need is a sure-shot, a girl who'll sleep with anyone—even
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Pummy. No, shut up. I know you and Salah worship at the masjid of Pummy. La illaha illalah
wa Pummy rasool illa. There is no God but God and Pummy is his messenger.” He cackled at
my glare, like it was nothing to twist the holy words that way. “Not everyone thinks he's great,
the Mutawwa sure didn't. So we need a sure-shot, a girl who can cool our firebrand. Then he'll
forget all about his Mutawwa.”
“And you know girls like this, do you?”
“Sluts? Unfortunately, no. But I know a girl who's got a thing for bad boys like Pummy.
I've talked to her about Pummy loads of times” His smile grew even smugger. “One of ours, a
Paki girl, but really hash-poosh”—He was one to talk, the posh bastard—“goes to the British
school. She loves bad boys, crazy people and wild parties. I've told her all about Pummy, what
he's like at school, how crazy he is, how scared others are of him, and she was really interested.”
“Parties?” My brain was stuck on that word. We knew what partying mean to these hash-
poosh memsahibs, we'd seen them in hindi films—drinking (at least, back in India or England or
wherever) and dancing so close to boys that the clothes were all that prevented them from being
stoned to death for whores. “And you think Pummy'll just go along with what you want? You
have him meet this girl and he'll jump out there, start dancing?” The thought of Pummy acting
like Akshay Kumar, like some shaana Hindi film hero, made me want to both laugh and
shudder.
Khalid gave me a look. “I've told her he's the strong, silent type.” He smirked. “Like
Amitabh Bacchan in Hum. Like Batman, all grizzled and somber and frowny. 'Heroing is serious
business, grrr'.”
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“Shut up,” I said, but I laughed. Sometimes, I'd forget that Khalid could be funny too.
“You sure? If it goes wrong...” I could recall as clear as day the sharp, efficient thuds of
Pummy's fists on Khalid.
“Get a guy a girl, he'll forget his own mother. Look, she's not going to put out
immediately—she isn't a slut—but it'll be obvious that she's into him and instead of panting
about the fucking Mutawwa, Pummy'll be too busy panting about Khadijah.”
“Khadijah? Her name's Khadijah?”
“Yeah, why? Know her?” He sounded incredulous, like he didn't believe I could know a
girl.
I didn't. I knew a Khadijah, of course, like all Muslims, the Prophet's wife, the first
believer: People ought to think before naming their children.
Looking back, I'm not sure why I agreed with Khalid, whether I actually believed his plan
might work, or whether a part of me wanted it not to work.
I was never a good student, so I can't be sure that I'm remembering this right, but
momentum and kinetic energy, objects in motion, that's what pulled me along this path: once set
on my path, I was hurtling by my own life without doing a thing. I'd once wanted Pummy to stop
obsessing over the Mutawwa so even though I wasn't sure what I wanted any more that old
thought kept me moving in sync with Khalid.
The fact was, though, seeing that boy's death had changed something in me, something I
accepted only in my dreams, as I slept. I don't think I really wanted Khalid to succeed even then.
And in the end, it was I who damned us all.

Shankar 216

So we visited Saudia City that weekend, riding Khalid's bus after half-day Thursday.
Khalid enjoyed himself: the littlest kids seesawed between terror and awe of us and Khalid's
standing visibly went up. The driver took us all the way up to his house, and as we ambled up the
path to his door Khalid gave me a meaningful look.
“Come in come in come in,” he said, like one of those simpering salesmen in the souk as
he opened the door, and a wall of chill air rushed us. Salah plopped down in front of the TV
immediately, and Pummy slumped onto a sofa as Khalid pulled me to the kitchen. “Listen, we
should leave soon. Otherwise, those two will happily plonk themselves in front of the TV all
day.”
To be honest, I wasn't sure that the trip wasn't a waste. I recalled how confidently Pummy
had proclaimed that the Filipina would be beneath us soon and I wasn't going to believe Khalid
where Pummy had failed.
I wasn't sure I even believed the girl, Khadijah, was the way he made her out to be. I'd
thought about it the past few days, tried to imagine her face in my mind: tried transposing the
faces of Pooja Bedi and Pooja Batra, the glossy, wannabe-firangi desi girls in Jo Jeeta Wohi
Sikandar onto the more Muslim features of girls I'd known, and I'd partially succeeded, but
trying to impose the name Khadijah on those faces didn't work.
I'd gone along only because Khalid's plan helped distract me from dreams of the dead
boy's accusing face, but now, seeing Khalid's blazing confidence, my worries swelled—What if
something worse happened? What if the girl rejected Pummy? How would he react? I didn't
always like Khalid, but I didn't want him hurt.
Before I could say anything, the others approached the kitchen door. “What are you two
doing?” Pummy said.
Shankar 217

“Just figuring out what we should drink,” Khalid said, smoothly. “Pepsi, Coke, RC?”
“Vodka with ice,” Pummy said, sneering. “Rum.” He'd been in a mood all week since
Khalid and I kept putting him off, deftly changing the subject whenever he brought up the
Mutawwa, and I think he'd come only because he imagined with the four of us alone in a house
for a few hours he'd either talk or beat us into agreement.
Salah and I laughed but Khalid's eyes lit up and he gave me a sly glance. “Vodka and
Rum? I know just where to get that.”
My stomach sank as Pummy tilted his head like a bored cat deigning to give you
attention. "Really?”
“Yeah," Khalid said. When Pummy said nothing, Khalid continued quickly. "There's this
gang of mostly gora kids I know here. Brits and Americans and the token desi and Arab—the
type that go to Continental and Jeddah Prep, you know how it is?" We didn’t know. "Well, their
dads work for the Airlines, right? And everything comes via flight. So they get the stuff there. I
think. But they have it; I've seen them drink and stuff."
Pummy leaned back against the door in a languid, liquid move I've never been able to
pull off. "I've always wondered why goras bother coming to this country. Daaru nahin, laundi
nahin. No drink, no women." He let out a sharp barking laugh. "If I were white, I'd never leave
America or Europe. Just drink and fuck all day."
"There's a girl, too," Khalid said, breathlessly, like he couldn’t believe his luck. I could
understand: it was almost like someone up there was writing his script.
"There's a girl," Pummy repeated, mocking.
"Yes," Khalid said. "Desi, yaar. Studies in the gora school, though."
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"One of those," Pummy said, and this we did know. Those types always look down at us,
revved up their white-inflected accents whenever they noticed us about. Like they were telling
the world, we're not like these, please don't hold them against us.
"She's cool, though," Khalid said, insistent. "No airs at all."
"What's it to us? You like her?" This was Salah, actually curious rather than belligerent,
and Khalid winced, looked over at me for help.
"Won't it be nice to have a girl who's a friend? We-we can talk to her," I said. "Find out
what it's like to study in that hash-poosh school. Maybe she has friends at our school. Who
knows?" My face burned with embarrassment since Pummy and Salah were watching me with
amused and confused glances respectively. But the thing is, I had been wondering—the gora's
schools were the cause of much consternation and envy in ours, particularly their co-ed status,
even here, and I wondered how they turned out, the boys and girls raised in these schools.
"It'll be fun, right" Khalid wheedled. "We can see if a gori education can turn a seedhi-
saadi desi girl into a gori."
I felt a sneaky admiration for him, for the way he was gently but insistently leading us—
no bravado, none of the shit he'd told me, but he was still getting his way.
"All right," Pummy said. "Let's go."
"What?" Salah said, looking confused. "To where they're drinking alcohol?"
"Don't be a bitch," Pummy said, and Salah looked hurt.
"But—drinking…"
To be honest, I wanted none of that either. "We don’t have to. What?" I said when Khalid
glared. "You two can drink if you want. Salah and I will just sit there."
"You'll drink," Pummy said firmly, daring us to disagree.
Shankar 219

"Pummy," I said, protesting, and Khalid threw his hands up in incredulous despair, but
we all have to draw a line about our beliefs somewhere. Beating up boys, stealing their money,
disrespecting elders, soliciting women—these were one thing. But alcohol was another—it was
just one step from chewing raw pork.
"Just one glass," Pummy said. "We keep hearing it's haraam, but how do you really know
what you're trying to avoid until you try it? What's so great about avoiding sin when you can't
even be tempted by its memory? A real good Muslim would have to know what sin is, why it's
tempting, and then reject it. That'll please God most."
Salah and I said nothing.
We were going, after all, what was the point?

The American whose home we went to lived on the other side of Saudia City, and a good
fifteen minutes later we were outside his door, ringing the doorbell. A girl opened the door a
cautious sliver, then pulled it open all the way on seeing us. Her hair glistened golden and wispy,
like the tassel of corn, and her eyes were the electric blue of twisting flame. "Kay Jay," she
screamed—screamed the way women do when they see a heartthrob actor or singer: It was like
Bachchan himself had landed on her doorway.
I watched her surprisingly long, large hands wrap on Khalid's biceps as she drew him into
a hug, and saw that Pummy was watching in the assessing way we'd eye the plump chickens at
the store before picking one for killing.
"Hey Sue," Khalid said and Pummy, Salah and I gave each other startled, amused glances
since his voice had suddenly acquired a deeper timber. "These are my friends," he said, and made
introductions as she led us inside.
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We'd interrupted a gathering, I could see, from the wall of expectant faces that greeted us
as we emerged into the living room.
"It's KJ, everybody!" Sue said, and waved us in. "And he's brought friends."
The room held about a dozen people, mostly white, but here and there I saw a brown
face—two desi girls and one long-nosed, dark-eyed Arab face, smiling at us for once; the center
table was strewn with packets of biscuits and chips and cookies and other brands I'd seen in
supermarkets but never tasted. There were more girls there than I'd seen in one room in my life,
and I remembered the parties in the movies I'd watched. All they needed was some music and
alcohol, and…I felt a hot flush creep up my collar.
"Come in," Sue said, again, and I found myself suddenly shy in the midst of so many
strangers. Salah, too, hovered uncertainly by the door but Pummy stalked inside, nodded at the
gathering sharply, and fell back into the one free single sofa in the room.
"That's Sue's seat," Khalid said, but Sue shook off his remonstrance with a loose-wristed
wave, and I saw that her hands were free of any bangles or rings, anything womanly.
"That's okay," she said, and perched herself on the armrest of the long sofa next to it,
against a gora as white and blonde as her.
While Salah and I dawdled indecisively, Khalid moved forward and clapped hands with
the males, hugged some of the girls. "Come on," he said, and Salah and I settled near Pummy's
feet. The two desi girls were markedly different: one, who avoided our gazes, had the frizzy
curls, soft, round features and dusky complexion of a Madrasi, so the other had to be Khadijah.
She was beautiful and the minute I saw her, I stopped believing any of Khalid's words
besmirching her honor.
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“So,” Khalid said, introducing us to the room at large, though I knew his words were
mostly aimed at Khadijah. “These are my friends from school.” They graced us with polite
smiles. “Don't let their innocent looks fool you. These are three total bastards. The pony-tailed
one is Salah, that's Muslim—yes, yes, Muslim's a name—and this, this is our glorious leader,
Pummy.” He was laying it on thick.
Khadijah looked over now, watching from beneath dark lashes whose fluttering kept
drawing my eyes to her face, and I knew Khalid's plan to make Pummy look good and manly had
worked out even better than he'd hoped. There we were, Salah and I, seated at Pummy's feet like
his chelas, like courtiers before a king, and while we sat slightly crumpled and round-shouldered
he leaned back, relaxed the way he did against any surface, like they existed to mold themselves
to him.
“How come you haven't brought them over before, you naughty boy?” Sue said.
“Guys?” Khalid said, and I knew it was an opening, that he wanted us to make a good
impression, and I immediately saw it wasn't going to work: We had to speak in English. Yes, you
could say we attended an English medium school, but let's face it, surrounded by your own, are
you really going to use another tongue except when teachers force you? Beside me Salah's face
turned into the rictus of a grin, since he'd also realized what we'd set ourselves up for.
I could see it in my mind's eye: We'd speak in our kat-put English, and they'd laugh, and
Khalid would be embarrassed by us and Pummy would get angry and when he got angry, well—
I'd known things could get much worse. Khalid probably wouldn't fight these people since he had
to see them every day, and that left the three of us, and sure a few of them were girls but we were
guests, we couldn’t just go punching people in their homes—
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“He is always trying to, but we are always getting caught up in playing the video games.”
It was Pummy who spoke, of course, and in a movie Salah and I would have been shocked and
delighted by learning that Pummy had hidden his ability to speak the Queen's English from us,
but his voice sounded like it always did when he used English—the sing-songiness of his tone
and his brashness covering for that second's hesitation in a foreign tongue.
They didn't laugh.
Or rather, they laughed but at the joke, not the half-assed way he spoke, like he had rust
in his mouth, and it broke the tension enough for me to speak up, too.
I have to give it to these goras on one count. They were extremely well mannered, so
instinctively, you could almost believe they were raised in aristocratic havelis, reading Ghalib's
poetry, practicing that slight tilt of their noble heads as they declared, 'After you, please, after
you', and were not not pig-eating Muslim killers. The Arabs were strange too, nothing like the
ones we'd ever dealt with: they didn't seem to openly consider themselves our betters.
“Maybe all Saudis should be forced to study at Prep or Continental,” Pummy said when I
mentioned this later. “They might become human.”
"So," Khalid said after the ice was broken and the conversation petered to a temporary
halt once more. "Where's the good stuff?" and when Sue slid an instinctive, unmeant glance at
us, he dismissed her concern with a grand wave. "They're cool, dude."
Sue reached behind her sofa with one hand while still facing us, and her shirt clasped her
more tightly and I turned away. "Here," she said triumphantly, pulling out the half-full bottle of
dark liquid, just as Khalid said, "Rum, boss, delivered as promised. I'll get glasses."
"There's a whole buncha paper ones on the sideboard," Sue called out, absently twirling
the bottle in her hand, making the liquid rush about. "And beer in the fridge."
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Khalid stumbled back, juggling a column of paper glasses, beer and a nice clear patterned
glass, obviously part of a good set, which he handed to Pummy. Salah and I rated only paper
cups, and he tossed a few beer cans towards the upthrust hands of the sofa dwellers before
clicking open two cans and pouring for us.
Pummy tilted his glass towards Sue, held between thumb and forefinger, and she opened
the bottle, and I had my first heady hit of alcohol as she poured.
"Club soda or water?" she said and Pummy shrugged. She tugged a soda bottle from her
male twin, and muttered no fizz, before rising up and languidly walking towards the kitchen.
Salah and I looked at one another and the beer.
"You have to drink, otherwise these guys will worry," Khalid said.
They'd been so welcoming, so I raised the paper glass to my lips, cautiously.
I glanced up and caught Khadijah gazing at us, probably more at Pummy or Salah than
me, but it didn't matter—she had the large, dark doe eyes of the 70s heroines—Sharmila Tagore
and Hema Malini—which made her seem like she was always on the edge of shying away and
hiding behind a tree before bursting into song and watching her I brought the drink to my mouth,
swallowed temptation.
Hell comes for us in many ways.

"You guys want to go to the pool?' It was an hour later and Khalid sounded a little too
loud and happy to me. We'd graduated from beer to some of the harder drinks, and I'd only had a
little, for show, but Salah had been less reserved. Salah and I were still occupying our old spots
but Khalid now occupied Pummy's seat, his hands carelessly dangling next to our heads as he
made little paddling motions to mime swimming.
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Pummy was over on the sofa talking to one of the Arabs, closer, I noticed, to her.
Drink made Salah belligerent. "Motherfucker, I can't swim," he said, a little too loudly.
"Can’t you?" Gary—Sue's boyfriend, I'd learned—said. "I can teach you, you know."
"Gary won an inter-school meet. Beat all the kids from schools in Riyadh and Dammam,"
Khalid—nay, K.J.—said, and I raised my drink in acknowledgment of his feat.
"If you can't swim, what do you guys do at the beach?" Sue said. "Don’t tell me you
never go in!"
"Oh we go in. Just don't get too deep," Salah said. "Or use a tire tube."
"C'mon!" Gary sounded aghast. "You live next to the Red Sea, you can't not know how to
swim. Promise me you'll come by. I'll have you swimming like dolphins in a month, tops."
"You're a good guy, Gary," Khalid said, patting his arm.
"Good guy Gary," Salah said, then laughed. "Kutta Kamina Khalid." Khalid winced, and
I suppose that I should have intervened to head off a fight, but something caught my eye.
In a corner, two people were kissing and I could hear their soft sounds and I tried not to
look, tried remaining nonchalant since no one else seemed bothered.
Pummy and the Arab had switched seats and he was now next to Khadijah, who twirled a
flirty hand through the dark waterfall of her hair. I forced myself to stand, feeling a pleasant rush,
and carefully sidled closer to them, smiling at the Arab as I tumbled next to him.
"Hi," he said. "You're Pummy's friend."
Not Khalid's but Pummy's in just an hour. "You're Saudi?"
He made a face. "God, no. Syrian, dude." That surprised me; most Syrians I'd seen were
as fair as whites. He attended Jeddah Prep, he said, but that was obvious from his accent, one I'd
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heard on Tom Cruise and other gora actors in the few English films I'd watched. "You want
something?" He gestured to his glass.
"Beer," I said, and the sofa dipped as he lifted up and I used the momentum to slide
closer to Pummy, who threw me a quick, irritated glance before turning his head towards
Khadijah, whose own smile now extended to me. Like her white friends she wasn't wearing
much jewelry, I noticed, but her arms and hands were much daintier than Sue's. Perhaps because
in that unfamiliar terrain, it seemed comfortingly familiar, the smooth brown of her arms, and her
eyes were too intimidating to meet for long, I stared at her hands and the way they moved as she
talked.
“So do you not speak Urdu?” Pummy said.
“Sure,” she said. “Abbu and Ammi would flay me if I didn't." She then set out to prove it.
She spoke well, but with an accent that would have made me want to slap a boy but only made
me want to kiss her on the mouth. She sounded different from her shy looks, all throaty and
amused. She smiled, still watching me, and I saw myself through her eyes and didn’t like what I
saw.
“Do you watch Hindi films, then?” Pummy said, and she said of course so exuberantly,
her hands excitedly punctuating the air, that I wished I had asked the question.
Pummy turned his back on me completely. It was like they were in their own personal
bubble except that her warm eyes still met mine occasionally, and she modulated her words to
include me, left openings inviting me to slide into the conversation. But I didn’t take them.
Soon her looks my way tailed off and I felt this keen stab of betrayal though I couldn’t blame
her for ignoring someone acting as dumb as a retard. Pummy and Khadijah were wrapped up in
conversation, Khalid was loudly laughing at something with Gary, Salah's morose glare was
Shankar 226

fixed on Pummy and I felt a profound aloneness. I'd always thought of us four as one, even
though I didn't always like Khalid and Salah's simpering sometimes irritated me, but now I was
beginning to see that we'd stretch and fall apart and I didn't like how we'd end up.
I drifted back towards Khalid who tugged me close and said, "So, how’s it going there?
Bait working?"
Bait—that’s what he reduced Khadijah to. I started to say why he was wrong about her,
abut Pummy, but Gary caught Khalid's eye and whispered something. Sue was smiling at Salah
and me with a conscious, brittle smile now, an air hostess' smile, maintained by sheer effort and
practice, and I recognized that they wanted us gone.
"It’s fine," Khalid said, and his voice, high on drink, wasn’t as low as he thought. "You
can trust them."
Gary looked unhappy and Sue uncertain. Salah, still seated at Khalid’s feet, ignored
everything about him, and swirled his glass absently while darting quick, unhappy glares at
Pummy and Khadijah.
"They want us to leave?" I said in Urdu.
"We can’t leave," Khalid hissed, nodding in Pummy's general direction.
"Ask her to come with us," I said.
Khalid scoffed. "Don’t be an ass. She won’t come. One girl, four guys? Not safe."
We spoke in Urdu and Sue and Gary watched our ping-ponging conversation with wary
incomprehension.
"Listen. Alright, listen?" Gary said, looking apologetic. "We—"
"You want us to leave. That’s okay," I said, but flushed because I felt embarrassed for
both of us and I hated Khalid a little in that moment.
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"We were thinking of going to the pool," Gary said, mumbling.
"It’s okay, we’ll just get Pummy and leave," I said. I turned—we all turned—to the sofa
and I said, "Oh."
Because they were kissing. Or so close as to make their intentions clear.
I swung my head back hastily, towards Salah who was watching them unblinking, his
face wiped clean of any emotion—I’d never seen him so blank.
"Huh, maybe she will leave with us," Khalid said, smug. "Give us a couple of minutes
and we’ll be out of your hair."
"Stay," said Sue, who was watching Pummy and Khadijah with a rueful smile. "Would be
all kinds of wrong to stop that." Gary still looked unsure.
"Dude, you can trust them," Khalid said. "Tell you what. I’ll light the joint and we’ll take
the first puffs, 1,2, 3, all right?"
Gary sighed and dropped his shoulder in acquiescence.
"What’s going on?" I said when he and Sue drifted out of the room.
"They want to light up and they're worried to do it in front of strangers."
"Light up?" I said.
"Bhang. Ganja."
"Drugs?" Salah said.
"Be a little louder, why don’t you? I'm not sure the neighbors heard. These guys are
already worried and you say drugs that way."
"Ye kya museebat hain, yaar. First, you make us drink now this. And Pummy….Come,
Muslim, let’s leave." Salah gave Pummy a long look, and uprooted himself from the floor.
"Don’t be an ass," Khalid said sharply, and Salah shrugged his clutching hand off.
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"Coming?" he said.
"We leave now, it’ll piss Pummy off."
Salah opened his mouth and I thought for one proud second he’d say who gives a fuck
what Pummy thinks. Instead, he deflated like a pricked balloon.
Khalid mouthed 'good job' like I’d accomplished some miracle, but it wasn't that difficult,
not really, not when dealing with a boy used to being led, unused to being alone.
Gary and Sue returned holding plastic bags and what looked like paper and Khalid said,
"All right!" and the other kids hooted like the anticipated main act had just stepped on stage.
I knew what bhang was, of course, but I had only heard it mentioned, never seen it, even
in the movies, since the Saudi censors conscientiously removed all traces of celluloid
immorality.
Pummy unglued himself from Khadijah and whistled at the paraphernalia as they walked
over. To my surprise he seemed to know what it was already."Where’d you get this?"
"You can’t tell anyone, right?" Gary said in the sort of demanding tone that would have
left him eating Pummy’s fist any other day but with his hand warmly close to Khadijah's hip
Pummy was relaxed and indulgent.
"Where'd you get it?" Pummy said again, hefting one of the plastic bags until I could see
more clearly what it contained and Gary shrugged, in an over-careless, cooler-than-you manner.
"You know, the Africans."
"Takroonis," Khalid supplied helpfully.
"Yeah, you ever wonder why you don't see beggars sleeping on the sidewalks and such?
Where do they go, where do they sleep? There's a whole other slum city run on the outskirts, a
Shankar 229

ghetto run by these guys—just booze, drugs, women—and me, I know people who know people,
who get me what I need."
"And here I was, happy to be buying tamarind packets from them, the fuckers," Pummy
said in a disgruntled tone. The others laughed. The takrooni women often sat outside our school
on large, dirty sheets they'd sling onto their backs in a bundle as they were leaving, at least one
snotty child with pepperball hair and large, dumb eyes gawping up at us open mouthed as we
bought little tamarind packets or gum from their dead-eyed mothers. I'd always felt pity for
them. But according to Gary, I shouldn't, they were the worst sort of criminals, or would grow up
to be, running the drug trade, the prostitution racket, anything illegal in the city.
I remembered the boy with deadened eyes, and a takrooni delivering judgment with a
whisper of silk through air. Gary leaned over to roughly handle his treasure and I started and
flinched back, expecting to see the implacable face of God's hand staring at us with accusing
eyes, but I was surrounded only by these cosseted children.
"You can get anything here," Gary said. "It's all bullshit anyways, this whole religious
masquerade. I've heard the royals themselves are involved."
"They've got all the money they need," Salah said, protesting. "If they ever need money,
they can pump out a few million gallons of oil. Why would they need to sell drugs?"
"Not everyone. The lesser princes only have their name and their pride, right? So they
trade on that. They gotta make a living somehow and they're not going to work, are they? They
use their clout to get things through, and skim off the top. Everyone knows what's going on."
"Fucking Saudis," Pummy said and everyone grunted in assent.
"Then why do they execute people for bringing in drugs? We saw a kid killed," Salah
said, still protesting and defending the royals like his own mother had been insulted.
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"For show" Gary said but others had already interrupted him.
"You watched an execution?" Khadijah said, breathlessly.
"What's it like?" Sue said.
"It was horrifying, guys," Khalid said.
"Did they, like, actually chop his head off?" Gary said, slicing the air vertically.
"It's not a guillotine. The executioner has a sword. He sliced it off." Khalid paused. "It
took him five turns."
I remembered, clear and pure as the call to prayer, the three blows, and the fact that
Khalid had turned away, but in his telling he'd seen every blow, every spray of blood, every
shade of blood-red of the wound, and the way the head bounced and rolled on being detached
from the body. Seeing how intently everyone was listening, Pummy began adding his two
halalas.
I don't want to hate Khalid's friends for this, but it repulsed me, the animal eagerness on
their faces, the sharp, still way they stood listening, the glimmer behind their eyes as they were
imagining themselves into the horror we'd witnessed, only to them it wasn't horror but an
adventure. Khadijah almost unconsciously slid closer to Pummy, and as he described how the
crowd had flinched back, with a disdainful curl to his lip, the way the head had tumbled sad and
slow onto the ground, her breathing seemed to speed up, and I thought she would kiss him.
"Dude, KJ, how could you not tell us?" the Syrian said, finally. The others joined in his
complaint. “Can girls come? No? That's not fair!”
Salah, whose horror of that day was still etched beneath his eyes, said softly, "It's not like
you imagine it. It's horrible."
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There was an awkward pause and the silent shifting of bodies that reminded me of the
crowd's uneasiness as they awaited the arrival of their bloody entertainment.
Pummy said. "What can we do? Whether we like it or not, the Saudis will kill who they
want. And I doubt the poor fuckers dying care who's watching."
The group, especially Khadijah, latched onto this, murmuring agreement before shifting
their focus to the bhang, but it shimmered in the air before me, a shadow of their curious, almost
childlike pleasure in blood.
They didn't see, they didn’t understand, I told myself. If they had they wouldn’t behave
this way. I wanted to say, try to think of yourself with your heads on the block, but I couldn’t
even imagine it; Gary or Sue with their bold, blonde hair and burnished American glint, or even
Khadijah or the Syrian, though they looked a little like us, because they had that sheen of
American plastic covering that could be dented but never breached.
I could see myself there, though. Or Salah. But not Khalid.
And now I understood why he hadn’t dreamt of the dead boy.

Shankar 232

III
The next week things went back to normal except Pummy was now favoring Khalid,
Khalid was smug and celebratory, Salah was sullen and withdrawn, his eyes blankly turned to a
happier past or a fictive future, and I—I was still not sleeping well. Every night I saw him, the
boy who died. And in my dreams they were all there, Gary and Sue and the Arab and Khadijah
and the others whose names I hadn’t caught, standing in the crowd, yelling, laughing with blood
lust, calling for his head while drawing on rolled-up joints. The Arab was snorting cocaine. And
the takrooni, who was sharpening his sword with a whisper of silk of all things, foot resting on
the boy's dangling head, smiled at them indulgently. The Azaan resounded about us—Al
hamdillalhi rabbil allami—and the boys’ blood bathed their clothes, but instead of being
horrified they laughed and cheered and said Isn’t this exciting? This is so amazing, wait till my
friends hear about this! And they photographed the grisly scene on cameras that magically
sprung up in their hands the way they do in dreams, saying, this will be something to show
people back home, right?
Then Gary, Sue, and Khadijah got too excited and stepped closer to the spot but while the
police drew their sticks warning the rest of us to step back when we tried the same, they ignored
them, a force field about them deflecting the stern gaze of authority.

I was having these dreams and my friends were acting strangely.
And then I ran into the Mutawwa.
Shankar 233

It was evening and I was on my way to meet Pummy and Salah and he was walking my
way and was then past me, towards a commotion in the other direction. I'd been craning my head
back to see what was going on and had swung my head back, only to see him right in my face. I
recognized his face—it was inscribed in the inside of my eye—but he didn’t give me a second
glance. Walked past me like I was nothing, and I felt an immediate, humiliating burst of relief,
and then a sudden jolt of rage a—that I meant nothing to him, that he could just walk past me
like that.
I ran to where Pummy and Salah waited, and Salah smiled in relief: things were still
strained between them. I had understood something that day, watching him watching Pummy
and Khadijah, seeing my jealousy mirrored in his eyes but not for Khadijah, and I felt pity for
him.
"Mutawwa," I panted, and Salah’s eyes widened. "Our Mutawwa. Just saw him."
"Where?" Pummy said, and I was panting so hard I failed to note his voice was odd,
lacked the same old heat.
"Something’s going down, near the Akbar building," I said.
"Let’s go," Salah said, with more enthusiasm than in days, and Pummy nodded.

A crowd had gathered, like at the Mosque, mostly our brethren this time. Two cop cars sat
in the middle of the street, their lights painting the faces in the crowd distant blue and furious red.
“What’s going on?” Pummy said to the nearest man.
We heard guttural Urdu, begging, and there was our Mutawwa. When he’d beaten
Pummy, his face had been impassive, like he was girded for a necessary job. He still wore
that dry look as he savagely thrashed this cringing man rolling about on the road, yelping and
Shankar 234

howling and begging for mercy from him or for help from the cowed people on the street. The
cops watched with indifference, only occasionally turning to the crowd, mocking us with their
power.
“Fool was supplying alcohol.” One sheep in the crowd finally answered Pummy’s
question, and he looked both sorry for the man and pleased at his fate, like his suffering
validated the speaker's decision to live as a coward.
Pummy turned back to him but I stopped listening. Gaze still on the Mutawwa, I
reached inside my shirt and drew out something half-way, a metallic, gleaming something,
something I'd started carrying since our visit to Saudia City. A knife. A great big, bloody knife
that like our fathers used on sacrificial lambs on Eid. Salah, who'd seen me, pulled at Pummy
and he grabbed my arm to keep it halfway hidden.
"What are you doing?" Pummy said.
"This is our chance," I said. I thought Pummy would get it, that the Mutawwa had been
placed in our path for a reason, but he looked at me like I was mad.
“You’ll never reach him,” he said, wrapping his other hand around me. “And even if
you do, the cops will get you first.”
I struggled to free myself. “You said they don’t notice us, that we are invisible. If we
do this, now, we won't be invisible.” I said. The thought had been going through my head
ever since that first surge of liquid rage had coursed through me, every time I dreamed, every
memory I had of Khalid's laughing friends. And when the Mutawwa hadn't noticed me, just
minutes ago. Couldn't he see that this was the only way?
Pummy tightened his hold and pulled me back. “Later,” he said. “Let's go.”
Shankar 235

I thought of the dead boy’s limp form as the takrooni whispered in his ear; I heard the
liquor seller’s whimpers soften, and tried fighting. The people around us glared, irritated and
quizzical, and we were only a few seconds from catching the police's attention, I knew. “Let
go, Pummy” I said, as the Mutawwa stepped back from the moaning, sniveling creature, and I
thought of the Mutawwa at my feet, and it set my heart racing unnaturally again, even though
I tried to clamp down on the feeling.
Pummy said, “Don't make me hurt you, Muslim.” Salah's hand slipped onto my stomach and
twisted the knife from my grip till it was almost stabbing me and then I stilled. And when the cops
lifted the whimpering beast from the ground and dragged him into the back seat of a waiting car,
we dispersed like the rest.

When we reached an isolated space between buildings, they let go of me, and I rounded
on them and Salah raised a placating arm at me.
"There were cops there. You’d be dead the minute you tried something,” Salah said,
apologetically, but he was eying me with respect, and I felt the same giddy rush like after I'd had
a couple of drinks.
Pummy's voice rode over his. “Besides, it’s not important anymore.” I looked at him
uncomprehending for a second, and then I realized what he meant—Khalid had won.
"So that’s it? You’re done? Khalid was right. You’re a coward."
Salah’s eyes got even larger. Pummy stilled, and cut his eyes my way. He had this way of
stillness that made the world about him go flat like a blurred picture. "A coward?" he said, softly.
I thought of the way he’d fought the Mutawwa, like a djinn had entered him and given
him strength and I thought—this is the time for my djinn, for me. This is what it must have felt
Shankar 236

like, this harsh thrill of joy racing up your spine in a sudden, spirited whoosh, like the bubbles in
a just opened soda can. And just as in the fight with the Mutawwa, the heady rush, the
confidence and wild exultation, wasn’t enough.
I’d moved toward Pummy,( as was only right since I’d issued this challenge), my right
hand thrust forward to grip his shirt—that opening salvo fights between boys have—and he stood
still for a minute, struggling perhaps with this actually happening, but the minute I tugged at his
shirt, something shifted in his face, his stance, the reverse of what had happened to the
Mutawwa, he shifted from vulnerable to implacable, and I didn’t see the blow come, only felt the
meaty thud of his hand against my brow.
I hit him back, without his heft and assured experience, but with the same rage and then
his hand cracked against my face again, wildly, and we danced about clumsily, swinging
unevenly at one another, the blows not all landing, but burning sharp and fierce when they did.
Even then, I recognized that he wasn't giving it his all and that angered all the more. Fight, you
bastard, I said in my head and kneed him in the groin. He looked up at me winded and
murderous and I thought, at last...
Then Salah was between us pushing us apart.
“What’s wrong with you two? Stop it.” He sounded on the verge of tears.
“Coward! He’s a coward,” I said, taunting, and Pummy lunged for me again, knocking
Salah down, but I skipped away from his reach. “Truth hurts? Big, big words you used to say.
But when it comes down to it, you don't have the guts to follow through. You're nothing but a
bully. Your father's more of a man than you.”
This is how it goes in school fights: you taunt the guy, call him a coward or pussy or
whatever and then he says, come near me and I’ll show you who’s a coward .
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Pummy didn’t answer my taunts, though, just glared at and beyond me, the way he’d
done with Khalid and then snapped forward suddenly, like a snake. I could have danced back,
weaved, since he didn’t have the reach to get me, but my blood was singing in my ears, through
my hands and ecstatically shivering fists and I feinted back towards him—
And again Salah was between us, but this time he pushed me away, kept pushing me,
moving us beyond Pummy’s reach.
Pummy stilled. Maybe he expected Salah to act as his proxy, fight for him like a good
chela, but Salah said, “Stop it, Muslim. Don’t. It’s not worth it,” loud enough that Pummy heard.
“Salah?” Pummy said, but Salah kept his eyes on me and shook his head, sadly, and I,
who knew what he felt about Pummy, thought of what this had cost him.
“We’re going,” Salah said.
Pummy looked confused, standing there, watching us leave.

Pummy caught up with me later that evening in the park outside school, where I was on a
swing, not swinging but turning furiously sideways till the chains got all twisted up, before
exploding in the the other direction. Its brother swing was broken, the plastic black seat-strap
having torn one end free from the iron chains.
"Cooled down?" he said coming up to me and catching the top of the swing set for a pull
up. I watched the muscles of his forearms as he pulled himself up, the tight abdomen visible
through the hiked up shirt and despite my resentment I felt the age-old admiration for his wiry
strength. I said nothing and he huffed. "Muslim yaar,if you won’t talk to me what can I do?"
His exasperation and pleading was like a drug—all these years and now the shoe was on
the other foot, the way I liked it.
Shankar 238

"Salah and I talked," I said. He let go of the swing and fell onto his haunches next to me,
and suddenly I was looking down at his expectant face. "We're still going through with it.
Beating the Mutawwa."
"I said we'd kill him," he said almost absently. "Why?"
I took a moment to envision the Mutawwa's spurting neck. "We're only going to beat
him. We're not you." The fact was, this was the only way I'd gotten Salah to agree with me. I still
wanted to feel his warm blood splatter against me, to see his pleading, begging eyes. The air
resounded with the call to prayer, and with the sun only a hint in the horizon, the school looked
rather beautiful in a desolate way.
"But why?" Pummy repeated.
"It isn't right. That boy died—died for what? For carrying drugs? And these goras,
Khadijah and her friends, they're all drinking and drugging and where was the fucking
Mutawwa? Where was the police?"
"That's the world," Pummy said. "What do you think, this stuff doesn't happen
elsewhere? Abbey, India is worse."
"Hindustan can go to hell. This is the home of the Faith. I learned to live with the rest of
it. The Saudis spitting at us, treating us like dirt, the way they act like we owe them something
for doing all their dirty work. Because this is the home of the faith. I knew they didn't care for
our bodies. But I never thought they didn't care for our souls."
I waited for him to say something else, something mocking, but he just watched me,
troubled. I reached out and ran the pads of my fingers over the bristling hair on his scalp, the
rough, pebbly scab over his long wound, and he let me feel his wound, the way only Salah was
Shankar 239

usually allowed to. "Look what he did to you. He wouldn’t even touch them. They get away with
everything."
"They always do."
"So why should we stand for it?"
"What else are we supposed to do? Dekh, there's two ways out of it. You work hard,
study like a little shit and one day, maybe, if you're lucky and you know the right people you get
high up enough to be like them ." He flashed me a smile. "Or we can run off and join Dawood."
After the Bombay bombings, we'd joked about this. Dawood was a gangster but he'd
become a hero to even our fathers that day he'd shown the bastard Hindus that Muslims didn’t
run, we made others run. Even Abbi, who dismissed Dawood because he drank and had a Hindu
actress as his keep had said, there's a Muslim mard: a real man.
I had felt bad, not just because some of the people killed in the blasts were Muslim but
because no one deserved to die that way, sudden and unaware. You should get the chance to look
death in the face and reconcile to it and with your God, not have it creep up behind you and tear
you from the world in a sharp conflagration of fire and heat and pain. Even the people killed in
riots, they'd fought back desperately knowing they were likely to die, had the chance to kiss their
loved ones one last time and say, finally, There is no god but God and Muhammad is his
Prophet.
But I couldn’t say that openly in school. So I bellowed with the rest, You take one of our
mosques, we'll burn a hundred temples. You kill a hundred of ours, we'll set your world on fire.
"I'm going to do it, Pummy," I said. "If I don’t have the guts now, when I'm angry and
strong and right, then I'll never do anything. I'll always walk away. Salah said he'd join me."
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He shook his head wearily. "That son-of-an-owl will do anything for a thrill, isn’t it?" I
looked at him fondly. That was Pummy right there, utterly unaware that Salah didn't do most
things for the thrill, but to please him. "But no beating-wheating. We do this, we do it right. We
kill the bastard. And we do it to get away with it."
"We?"
He shrugged. "Did you really think that I'd just dropped it? I stopped you because I didn't
want you to die right there, like an idiot."
My smile that moment must have been as cool and welcome as rising the moon because
he grinned his old grin, that crazy cocky grin. "What about Khadijah?" I said.
He shrugged again, then laughed. "You thought what? I was going to marry her? I'm not
the one that's going to die a virgin. Like a good little Jihadi."
"I'll be killing a Jihadi," I said, and once again, I thought of the Mutawwa, but his head
was bowed and his head obscured except for his long, bushy beard, as I swung the same golden-
hilted blade the Takrooni had wielded, only my weak arms were powered by righteousness and
took off the Mutawwa's head in one blow, and I felt again that same sweeping rush of joyous
hate flood through me.

What Pummy told me that evening was that he'd never really meant to put the Mutawwa
aside, that all Khalid's scheming had accomplished was to make him temporarily shift his plans. I
wonder now if he was telling the truth—Pummy had been like a dog with a bone on this thing, so
perhaps he wasn't lying, perhaps he was only delaying his vengeance while seeing how far he
could get with Khadijah. But sometimes I think, like Khalid said, the touch of a girl had made
Shankar 241

him forget his defiance and rage, and that it was my taunting that made him decide to go through
with it after all. And that's why I think I damned us all.

Pummy didn’t show up at school the next morning. I'd slept well that night, no dreams of the
dead boy, and a part of me was worried about Pummy's absence but more about telling Khalid. That,
however, was taken out of my hands. At lunch, Salah repeated the story of our run-in with the
Mutawwa to Khalid with an awed sort of pride. “If Pummy and I hadn’t stopped him, Muslim
would have gone after the Mutawwa.”
“Wonderful,” Khalid said, dryly, watching me mordantly. “Of course, if you hadn't
stopped him, he'd be dead right now.”
“You have no faith,” Salah said sullenly, then he smiled. “Muslim was a tiger yesterday.”
“Oh good, you've found a new infatuation,” Khalid said, and Salah glared at him hatefully.
Khalid peeled a few crisp notes from his wallet. “Why don't you go get us something to eat and meet
us behind the cabins?” Salah looked at me doubtfully and I nodded.
“Stop acting like a bitch,” I said, when Salah trooped off, leaving Khalid and me behind.
Khalid waited till we reached the cabins before rounding on me, furious. “What have
you done? We were out. What have you done?”
He was scared, but instead of soothing him, I laughed. “Is the rich boy soft?”
Khalid stiffened. “Salah's soft—soft in the head. Why would you do this?”
“You wouldn't understand,” I said.
“Fuck this, you're all crazy. You know what, I'm telling someone.”
He would. I could tell.
“Then don't come,” I said. “Be a little coward. But don't rat us out.”
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Khalid glared at me, hard. “A rat? You think I'm a rat?”
“Like I said, don't come. Go home to mummy-daddy, stay safe, dance about with your
American friends but don't rat us out.” I thought of him in that room, surrounded by those
cosseted little children, by Sue with the golden limbs and beautiful, untouchable Khadijah,
how at ease he'd been. How had we ever imagined he was one of us?
“I don't know what you're trying to prove, Muslim, but I'm not going to be part of it.”
He didn't say he wouldn't rat us out. I took a step towards him, and he curled his fists, so
much larger than mine, and I knew I couldn't stop him. “You're mad, but I'm not going down
for your madness.”
“Like I said, just keep your mouth shut,” I said, as we squared up to one another, in
that sandy little backlot hemmed in by white walls gone to dirt gray and weathered porto-
cabins whose ACs shot heat our way, and I was heartened to see Pummy and Salah walking
up behind Khalid.
“Khalid wants to tell the teachers we're mad,” I said aloud. He turned and stiffened,
the way prey did when they catch sight of a predator, eyes fixed on Pummy's lazy grace.
“What's all this then?” Pummy said, and Salah moved away, kept moving till we were
three points on a triangle about Khalid. “Khalid?”he said, gently, and I remembered the
beating Khalid had got the last time we were here. Khalid's shoulders slumped, and I could
feel triumphant derisive laughter bubbling up in my throat and tamped it down, but Khalid
seemed to read my mocking thoughts and shot me a hateful look.
“Just let me go, Pummy,” he said. “I don't want any part of this. You do what you
want. But I don't want to be involved.”
“And you won't tell?” Salah said, just as I warned them. “Swear on God?”
Shankar 243

Khalid laughed a hiccuping laugh. “Swear on God? You're children. Why am I even
listening to you?” He turned Pummy's way as if to walk past him and Pummy watched him
troubled and confused. I could tell Pummy was going to let him go, and I lunged. For a
moment we struggled like cats, loud and clawing, throwing wild punches at one another as
Pummy and Salah watched, undecided.
Finally, they pulled us apart, but our loudness had drawn an audience, I could tell
from the periphery of my eye, and the low humming murmurs just beyond my sight.
“Get a teacher, get a bloody teacher,” Khalid screamed and I jumped at him once
more, Salah letting go of me abruptly and helping me stall our friend. As we struggled I could
hear the sudden, decisive footfalls of excited students making their way away from our
drama, to ramp it up to the next level.
Pummy rounded on the gawkers. “Fuck off! This is between us.”
A few boys didn't show any signs of leaving, particularly when Khalid screamed,
don't go, they're mad, but when Pummy stalked towards them with his shoulders hunched
forward the way he did, they scattered, leaving just us four, Khalid struggling against mine
and Salah's combined grip.
We had less than five minutes at best, I knew. If the boys were smart they'd run to the
PT teachers, whose office was on the first floor. If they ran to the staffroom on the second
floor, it'd give us more time.
Pummy turned to Khalid. “Just promise us you won't tell the teachers anything.”
“The teachers won't believe him any way, will they?” Salah said, and he wanted to
sound scornful but he sounded like he was pleading at the end.
Shankar 244

“If they won't believe me, just let me go,” Khalid said and Pummy nodded at us. I let
go of him reluctantly, and Salah seemed even more unsure but he stepped back.
“I should have known,” I said. “You were never one of us.”
Khalid cocked his eyebrow derisively, that superior look he'd generally worn around
Salah and me reemerging on his face. “Because I won't let you act like mad dogs? I could
have told on you any time the past few weeks, but I didn't. And now I'm the villain. You
fuckers! My dad always said not to hang around you."
When we didn’t say anything, it just made him bolder. He threw his hands out,
gesticulating like this was the climax of some Hindi film, all righteous anger and scorn. "Of
course you want to do this. You've got no futures! You've got no lives. You mediocre little
shits, you think you're something? You're nothing.”
“Shut up, Khalid.” That was Pummy, slow and still, the way he got when he was
dangerous, but Khalid either didn't notice or didn't care.
“You're losers. That's all you are Pummy, a third-class loser, a wannabe thug. You
can't do fuck all. You'll be changing my tires some day and you can't bear that, so you want
to drag me down with you.”
I don't think he was finished. He would have said more. But Salah had stabbed him.
I'd never thought to ask where my knife had gone the previous night.
I learned later that Pummy had been so inspired by my rage he'd skipped school that
morning to dawdle outside the butcher store. He often hung about thereabouts so the
shopkeepers had thought nothing of it until they realized that two of the cleavers had gone
missing. He'd jumped the wall, those in hand, to let us know we were ready for the
Mutawwa.
Shankar 245

Instead, he used it on our friend. Salah and Pummy. And I just stood there, as his
warm blood spurted on me, as he looked at me with the uncomprehending eyes of a dumb
animal, as he opened his mouth to say something, as he died.

I know, it's a joke, isn't it? We were supposed to be the Mutawwa Killers. I bet that
fucker doesn't even know how lucky he got, or if he does, he'll probably write it off as God
looking out for his own.
And perhaps He does. After all our big dreams and big hopes we committed a small
crime in their eyes. Just a bunch of Hindis killing one of their own, like the animals we are.
You'd think since they valued our lives so little, they might even go leniently on us for this
crime. But no, an eye for a Hindi eye it will be. And since I didn't actually do anything, since
I stood petrified and numb as my friends set upon our friend, I get to live in here for the
foreseeable future. My lawyer assures me that they may even let me go free in ten years or so,
even earlier if I proclaim my repentance.
But you may as well kill me. Because the truth is, I don't repent anything. I only want
to join them, my friends.
People like you will visit me, try to break me, convince me I was wrong, so the press can
blare my repentance. But I won’t repent. My only regret is that I never got to see Pummy's vision
come true, to feel the slick, warm blood of the Mutawwa flow through my fingers, to see him
humbled.

Shankar 246

Feng Shui
She’d been deciding between two models of washing machines, an earthy brown front-
loading one and a Krishna-blue top-loading machine, when the phone chimed with the first text
message.
Amma where r u? Amma Im scared.
“Madam would like to hear some details?” asked the salesman, a scrawny boy, barely out
of his teens, with a wispy-thin mustache he kept unconsciously smoothing down between
questions.
“Details, Yes,” Revathi said distractedly as the phone buzzed again.
Amma. Amma can I come home?
“This, Madam, is a new model. Godrej, domestic. Top class.”
The top-loading machine couldn't handle their heavy blankets, Revathi knew, but it
reminded her of the soothing blue walls of her home, the blue of the deity—
Amma, Call me. Please.
Amma please call.
“This is unbearable,” she said, startling the boy. “I’ll have to come back later. Tomorrow,
perhaps?” she said hurriedly and, seeing the fly-trap pose of his mouth, embarrassedly. “What
time do you open? Will you be in?”
“Of course, Madam. Tomorrow nine we open,” he said, still ingratiating, and Revathi
knew he’d sized her up. Her silk Kanchipuram sari, the thick gold bangles jangling on her
wheatish arms, and the plump Gucci bag her son had sent over from America kept the
salesman’s smile pleasant. “Ask for Raghu, Madam.” He tailed her to the door, clutching it open
Shankar 247

as she braced herself and stepped out of the well-ventilated store into the muggy heat of late-
April Mangalore.
She came to rest under the shade of a clothing store’s canopy, away from the door. The
phone had buzzed three times in that short walk, and when she pressed the only number in her
contacts, Sanjana answered on the first ring.
Revathi eyed her watch. 11:30: What class was the girl supposed to be in? Orthodontics?
“Amma?” Sanjana’s voice quavered and Revathi crushed the irritable thought that in
times of distress her daughter purposefully regressed to her child-voice.
“What is wrong?” Revathi winced. Be gentle with her, RK had said, be calm. “Is
something the matter, mole?”
She heard a whimper over the crackle of the line, then a barely stifled sob. “Can I come
home?”
“What’s wrong?” she asked again and closed her eyes against the pressure arrowing
through her forehead. She tried imagining she was teaching (but she had quit, for the girl) and
talking to a particularly slow student. The pressure in her skull grew, and she couldn’t bring
herself to open her eyes, though she was afraid of drawing attention.
Orthodontics lab, she heard. Someone hadn’t been cooperative, something. Can’t do it,
won’t, don’t want to. Revathi pressed the fingers of her free hand to her forehead.
“Sanjana, stop it. Stressing doesn’t help,” Revathi said. “Acha talked to the Dean,
remember? He said any help you need, he’ll give you.” At the other end of the line, Sanjana had
stopped trying to hold her tears in. “I’ll be there, soon. All right?” Revathi pretended her words
were to her middle child, Sidhant, a full four flights away in America, and that this was the one
Shankar 248

phone call she got from him each month, and her voice came out with practiced false mildness.
When the girl sniffled a yes, Revathi hung up.
Revathi opened her eyes to the snarling mid-morning traffic: tooting cars; auto-
rickshaws and bikes maneuvering through the spaces between the larger vehicles; and buses with
their destinations scrawled in Kannada, which, despite her six month long stay in the city,
Revathi could barely read. She wished, not for the first time, that she’d sent her daughter to study
in their own state, Kerala, where Revathi could navigate more freely, could understand the
language. Or that she’d done as Sidhant suggested and let Sanjana continue in a Saudi University
in Jeddah. Perhaps if the girl had been allowed to continue in the city where she’d been raised,
where she’d been happy—No, it was no use getting caught up in the past. Revathi clutched her
purse closer, moved to the edge of the pavement and hailed one of the passing three-wheelers.
Seven rupees minimum plus mileage—how far was the college? She tried calculating while
flailing an arm, and one of the rickshaws slipped through the slow-moving traffic to her side.
The wiry driver barely noticed as Revathi struggled into the open back seat ahead of two
teens who’d decided her rickshaw was fair game. She glared at the boys once she seated herself,
and they glared back insolently, in a way that would have earned her sons a clipping on the ear.
“Sidhaganga Dental College,” she said. “Hurry.” The word had barely left her mouth
before the driver revved up the vehicle, causing her to jerk and clutch at the back of his seat and
a little of him—the sweaty brown back of his shirt.
The journey took twice the time it should have because the driver stopped at one of the
small roadside temples with her, his first customer, in tow, to ask Lord Ganesha’s favor for the
day. Revathi would normally have been pleased at his piety (though she noticed that he hadn’t
turned the meter on—he would overcharge), but as she waited for him to finish propitiating the
Shankar 249

god, smashing a coconut in front of the temple and applying yellow sandalwood paste to the
windshield, she thought of her crying girl with impatience, and immediately after, guilt and fear
at even thinking such material thoughts around the divine. She silently begged forgiveness of the
elephant-god, and when the driver got back in, she didn’t, as she wanted, ask him to hurry.
“Wait,” she said, when he finally pulled past the gate of the college and sputtered to a
stop right in front of the administration building.
“How long? Meter will keep running,” he said.
She didn’t point out that he had never turned it on. “Five minutes, ten minutes.”
The girl was seated on a bench outside the Dean’s office, hands folded primly in her lap,
and though she was older, and much taller and broader now than Revathi herself (far too tall,
Revathi fretted, worrying about probable grooms a few years down the line), Revathi
remembered the knobby-kneed five year old who had sat in just the same sullen way for the
school bus every morning.
One of the peons dawdling outside the Dean’s door nodded deferentially. Revathi had
become a familiar fixture over six months: in the early days, after the girl had been released from
hospital she had accompanied her to and from school. “Sanjana,” Revathi said when she stood
just in front of the girl and the dull gaze fixed on her. “Come, come. Let’s go.”
The girl slouched to a stand, and hunched exaggeratedly under the weight of her bag.
“Stand straight,” Revathi snapped, adjusting the bag’s straps against Sanjana’s shoulders, and
wrinkling her nose at the sour smell. “My God, how can you stand to be like this?” This morning
the girl had been particularly bad-tempered and had refused to even take a shower. No wonder
her lab-mate had run off: Revathi would have.
“I want to go home,” Sanjana said.
Shankar 250

Control yourself, don’t snap at everything she says. Revathi shut her eyes and let the
memory of her husband’s measured tones calm her. “Yes, let’s go.”
They didn’t speak on the ride back, didn’t touch. Revathi thought the driver frowned at
the smell. It was nearly one when they pulled up in front of the apartment complex, and
Revathi’s makeup was starting to trickle down her face.
“One hundred rupees, Maydum,” the driver said.
Revathi urged Sanjana out of the rickshaw. The watchman, watching bemusedly,
approached them with a smile. “Go, go upstairs. I’ll be there soon,” Revathi said to her daughter.
“Eighty five rupees, Maydum,” the driver said, wary gaze now flickering to the
watchman, who stood close enough for Revathi to smell the coconut oil slicking his hair.
Still too much, but she could do nothing. “Could you make sure the girl gets on the
elevator?” she asked the watchman when the man’s soft belly grazed her elbow.
“Yes, of course,” he said, with an ingratiating smile that didn’t reach his beetle-black
eyes. A thief’s eyes, Revathi had told Sanjana. She hadn’t liked the man from the minute they’d
first visited the apartment complex, but RK had been in a hurry to get back to Saudi Arabia and
the apartment had security, and was mostly occupied by people like them, families left behind by
men working in the Middle East.
By the time Revathi had paid the driver and got upstairs—having thanked the watchman
and felt his gaze trace her steps to the elevator—Sanjana sat slumped against the door.
“Get up,” Revathi hissed. The halls lacked privacy. Every morning she could hear the
newly-married couple opposite them coo happily to each other as they left for work. Again, she
had to heft the girl up, straining against the other’s inertia, while trying to stay aware of the
sounds about her. With one hand holding Sanjana up, Revathi fumbled and unlocked the door,
Shankar 251

shouldering it open, and half-carried Sanjana to the lone couch at the center of the room, a worn
blue one the previous occupants had left behind.
“Sit,” Revathi said. “Eat something, sleep, then take a shower.”
Revathi had cooked earlier—chappatis, because rice made the girl sleepy, and, as a treat,
chicken curry. The girl constantly complained about the vegetarian fare but she’d grown
lethargic and gained unseemly weight since she started taking her medication, though the doctor
had assured her it had nothing to do with the meds themselves. Revathi brought the food over
and placed it on Sanjana’s lap.
Sanjana eyed the food with little animation, and Revathi, who rarely had to pester
Sanjana to eat, grew irritated. “You want it. You’re not that sick.”
The girl reached out hesitantly, tore off a flat strip of chappati and dipped it in the thick
brown curry. “You don’t know how it is,” she said as she brought the hand to her mouth.
But I do you silly child, Revathi wanted to say. I know the pain tearing your head apart, I
know how everything—your husband’s not noticing, the children being particularly ill-
tempered—seems like an excuse to spiral out of control. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“With you?” The girl arched an eyebrow.
“Don’t be stupid, of course you can talk to me,” Revathi said.
“I am not stupid,” Sanjana said.
“You just behave that way then.” Don’t don’t don’t, her husband’s voice intoned, and she
could almost see him, touch him, his wiry graying hair, curled into silver springs, thinning in the
middle, could almost feel the wet, insistent mouth against the back of her neck.
Shankar 252

Revathi said no more but watched the girl eat at her snail’s pace until Sanjana held out
her plate, half-full. While Sanjana slumped deeper into the sofa, Revathi devoured the rest in the
kitchen by the sink.
“I’m going to take a nap. It’ll be better if you do too,” Revathi said when she was done,
and placed the plate in the sink before pressing forward to the bedroom at the end of the hallway.
The girl didn’t follow and Revathi stormed back into the living room.
“C’mon,” Revathi snapped in her teacher-voice, holding out a peremptory hand. “You
need some sleep.”
“Are you angry?” Sanjana asked timidly when Revathi loomed in front of her.
Revathi stilled, shook her head, and traced the curve of Sanjana’s jaw lightly. “No
darling, I’m not angry. You are sleepy, no? Come.”

When Sanjana finally fell asleep—she’d tumbled straight onto the bed, without brushing,
changing or showering, and Revathi would have to change the sheets later—Revathi pressed her
lips to the girl’s damp forehead, then eyed the ceiling fan with annoyance as it swished on
without prompting. They had power again. Living in Jeddah she’d gotten soft, used to the casual
comforts of Air Conditioners and uninterrupted power service, and now she felt summer keenly.
Revathi crept out of the room, to the old couch, sighing as she sank into it, straight onto
the TV remote. Nothing in its proper place, she thought as she clutched the remote, even in an
apartment this bare. Other than the couch and TV right in front of it, the only notable item in the
room was the god-house near the screen-door on the right of the room, the one where all the gods
charged with her family’s welfare resided: Krishna, Ganesha, Ayyapa, Shiva. She murmured
their names, looked at the wall-clock, then around at the emptiness and thought, bare necessities.
Shankar 253

This wasn’t how she had envisioned things turning out two years earlier, living in Jeddah
with her husband and daughter. Sitting at the high school graduation ceremony, gracefully
inclining her head at fellow teachers and friends as Sanjana, Head Girl, third-ranker, strode onto
the stage to receive her medal and graduation certificate, Revathi had felt content. It was all a
blessed surprise.
When they’d first let Revathi see her daughter after the delivery, her tiny torso, arms, and
legs covered in bloody bruises in place of missing skin, Revathi had believed the worst, even
though the doctors comforted her by giving the ghastly sight a name—Aplasia Cutis. She’d
flown home to deliver her child and RK had been stuck in Saudi Arabia. Afraid she would lose
her child despite the doctors’ reassurances, and secretly fearing the blood-red flaws and missing
navel owed to the medicines she’d consumed, Revathi had begged her father to visit the
Namboodiri, the astrologer who had predicted Revathi was destined for outward prosperity and
inward turmoil—long before a physician said the same.
Father had told Revathi the story so often, she felt like she’d been there with him. How
he’d rushed to the Namboodiri’s house at lunch time, forgetting propriety, yelling, “Namboodiri,
Namboodiri, will she die? Will my granddaughter die?”
How the curtain separating the living room from the inner sanctum had been pushed aside
as the Namboodiri, tall, gaunt, imperious, had stepped into the room, wiping his mouth, looked at
her father and said, “Marikum. She will die.”
Revathi, though she knew how this story ended, still felt her heart speed up, even now,
whenever she thought of the pale old man whose familiarity with the fates she’d been in awe of.
Shankar 254

“She will die,” the Namboodiri reaffirmed, “but not yet. Not for a long time. I studied
your daughter—her children will outlive her.” And he disappeared behind the curtain once more,
leaving her drained father to make the trip back to relay the good news.
The doctors had continued to work furiously over the next few days grafting skin,
fashioning a navel, making her daughter whole, and even though at night, her mind, sick since
the birth, played tricks on her, Revathi had latched onto the Namboodiri’s words. Not yet, not
yet, not yet…
The girl had not only survived, she had flourished, a happy, mostly healthy child, who
never backed off from fights with her brother, or from stating her jutting-jawed opinion. Sanjana
at seventeen had been more worldly and cosmopolitan than her sheltered mother had been even
after her eldest child’s birth. So Revathi had been blindsided when, three months into her college
career, Sanjana proved to be just like her.

Every week, they’d call the girl up at least twice at her hostel. The first time she failed to
answer their call, RK had dismissed it easily, saying she was off somewhere having fun with
friends. Revathi had felt troubled. “Something is wrong,” she had said. “I have a feeling.”
“In thirty years, have you ever had a positive feeling?” RK had laughed.
But she’d been right, hadn’t she?
She did admire her daughter’s resourcefulness. The girl had managed to hide her
hospitalization for almost a week. Perhaps she had been afraid or ashamed because of the reason
for her breakdown: Revathi had warned her daughter about boys, the way they were.
“Stress, it must be,” the doctor, a fresh-faced man, had said when they met, an hour after
their hastily-arranged flight had lodged them in Mangalore. “Moving from a sheltered home to a
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hostel, from a metropolis to a smaller city, the stress of adjustment.” The girl had been found in
her hostel room, hysterical, and when a tense lady warden had accosted her, she’d felt the force
of the girl’s physical strength. Afterwards Sanjana had stopped speaking altogether. “No history,
yes, of stress related illness? For her or the family?”
“None,” Revathi had lied, while her husband sat beside her, stiff and silent. He hadn’t
seen the point of not telling the doctor—“the man is a doctor, Revathi,” he had said, enunciating
slowly—but the hospital was part of the medical college, and word would spread, and Sanjana’s
friends would know, and she wouldn’t be able to return and pretend that nothing had changed.
Right now, the word was that it had something to do with a broken love affair—that had indeed
been the trigger, and Revathi should have considered the problem of sending off to school a
flighty girl who had only been schooled with other girls. Revathi would rather have Sanjana’s
friends believe her act a one-off, a jilted girl’s angry reaction, rather than the symptom of
something worse.
RK didn’t see the bigger picture. He said times were different, and hiding illnesses did no
good: Had it done any good for them? Wouldn’t it have helped him if he’d been told before their
marriage? Revathi, however, believed in her father’s mantra: Family frailties could be displayed
to no one else. She would make a concession, she told RK. Unlike him, her future son-in-law
would be told of the girl’s problems, all the problems, from the beginning. RK then said there
would likely be no future son-in-law with Sanjana’s problems, and they’d fought and Revathi
had wept until he agreed to do things her way. They had ended up traveling to Bangalore by train
and visited the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences. The doctor had been
patient, kind, and reassuring.
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“Mental illness is like any other illness,” he’d said, “treatable and curable. But in our
country there is a terrible stigma, and most people don’t get the help they need. You’re doing the
right thing. You don’t know how many families just pretend not to see what’s under their noses.”
Revathi had smiled primly at the doctor and shot her husband a triumphant look. She was
a good mother. Her daughter would get treated and no harm would come to her reputation from
the wagging mouths of “well-wishing” gossips.
It was so much more than she’d gotten, and the doctor’s gentle, firm voice had
convinced her that everything would be fine. She’d quit her job, packed a few bags (leaving most
of her treasured possessions behind) and moved into this apartment with the girl. Just as the
doctor had said, she would make everything fine.

But sitting on the bare sofa while the girl napped, Revathi didn’t feel quite as cheerful as
she had. As the yearly finals approached and class pressures grew, the girl had morphed once
again into the depressed being Revathi had heard described by roommates, the one that preceded
the hysteria. The illness had only subsided, waiting its chance to rise again. Every little stress
served as a potential trigger, and Revathi wondered if this would be the girl’s fate, lurching from
episode to episode, the real, laughing, cheerful girl forever haunted by the next recurrence.
Adding to Revathi’s problems, RK, reliable, rock-like RK, had run into trouble. Some
Danish company had bought out the shipping company where RK worked, and in absorbing the
department into their own, had decided they didn’t want to keep a man seven years short of
retirement age. Seven years short of retirement age, with an unmarried, unhealthy daughter, and
two sons who barely communicated and acted at times as if they weren’t part of this family,
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especially her oldest, Sanjay, who’d left his career as an engineer behind to serve as a
functionary for the R.S.S, the Hindu radicals.
Revathi let her fingers dance over the remote as her troubled gaze fell on one of the few
fittings in the room—the clock. And then it struck her. “Feng Shui!” She’d almost forgotten.
Ravinder Chadda’s square grinning visage greeted her as the TV clicked on. The camera
zoomed back from him and, in the background, Revathi could see an extraordinarily furnished
room—the polished wood tables holding glittering knickknacks, the curving white staircase, and
human-sized, bejeweled bust of the yellow elephant god placed at the curving foot of the
staircase. The room reeked of ostentation, belonging no doubt to some rich business family who
wanted to guarantee their happiness. Which explained Chadda’s presence: to use his ancient craft
to better their fortune.
She’d tried describing the show to Sanjay, with little satisfaction.
“People are dumb enough to fall for that? Moving crap around gives you luck?”
“It is tradition,” she’d said, and explained about her own childhood home and how it had
been built. “Vaastu Shastha, we call it in our tongue. And don’t speak like a fishmonger.”
“So what does this charlatan do? Mix East and East-er? Indo-Japanese fusion?”
Revathi knew Feng Shui was Chinese. “You think all people are fools who don’t agree
with you. These are educated, well-to-do people, and he’s on TV. If he was a charlatan, don’t
you think he would have been found out?”
“By those educated well-to-do people?” He’d repeated her phrase with disdain and to
placate him she asked about his furniture, eager to provide an example of Chadda’s work.
“Furniture?” he’d scoffed, “I can’t afford furniture, Mother.” He seemed almost proud of
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breaking her heart, the foolish boy, who’d used his education to become nothing more than a
rabble-rouser for fanatics, and she hadn’t tried to persuade him anymore.
Chadda was a handsome man, with a strong, sure jaw and sharp eyes. One had to watch
him in the act, see the confidence and passion, to perceive his power.
When she’d been six, her father, on the verge of building his house, had consulted the
traditional carpenters about the floor plan. Revathi had watched the ashaaris work on the land,
their purposeful strides and gazes, musing frowns, the way they searched for that point, the one
point around which everything else had to be built. There was a science to it—No, something
even greater than science, which took into account Nature, her grand immutability and the hands
of the gods in everything.
She hadn’t tried explaining, not to her sons or her husband, who’d only agree with her to
make her feel better.
As Chadda turned to the camera and explained the discomfiting aura caused by the
arrangement of items and colors in the room, Revathi let go of her concerns regarding her family,
and let the rich, reassuring voice bind her in its spell.

A week after her unsuccessful shopping expedition, Revathi still hadn’t gone back to pick
a machine, still had to depend on the bent old woman who’d come to the door with a gapped-
toothed grin to take clothes off for washing, washing that never attained the thorough cleanliness
Revathi longed for. As for the girl—she stayed home the rest of the week, medicated, and
alternating between tears and a stillness that scared Revathi: Even as a child, sickly and sullen,
Sanjana had always been noisy. In sleep she would mumble and toss and make incoherent little
noises. But now, Sanjana slept motionless, and if it weren’t for her drawn-out breathing, Revathi
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wouldn’t know the difference between her daughter and a corpse. Revathi found it hard to fall
asleep. She had taken to clasping her daughter’s warmth to her fiercely. And the medicines
ensured the girl never knew.
RK called regularly to check on them, but Revathi, knowing the stress he was already
facing, tried to keep her words light and pleasing. Revathi couldn’t leave the girl alone so every
day she watched reruns of her show on TV, compared her bare accommodations to the clutter
that Chadda lovingly molded, thought of her own home back in Jeddah, with the cream
cupboards full of her little trinkets—her favorite crystal figures, her collages of the children from
birth till awkward adolescence, the tiny mementos friends brought back over from their trips
abroad—replicas of Mickey and Lady Liberty among others, places she’d wanted to visit but
deferred in order to cater to her children and her husband.
A week, and other than the washerwoman, Revathi’s only visitor had been the delivery
boy from the neighboring grocery store. Restless, and seeing the girl had grown a little more
animated, Revathi cajoled Sanjana into going back to school. She promised to keep her cell on
her at all times, just in case you feel like coming home. Finally, with only a few muttered
protests, the girl had trudged off to the bus stop, the few defiant looks and words she tossed her
mother’s way pleasing Revathi with their vitality.
Despite her eagerness to get out of the house, Revathi spent the morning scrubbing the
floors, folding and refolding the clothes the old crone brought, and then watched a new episode
of her show—a “New Year special,” because of the approaching Hindu New Year. Chadda,
forehead adorned with three streaks of yellow sandalwood paste, preached the importance of
having a god-mask near the entrance to the home, positioned as the first item one would see on
entry. In Jeddah, she’d had the face-masks of Kathakali dancers on the living room wall, because
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she’d been homesick at the beginning of her marriage and every time she glanced at those
heavily made up, multicolored faces, she’d brooded less. Here was an example she could relay to
her son! She only hoped to remember it till his next call.
“The color of the mask is important,” Chadda said. Each color had its own meaning, its
own mood. “Yellow, for example, is a cheerful color, not only in Feng Shui, but our own faith.
Yellow is the color of the sun, of our crops and of course,” he added with a gentle, embarrassed
nod as he ran his fingers near his forehead, indicating the streaks, “faith. So a yellow picture of a
god for the entrance, a wonderful addition.”
Chadda continued and Revathi stopped listening only to call Sanjana’s cell and making
sure she was all right.
After the special, Revathi bustled to the appliance store, selected the washing machine in
dark blue (because, as Chadda said, it was a strong color) and decided the pleasing upturn of
events warranted a temple visit. While living abroad, she had had to restrict herself to squeezing
all her temple visits into a month’s vacation time. Now she had easier access, but the unfamiliar
city, the girl’s health, and her own hesitancy had ensured she rarely went. After a lifetime of
having had men—her father, her brother, and husband—ease her expeditions outside the home,
taking the initiative didn’t come easily. Only in the last month had she begun to make visits to
places other than her daughter’s college.
The temple felt remarkably busy for a workday afternoon, perhaps because of the
approaching Hindu New Year. Revathi was enveloped by the expected, almost mindless chants
of old women seated in corners; the commands of morose priests; the shoving and pushing by
those, workers and students, on their lunch breaks in to quickly propitiate the gods; or, in the
case of some boys, to view the pretty girls. Usually the familiarity of these sights and sounds
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would ease Revathi’s mind into the welcome tranquility she needed to pray, but today she found
herself finding fault with everything: the raucousness of the chanting old women, the impatience
of the harried priests who tore her money from her hand and didn’t bother glancing at her as she
recited her daughter’s details—date, year, time of birth—for the special prayers. When the priest
recited the prayers, instead of praying by him, Revathi took in the almost rote way he said the
words. Even the idols looked too much like the priest, fatly content, eyeing her impersonally.
Chadda, she thought, seemed more interested in people, and he was watching from a TV.
She got home later than expected, the sun a sinking red globe in the horizon as she made
her way to the elevator and when she opened the door to the apartment she was struck by the
dead stillness of the flat. The god-house sat unlighted despite the hour, and Revathi, in a
confused corner of her mind, realized that for the first time since moving in, she would miss the
evening prayers at home. She moved to the bedroom to check up on the girl.
Sanjana wasn’t there.
“Sanjana,” Revathi said, hoping to hear an answering voice. She hurried back to the
living room, walked past the god-house to the screen door, pulled it open and stepped into the
balcony. Downstairs she could see the children from the apartment building playing, their
laughter light and airy. But she caught no sight of her daughter’s tall frame or bobbed hair.
Where could she be, she thought and looked up towards the roof. Her heart froze. The end of a
familiar yellow scarf blew in the wind.
Revathi ran.
In her haste she forgot to close the screen door, the front door, forgot that the apartment
building had an elevator and took the stairs instead. As she tore open the door to the terrace, her
heart hammered in her mouth and she clutched at the stitch at her side.
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Sanjana stood where Revathi had hoped she’d be, at one end of the roof, hunched over
the parapet, the ends of her yellow dupatta whipping about her, slapping her shoulder and back.
“Sanjana,” Revathi said. “Sanjana.”
It took an inordinately long time for the girl to turn. Her eyes looked feverish, her skin
flushed.
“Ma,” she said. “It’s so nice here. So nice and windy. I don’t know why you’re afraid of
heights.” She laughed, a laugh full and pealing and strangely discomfiting. “I saw him today,
Ma. He was in school today.”
“Come here,” Revathi said, failing to temper the anxiety in her voice.
“You come here Ma. Don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything.”
“This Instant.”
The girl shrugged, turned away and dipped her body over the waist-high concrete.
“Please.” Revathi heard the word quicken and break at the end.
Revathi inched forward, not looking out at the expanse of city in front of her,
concentrating only on her daughter. When she gripped Sanjana’s arm, the girl looked over her
shoulder at Revathi with a pleased expression. “Look down, Ma.”
“We’re going downstairs,” Revathi said. The girl looked angry and Revathi clutched her
even tighter. “Now.” For a second, from the look on Sanjana’s face, Revathi feared her “loud
voice” hadn’t been enough, but the girl straightened and turned, shrugged her arm free and
walked ahead of her to the door that led back to safety.
“Why are you acting like this?” Sanjana said. “I simply wanted some air.”
Revathi wrapped a protective arm around the girl’s back. Her daughter was much
stronger than she was. “My fault. I’m foolish. I worry. Please come down.”
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The girl gave her an injured look but let Revathi lead her back to the apartment.
Revathi got Sanjana to undress and climb into bed with difficulty. Sanjana paced about,
claiming she wasn’t tired and didn’t feel like sleeping and Revathi coaxed and threatened until
Sanjana climbed into bed. As Sanjana lay there, Revathi curled by her on the bed and ran a
soothing hand over the short, curling hair on her daughter’s head. “How were things in school?
Did your friends ask why you seemed so happy?”
“Good. I just got bored sitting, so I went upstairs. ” She batted her mother’s hand away.
“He was in school today. I think he came for some transcripts. He’s going abroad. Everyone is
going abroad. But we’re coming back, Acha’s coming back, and Sanju’s already back.”
Revathi prayed that Sanjana’s friends hadn’t noticed her state. “Sleep,” she said, “sleep,
sleep.” She intoned the words like a chant and Sanjana gave her an insulted look at first about
being babied, but soon Revathi could hear nothing but the rise and fall of her daughter’s heavy
breath. Revathi cursed herself. Having spent all her time worrying about the girl’s depression,
she’d forgotten the other danger—the manic stage, the Gemini twin. But the girl was in the
depressive state right now: or was this a mixed episode, triggered by the boy?
Revathi had lost her best friend during a crest of her own mania. A girl she had taken
under her wing in Jeddah, the wife of a protege of her husband’s. Feeling manically happy, she’d
called her friend up and talked, talked of things she could only half-remember—vituperation
against her husband for not understanding (poor loving R.K, how could she even think such
things of him?); her father for not getting her treatment. What still made her blush, however, was
what she’d said in the end—in the deluded high she’d felt like a goddess, and she’d claimed to
be so, said she was the reincarnation of Saraswati, goddess of wisdom. I am god, she
remembered saying. She didn’t know if it was that statement which had cost her the friendship or
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something else, words she couldn’t remember. It was the knowledge that someone else thought
these horrible thoughts—against husband, father, and gods—were actually her own that kept her
from trying to fix the rupture.
She got off the bed and walked into the living room, feeling a false calm envelop her. She
would complain to the watchman about the door to the terrace being left unlocked, and cite
safety for the small children. She would be called a busybody but her daughter would be safer.

Revathi’s head ached the next morning, and Sanjana, still feverishly cheerful, said as she
slurped up her morning bowl of cereal, “You sound slow, Ma.”
“I’m not slow, you’re in overdrive,” Revathi said. “Stop laughing. Please stop laughing.
You’re staying home today.”
The girl wouldn’t hear of it. Her spoon clattered into the cereal bowl. “I have to go to
school, it’s almost exam time.”
“I say you’re staying home, and that’s that.”
“I can’t! I’ve already missed too many days and the teachers—” Sanjana broke off and
stared at her mother. Revathi, knowing that enforcing her decision could only result in a swift
descent into the silence of the prior week, consented unhappily, after extracting the cell numbers
of Sanjana’s friends.
Once she’d seen off the girl to the bus, Revathi got out her prayer book and sat down in
front of the god-house. The elephant-god eyed her complacently, and Revathi broke off her
chanting. If the girl had jumped, really jumped, while she’d been out praying….She placed the
book down in front of the god-house. There was no comfort to be found here. Whenever she told
her children to pray, she’d tell them to picture a still flame or a favored deity in their heads, but
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the pictures that rose in her mind when she closed her eyes were of her daughter, of pealing
laughter and of a yellow scarf fluttering over the parapet; instead of silence, her own voice,
charged and excited, proclaiming, I am god, I am god.
The bell pealed and she rose quickly, grateful to be freed of such horrible thoughts. The
watchman stood just outside, smiling ingratiatingly. “Maydum, workers have come with washing
machine.”
“Of course,” she said, “please show them the way.”
The elevator proved too narrow to handle the machine’s girth, so the men, with the
watchman acting as cheerleader and sergeant, wrestled the unwieldy metal box up the three
flights of stairs. Revathi, standing at her door, could hear the muffled curses and oaths of the men
hefting it to her apartment.
As they carried it to the storeroom and installed the various fittings, with the watchman
standing back, watching them like the man of the house, Revathi dialed the number she’d gotten
from her daughter. A boy’s hesitant voice bade her hello, and quickly assured her that Sanjana
was all right. She needn’t have kept him on the phone longer but the presence of the workmen,
with their coarse muttering, their earthy smells, and insolent stares unnerved her, so she
continued to question him, minutely, till the boy politely rung off. Fortunately the men were
almost done, and in any case they didn’t look to her for answers. The watchman imperiously
commanded them, and saw them to the door when they were finished, pocketing half the tip she
handed over to him to give them.
The watchman turned and she smiled tremulously. The gods had deserted her the day
before and now she was alone with a man with the eyes of a thief. His little eyes took in the vast
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bareness of the room, and Revathi noticed disappointment in those calculating orbs. “Maydum, if
you want good place to find furniture, I can tell.”
Revathi felt her smile freeze in place.
“This is no good,” he proclaimed as he stepped out the door. “Should be a proper home.”
Revathi closed the door behind him and shuddered as she turned. The place stunk of
sweat. She crossed over to the screen door and opened it to air out the room. Proper home.
She disliked the watchman intensely, so why did his words sting? Because it was true.
They hadn’t had time to do any shopping, buy anything and at the time Revathi hadn’t minded.
But what if, what if Sanjana’s misery grew due to the bareness, the Spartan flatness of this
apartment? She thought back to the lush carpet in Jeddah, where she could catch tufts of soft-
gold thread in between her toes. She thought of her little crystal swans and toads, the bronze little
Statue of Liberty and the coffee mugs Sidhant had brought over featuring the names of men he
claimed were the funniest in the world—Conan and Jon something. Sanjay sometimes grew
irritated with her descriptions of furniture, cost, and look. He thought it was materialistic, but
then, he didn’t understand love for objects had everything to do with love for self in the world.

When Sanjana arrived from school, less chirpy but still smiling, she was met by a mother
with the hard glint of decision in her eye. “We’re going shopping. Go change,” Revathi
announced, grabbing her daughter’s hand in order to hurry her.
She could have chosen the newly opened mall, with its glitzy familiarity, but Sanjana
insisted they go to the bazaar.
“Think of how fun it’ll be, Ma.”
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If Revathi weren’t in a hurry, she would have marveled at the calm balance conveyed by
her daughter’s tone. Sanjana, like her father, thrived off of haggling, something Revathi had no
taste for.
“C’mon,” Sanjana wheedled, clutching her mother’s arm, and Revathi noted, despite the
smile, how strained her daughter’s eyes looked.
“Fine,” Revathi said, and her heart sang as her daughter squeezed her arm.
They needed to change buses twice before they reached the bazaar. The place was
crowded with bodies and stalls. Everywhere they moved, people pressed in on them and Sanjana
grasped her mother’s hand and clung tight, looking around in wonder at the raucous vendors
chanting the names of their wares.
“Look Ma,” Sanjana said, “your show has its own shop.” Squeezed between two busy
stalls, an empty shop: Feng Shui Furnitures. Excitement coursed through Revathi as they stepped
through its threshold. The store’s interior was lit by oil lamps and suffused with the smell of
incense sticks. The lone salesman stood near the sofas and smiled distantly at them, his austere
face at odds with the brightness of the furniture and potted plants about him. Near the door were
many little masks, of different deities, from Hindu gods to Jesus.
Revathi chose a smiling mask of Shiva that seemed popular in Mangalore, partly because
the picture was so different from the heavy-lidded, stern-lipped incarnation prevalent elsewhere,
but mainly because the moon-faced god with a sunny smile and well-groomed black moustache
reminded her of RK.
The salesman finally approached them. “I’ll take this,” Revathi said, “How much?”
When he quoted an amount that Revathi would’ve found exorbitant normally, she said “fine”
before Sanjana could begin haggling. The wounded expression on her daughter’s face didn’t
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deter her. “Why do you have these plants?” She gestured with a sweeping movement of her
right arm and the jangling of the row of thick gold bangles on her arm caught his eye.
He explained the connection of plants and Feng Shui and Revathi wondered aloud which
one she should get.
“You don’t have a green thumb, Ma,” Sanjana said.
“A little watering I’m capable of,” Revathi said dismissively. “I have all the time in the
world now.”
The sofas came next, and here Revathi was disappointed at first, finding none of the same
quality as her beloved set, but she finally settled on a green one. Green, she remembered Chadda
saying, was a calming color. Green would help the girl sleep better, not toss and turn worried,
about class, about friends, her mind, her brother, her son, her husband or the roof, yes green it
would be.
The man quoted a sum, too high once again, and Revathi found it rather amusing that she
didn’t care. As she whipped out her checkbook, she thought how surprised RK would be. He
always accused her of penny-pinching.
The salesman stepped closer to her and lowered his voice to a confidential whisper, “If
Madam will pay cash, I can reduce the price.”
Revathi eyed Sanjana in triumph. See, she didn’t need to haggle to get good prices.
Sanjana was busy poking and prodding the sofa, with pursed lips.
As she rummaged through her purse, however, Revathi grew dismayed. She didn’t have
enough money. “I’ll go get cash and be back” she said.
The shopkeeper looked hesitant, afraid to let a promising customer out the door.
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“Don’t worry,” she said in a bracing voice. “I will be back.” She grabbed a hold of
Sanjana and dragged her out.
“Ma, those sofas suck. They’re not strong, won’t last. What are you doing?”
Revathi’s eyes were drawn to a stall bursting with richly textured oriental rugs. “We need
to get some of those too.”
Sanjana’s eyes widened. “Ma, the banks will be closed now. We can’t get all this today.”
“Yes, we can,” Revathi said with a pleased smile. “I’ll pawn these.” She raised her arms
and shook her gold bangles. “Come reclaim them later.” Revathi, ignoring her daughter’s
protests about those being her wedding jewelry, pulled at Sanjana and started into a run, not
bothering to apologize to those she accidentally hit, and she had just started to feel the
quickening thuds of her heartbeats when Sanjana pulled her to a stop. The girl looked frightened.
“Amma, stop it.”
“What?” Momentarily, the chatter around them lowered to a murmur, and Revathi
blushed under the startled, mildly curious eyes turned her way.
“Amma,” the girl said in an urgent whisper, “let’s go home, please. We’ll buy the all this
later, we’ll come later.” Revathi stared. The helpless terror on her daughter’s face was so
different from the mild puzzlement on her husband’s or the irritation on her son’s, and Revathi
felt tears flood into her eyes even though the last thing she wanted to do was lose control in front
of the child who most depended on her. The last burden she wanted to place on her daughter’s
deceptively broad shoulders were tears, but she couldn’t help their overflowing, couldn’t help
wipe out the helpless look on Sanjana’s face.
I’m sorry, she said, and now it was her voice that cracked. I’m so sorry, but the words
didn’t come out right because alarm turned to fear in the girl’s eye. Revathi could see Sanjana
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mouthing something but all she heard was the rushing in her ears and all she saw were the
black spots dancing in her eyes before she fell, limply, into her daughter’s cradling arms.

Shankar 271

The Replacement
If RK shared his wife’s imagination he would have identified his current situation as
being in limbo, would have laughed at his mental image of a man frozen between ruinous
worlds, and then wept with self-pity. Being a practical man, however, RK never thought of
limbo, wouldn’t have known what to make of it, the image or the word—in his now frequent
ruminations the phrase that kept cropping up was No Man’s land. Fifty-eight years of age and
steadily working toward a pensionless retirement, and this—the company had been bought out,
and he’d been politely told his services wouldn’t be required once the audit was completed, in
about a month. Thirty eight years of eight, ten, thirteen-hour shifts, then this sudden expulsion
into No Man’s land.
If asked where he’d heard that phrase, he would have nodded toward BBC radio, his
vocal companion on the sojourns to and from the office for the twenty-five years of his stay in
Jeddah. And even at home—when they were young, RK’s children would announce at nine that
“Daddy’s news” was on, and he'd come hurrying and they'd watch, fascinated, the raptness with
which he attended to the newscaster's words, though the government-controlled Channel 2
broadcasts revealed mostly mundane propaganda. Revathi and the children loved stories, music,
film, esoteric conversations, but RK loved the sure and steady drip of facts, which required little
interpretation, much like the numbers he worked with, but opened up unimaginable vistas his
numbers didn't.
This incomprehensible thirst for the news, among his other characteristics, had coalesced
in an image in the children’s minds—of a stolid, terribly hard-working and boring though loving
man, a stereotypical accountant. In Revathi's hands this picture turned into a weapon—she’d
married a man who’d rather hear about things happening than make anything happen himself,
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whose lack of imagination reflected a lack of ambition. Even now, he knew, separated by seas
from her husband she ruminated on his many failings, constructed elaborate scenarios in her
mind of potential disasters that could befall the family, and complained about his almost bovine
placidity.
Today, as always, up at six, he headed straight to the kitchen and brewed a pot of coffee
and, while gulping down the bitter black liquid, called Revathi in Mangalore, since it was already
eight thirty there. He then jested with his daughter and gladdened to hear the irrepressible
warmth of her voice, his beloved youngest child, the most like him in her happy-go-lucky nature.
As he waited for the coffee to signal the need for a trip to the toilet, he mentally organized what
he had to get done at work—by the week’s end, the others would be absorbed into the new
company and he would be left with one assistant to complete the audit. The list arranged itself
methodically in his mind, and two items stood out—calling his bank about his Non-Resident
account, and calling Appu once he returned from work. His older brother’s health had been
deteriorating for months, the years of drinking, smoking, and general unhealthy living finally
taking their toll, and RK called all the time to see Appu wanted for nothing—and to assuage his
guilt about Unni.
As he adjusted his tie strap and admired the way the narrow blood red tie went with the
teal Van Heusen shirt, RK thought with affection of his wife. When age began to mark him in
unsubtle ways, she’d been the one who’d told—well, pestered—him to hide the sag in his neck
and to dye his hair. He opened a green pot of Brylcreem and dipped two fingers into the cream to
run through his thinning wet curls and, once done, stood back to take in the overall effect. He
had to admit, in retrospect, that Revathi had been right. He was seven years from retirement age,
but the years of being harassed by co-workers, the lot of accountants everywhere, had etched
Shankar 273

itself on his face, hair, and gait. The smart ties and dark hair had made him not just look but feel
younger. And he’d needed that to keep up with the youngsters that streamed in like roaches into
the office, this new generation eager-eyed, impatiently waiting for him to make way.
But he worked diligently, put in longer hours than men half his age—including his good-
for-little nephew—and had earned the respect he had commanded as the chief of the accounting
staff. Whenever Revathi complained about his lack of ambition, he could point to this—a boy
from a backward-caste family from a backwater like Kurumala, with unschooled parents, had
ended up going to college, and had earned a company car, family status, and enough money to
afford his sons’ U.S education. No, he thought with satisfaction as he brushed his pomaded hair,
he hadn’t done too badly.
RK moved to the little altar Revathi had created, with pictures of the trinity and other
favored gods, lit the oil-smooth cloth, and muttered the new prayers he’d picked out, written
down in Revathi’s neat little hand on almost porous Indian paper stapled to form a little booklet.
Strange, how he’d first started praying to please his wife after one of her nervous incidents, but
now, even though she was no longer around, he stuck to the routine because he had started to
derive some comfort from it. He wouldn’t call it faith exactly, only the optimistic wish of a man
who’d lived a respectable life that his lack of active sinning might generate some reward.
Done praying, he extinguished the flame with the pads of his fingers, then pressed the
slightly warm fingers to forehead and chest three times. He turned off every light in the house
except the one in the living room, and locked the door behind him. He’d lived in this house for
twenty years with Revathi and one or more of their children, and despite their absence it never
felt less than home. In the evenings he would rturn and sit in the living room and sometimes the
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ghosts of the past would flit by him on child-sized feet, the echoes of youthful laughter bursting
in the air and he’d feel a little less alone.
At the office parking lot, he parked near the back entrance to the building. When he
turned the ignition off, the car shut down with a pleasing purr. He’d miss this when he went
back, these easy comforts, the company car that handled like a dream, the sane and generally
law-abiding traffic. It was something newly arrived Indian boys instantly noticed and loved.
The elevator had three other occupants, two Indians and an Arab with Egyptian features
and western attire. All boys in their mid-twenties, and the Indians were obviously new to the
country, still projecting the sallow, hungry look of those just out of college. Their clothes didn’t
flatter them—the pants had slipped despite their graying belts, the checked shirts were made of
material bought in large quantities from wholesalers and turned into almost-uniforms and sold on
Bombay footpaths, and the dark half-moons under their arms showed they had walked to work.
The moon-faced Egyptian, in sharp contrast, fit into his clothes professionally and met RK’s
gaze with a closed-lip nod. The boys got out on the fourth floor together and as the elevator
doors silently slid shut RK watched the way the two Indians leaned into one another while the
Egyptian followed closely, yet a million paces behind. In a few years, he thought as the elevator
rose silently to his floor, the Indian boys would marry, and would, with luck, fill out their clothes
almost as well as the Egyptian. They would work diligently, send money back home to poorer
relatives against the wishes of their wives, spend too little time with their growing children, until
finally one day they’d be told they were no longer needed, and they would wonder where their
lives had gone and what they had accomplished.
Yes, they were probably good sons, wiring money into accounts back home every pay
period—unlike his nephew. The elevator stopped on his floor, and RK walked to the ghostly
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shell of the accounts department. While the five men under him occupied three-fifths of the
space with desks jutting against each other’s, RK had his own domain, separated from theirs by a
screened glass partition, from within which he could survey their work.
The orderliness that had characterized the room and lent it its professional air was gone.
Loose bundles of paper lay strewn everywhere. The accounts boys, always deferential, now
bristled with barely contained energy: They were all to be absorbed into the new company, most
of them staying on in Jeddah. He nodded to each of them, his smile slipping when his gaze
lighted on Unni. His nephew didn’t note the coolness; he smiled, though it never reached his
eyes.
RK moved to his office and closed the door firmly behind him.
He dropped into his chair, pulled out his bulging wallet from his back pocket, where it
had inconvenienced him all the way here, and slid it into the top drawer. Then he stretched,
cracked each knuckle, mentally reviewed the things he’d planned to get done and released a
breath. As he hunched forward and picked up the phone, a reassuring thought went through his
mind: He was dealing with numbers now.

At lunchtime he’d been carefully going through some old ledgers with his assistant,
Mushtaq, when his door banged open. The big, red man standing at the door shouted, “RK” as if
merely uttering the syllables gave him some pleasure, and rolled into the room, sliding into the
chair opposite. “All work and no play, old man? It’s lunchtime.”
“Collier,” RK said, grinning. He motioned to Mushtaq and the boy hurried out, clutching
the books.
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Of all the men he’d worked under, RK liked the Scotsman the best. Yes, there was
something oily about his friendliness, an overplayed avuncularity, and when they first started
working together the Scot had tried to persuade RK to help him with some truly creative
accounting. RK had, with some discomfort, made it clear he had no intention of thieving or in
letting Collier thieve on a large scale—even if he were dishonest, he wouldn’t have dared, not in
this country. Collier had generously forgiven him and they’d ended up forging a friendship.
Collier had also been the only one to stand up for him after the buyout, and despite his failure to
save RK's position, RK felt even more loyal to him than before. Collier himself had been kept
on: His whiteness carried a lot of weight in their professional circles.
“I’ve got my appointment,” Collier said, blue eyes twinkling, and RK felt the slightest
frisson of sadness. “I’m to continue here, head up this new monstrosity they are building.”
Collier hunched forward, clutching his meaty forearms close to himself. “I wish I could keep
you on. I want to. But—”
“Yes,” RK said, embarrassed and afraid his longing might be evident in his tome.
“Nothing we can do.”
“Still, you’ve worked hard all this while. You deserve a rest.” Collier leaned even closer,
till RK could see the coffee stains on those yellow teeth. “Well, I’ve still got to hire someone to
help run my money, and I was thinking of promoting from within. The boys are young, but they
have some experience and energy, and it’ll be good for morale. So, which one of these jokers is
the new RK?”
RK looked past Collier, through the glass partition at Unni, bent over his desk, tapping at
a piece of paper with his pencil. Bent at work, Unni looked like a younger version of himself.
The boy worked well, but he buckled easily, too, to those who had power over him—which was
Shankar 277

why he still smiled at his uncle. RK could just pick him, but he knew another viable candidate—
RK had hired Mushtaq when he’d hired Unni: Though qualified the boy had no real personality
and an unfortunately sly face, the sort that one deemed alarming on accountants. But he was
smart and ethical, and if Unni weren’t his nephew, the choice would have been much easier.
Collier probably expected him to pick Unni: This was Collier’s parting gift to him—he may not
be part of this new company, but he would be able to leave his mark on it. Perhaps this was why
RK said, “Give me a day or two to think it over.”

He treated himself to some local cuisine that night, eating the Al Baik fried chicken while
watching one of the myriad singing competitions on Asianet, mostly to hear conversation in
Malayalam. When Revathi had left, RK had assured her he would be all right, assumed he would
be. After all, he’d survived as a bachelor until he married her, cooking lunches and dinners he
remembered with some level of pride. Either his memory had betrayed him or he’d been spoiled
by married life. He’d been more energetic then, too, and now he felt too drained in the evenings
to bother with elaborate preparations, forgoing most of the subtle spices and tastes, the dashes of
this and the touch of that which made Revathi’s dinners such a pleasure, in favor of items hot
and edible—chili, salt, onions and he was done. Occasionally, as tonight, he ate from outside
though the censorious voice of his wife was an ever-present in his head, querulously reminding
him about his heart and blood pressure.
After, he called his elder brother. His sister-in-law answered the phone—strangely, since
she treated the phone the way he once had computers, with suspicion tinged with fear—and her
questions, after her tentative hello, dealt with her son. How was he, did he look well, and why
wouldn’t he call?
Shankar 278

“He’s doing all right. So is Smitha, and their little girl is doing wonderfully. I went to
their place last week. She has become very talkative, for a three-year old. I was just looking her
over and she asks me, plain, didn’t I have anything better to do than stare at her?” He laughed
and didn’t tell her that it had been his first visit to Unni’s in months, and that his every overture
to the boy and his wife had been evaded till then, politely, but rejected all the same. Only now
that he was close to leaving had Unni seen fit to let his uncle—the one who’d hired him, the one
who’d paid Unni’s way through college—back into his life. He didn’t tell her, though he was
laughing now, that the little girl’s question hadn’t seemed cute but rude and impertinent, that she
was her father’s child.
“Ask him to send some photos at least,” she said. She no longer asked when Unni would
visit. “At least some photos when you come. Of the child, especially. Or you could take some—”
Appu had grabbed the phone from her before RK could promise, and he was slightly ashamed of
his relief.
Appu sounded more tired than usual but hid it behind a greater gruffness, talking about
the mundane—who’s who was getting married, who was moving to the Gulf, how the rubber
looked—until they got to RK’s return. “It’ll be good, you coming back. Baby wanted to see you
before she…walked. There’s only the three of us left now.”
Strange, he and Appu were the oldest, and they’d outlived all but their youngest brother,
though Appu was only sixty-four. Baby, their youngest sister, birth name Meenakshi: strong,
sarcastic and quite capable of speaking her mind—bringing her only son, Santo, over was the last
kindness he’d been able to do for her, but the visa had come through only after her passing. She
hadn’t known her child’s future was secure.
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RK asked about his nephews and nieces. Appu asked about Sidhant and Sanjay. “He
called a few weeks back, the younger one, Sidhant. Hadn’t heard his voice in a long time. Seems
to have forgotten our tongue.” His tired voice lightened with amusement.
“Yes, he’s American now, isn’t he?”
“He’s a good boy. Good heart. What’d he see us for, one month each year for the first
eighteen of his life? But he always calls and talks—asks about everyone, tries to talk to
everyone.”
“A good one,” RK agreed. They only ever talked of Unni obliquely.
“It’ll be good when you get back.”
RK didn’t speak and for the next minute he listened to his brother’s strenuous breaths
over the phone. Then Appu surprised him.
“Tell that sonovabitch to call his mother, at least. She cries.”

He’d thought he’d been helping his brother when he’d hired Unni. He hadn’t known that
the boy would turn out to be so selfish and weak, that once he married, he’d fight with his family
and not speak to them for five years.
Marriage always had that pitfall. Occasionally, arguments erupted, often at some slight
felt by the wife, and the newly married groom, in the first throes of marriage, of needing to be
seen as a man, ended up fighting with his family to support his wife. Revathi had been the same
way; she’d sniped on and on about his spending on Appu and others. It was a woman’s test:
Afraid of losing her identity with her name, she tested her husband to see how much she would
have to forfeit. If the husband played his cards well, she would get over it in a few months, and
with time, he could go back to the old relationship with his family. Sometimes the fight ended up
Shankar 280

being permanent, the end result being that the children would bear their father’s last name but
have loyalty only to the mother’s side: he had friends that way. However, he’d never known a
couple who’d done what Unni and Smitha had—alienated themselves from both sides. Unni’s
battle with his family had started at the same time as Smitha’s war with her parents: Appu at
least had six other children; Smitha was one of only two, her brother much younger, barely a
child, and he couldn't understand how a girl brought up with such love and affection turned out
so heartless.
The galling thing was how content they seemed. Unni had prided himself on his voice,
and when they’d arranged his marriage, he’d asked for a girl who could sing. Revathi had
mocked him for that: He should be asking for a girl with a good education, one with a brain, one
who can raise his children well. RK had known the girl had a good voice, but he hadn’t known
how good until some friends had congratulated him after hearing her sing at a community
function, as if he, tone-deaf RK were somehow responsible for her gift. He’d learned later that
they had a lucrative side-business singing at functions the Malayalee community held, and in
return for their performances, they were given gifts—sometimes money, sometimes jewelry or
electronics—and some minor level of local celebrity. They were, to use his daughter’s words, a
“happening couple” and as such were always surrounded by ‘friends.’ Not only was Unni
content without his family, he seemed to be prospering.
RK couldn’t tell his brother or sister-in-law that. He couldn’t tell them that their
granddaughter, whom they’d never met, called the couple’s friends maman and mami. His own
children had called people who weren’t technically relatives ‘uncle’ and ‘aunty’: that was the
way they had been raised, with maman and mami reserved for real relatives, the same words in a
foreign tongue for the fictive family of fellow transplants they had grown up around. But Unni’s
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child didn’t even know her real family, not that well. The fictive family had filled in the gap left
by the real one.

Thursday being a half-day, they had a small farewell party in the main office, for both
the company itself and those left behind. The younger men, the ones who were being kept on,
talked boisterously, their laughter and energy amplifying the gloom of those being let go, who
were treating this for the most part, like a wake. RK, after exchanging a few words with Collier,
drifted off to a corner and ate and talked little unless approached. Few of the enterprising young
men he’d hired or mentored over the years bothered to speak to him for long. Only the courteous
Mushtaq seemed more than cursorily interested in his plans, and RK felt old and humiliated. So
when people started drifting off, eager to begin their weekends, he beckoned his nephew. “We
need to talk before you leave.” And with that he made his way back, for the last time, to the
accounts department. The hallway was empty, the clicking of his shoes the only sound.
Meticulous as he was, he’d boxed his belongings and taken them home earlier in the
week, all except for his coffee mug and his nameplate and some stationary. He would need those
for another three weeks. He played with the letterhead as he waited for Unni, wondering what
they’d do with all the stationary inscribed with his name. Unni arrived half an hour later, and slid
in easily into the seat opposite RK, looking everywhere but straight at him.
“So, what are your plans?” Unni asked at last.
RK hunched forward, hands to elbows, in an unconscious imitation of Collier’s power
pose, the shame he’d felt a few minutes earlier still not having passed. “What plans, boy? Pack
up and leave. That’s my plan.”
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After a pause, Unni said, “I suppose—I suppose Revathi chechi is happy,” and RK felt
his irritation rise. Revathi had been gone six months, and the boy had never cared.
“Not as happy as your parents will be when you visit.” There, he’d finally said it, what
he’d hinted at, talked around for these last five years because he hadn’t wanted to rock the boat.
All the boy did was watch him through those large, almost child-like eyes. “Every time I call
your mother keeps asking about you. And you know your father’s health is failing all the time?”
RK waited for a reaction, some tremor of anger to rise to the surface of that passive face,
some defensive statement. But Unni just eyed him placidly and murmured noncommittally, his
right hand curling about RK’s nameplate, fiddling with it.
“Unni, isn’t it time to forgive and forget, whatever it was? They are your parents.”
“Sure, forgive and forget,” Unni said.
“Don’t parrot me, boy. Think, think through that bullheadedness of yours.” Once, long
ago, when the musically inclined Unni had wanted to take up Arts rather than Commerce in
college, RK had quietly led him to the courtyard of Appu’s home and hidden from curious eyes
in the house had lectured him, reminding him of his six younger siblings, and his family
obligations. RK could still feel the ghost of the evening breeze play through his hair and through
the palm leaves as he held the crying teenage boy against his chest. The boy had been humoring
RK’s children when he’d called him aside, and he still wore the ‘watch’ the children had made
him, out of folded coconut leaves, with the numbers 3, 6, 9 and 12 scribbled in Sanjana’s
childish hand, and RK had felt a disquieting sense of melancholy. But he looked at that toy
watch and thought, if I let you follow your dream this may be the best you’ll get. He’d held the
boy for a time, since Appu never would, and he’d felt closer to him than even his own sons.
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“I am thinking.” Unni’s tone echoed the other impatient tones RK had heard since his
enforced retirement became known. The same barely-there politeness, the bristling impatience of
dealing with someone washed up and irrelevant. To hear that tone, from this boy— RK opened
his mouth again and Unni seemed to come to a decision. “Don’t interfere. It’s a family matter,
between me and my family.” He rose, the nameplate clattering on the table as he exited.
Your family? The family I’ve supported since before you were born? RK wanted to
scream. But he’d always been careful to think before he spoke, and by the time he gauged how
little he had to lose, the boy was gone.

They placed RK in the prospective storage room of the new office. A little table and chair
with a computer with no internet connection, and the few files he still had to go through. He had
always been proud of his assiduousness, but now he wished that he hadn’t worked so feverishly
these past few weeks. He had three weeks till his departure and the thinness of the files he dealt
with meant that he was usually done with his day’s work by noon. Then came the awkward,
repeated trips to the main office for coffee and stimulation. He’d become an invisible man to his
former colleagues; those he passed would give him embarrassed smiles, half-hearted hellos and
hurry away, back to their desks and the solid knowledge of their place in the order of things.
The first couple of days, RK had felt a burning shame, because his wretchedness was
nakedly obvious to all in the room. The second week, he started spending more time on the
phone to his family; afternoons in Jeddah coincided with late nights in Texas, but Sidhant was
usually awake when he called. The eldest boy, Sanjay, was stuck somewhere in the North of
India and rarely spoke long and his curtness reminded RK disquietingly of Unni; it was a
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different sort of selfishness, leaving a career behind to fight for a cause, especially a stupid,
wretched one. But the boy at least asked about everyone’s health, and dutifully called Appu
when RK asked him to. Sidhant’s conversation was aggressively cheerful, filled with office
anecdotes that made RK laugh and wax nostalgic.
“Don’t worry, Dad,” Sidhant said when RK confessed his unhappiness. “It’s only a few
more days. Then you’ll be home.”
And even more useless, RK thought. He’d first expected that his presence would at least
help Revathi and Sanjana, since he’d always mediated between them during their constant tussles
during the girl’s last years in high school, but lately from their conversations, he’d realized that
they’d achieved some sort of balance. Appu, despite his sickness, still went out each day to
oversee the work on their land, the rubber and the rice, kept himself busy and bad thoughts at
bay. RK would end up living in a city where he had no family except his wife and daughter,
settled in front of the TV, a useless old man.
Sidhant, as if sensing his thoughts, said, “You should think of what you want to do once
you get home. Remember, always have a plan, otherwise you’ll be lost, you’ll be bored.”
“Rest,” RK said. “I’ve worked hard all my life and now I’ll rest.” Even as he spoke he
knew he was mouthing Collier’s empty words. Perhaps if he could make himself believe it, he
would be happier. The fact was he had always avoided planning for this eventuality, had hoped
that by not thinking of it, he could keep retirement at bay.
Mushtaq came by later that afternoon, dragging along a fresh-faced boy just out of his
teens. “My cousin,” Mushtaq explained. “He’s starting as a secretary in Maersk.”
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Mushtaq had already helped launch the careers of two of his large family. The boy had a
good heart. RK shook hands with the shy young man, mouthed platitudes about hard work and
Mushtaq stayed behind after his relative left.
“Work hasn’t really started yet, RK sir. I hope we’ll get a leader like you when things get
hectic.”
RK wondered whether Mushtaq had heard of the opening Collier had, but the boy had
always been obsequious. He’d perceived it as slyness and it had used to irritate him until he saw
the boy’s work ethic, his devotion to his family, and then he interpreted it as the carefulness of
someone balancing a weight on too-narrow shoulders. A boy with no godfather had to be careful
all the time. RK knew this from experience.
Mushtaq smiled at him. “The real reason I came is to say I’m getting married next month.
My sisters have had their turns, and are doing well, by the grace of God.”
RK had talked to Mushtaq about this long ago, their experiences in self-sacrifice for the
family. RK himself had waited until his late thirties, had considered never getting married since
his older brother had seven children he couldn’t afford, and work had seemed to occupy all his
time. Appu had been the one to insist he go see the girl, a dark, slim twenty-year old with long
straight hair and an intriguing close-lipped smile. RK was always grateful to his brother for
that—for Revathi and the kids.
“Mabrook, congrats,” RK said. He looked at that narrow, sly yet vital face and felt a
momentary pang when he thought of it, aged and beaten, humiliated by ungrateful relatives.
“You made it much faster than me. I was thirty six before I managed to get around to it. Tell me
about the lucky girl.”

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Around four-thirty, just as he was planning to leave for home, Collier called.
“RK, you got a pick for me?”
Since Mushtaq left, RK had been thinking about nothing else. How both Mushtaq and
Unni worked so hard. How Mushtaq cared for his family, while Unni did not. How Mushtaq
respected RK, while Unni did not. And how Unni was family, while Mushtaq was not. “I want to
talk to you about it.”
“Lunch, tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” RK said and hung up.
In the elevator on his way down, with half the office crowded around them, Unni stood
next to RK. Neither spoke.

RK called Appu that night. His sister-in-law answered once more.
“Another week and we’ll be able to see you.”
“Another week,” RK agreed. He’d spent the time since his return boxing up old papers,
the school- and artwork of his young children. I want them to have their memories, Revathi had
said. They can never go back there, so we’ll take what we can.
“Did you—did you get the photos?” his sister-in-law spoke.
Sad, RK thought. Soon he’d be able to visit the home he grew up in, the one Unni grew
up in, but his own children would never be able to see their childhood home in Jeddah, except in
photographs. “No, not yet,” RK said. “I’ll get them, I promise.”
Appu didn’t ask about Unni. He spoke about land instead. “When you’re back, we should
consider partitioning the property: You, me, the others’ kids. Getting too old to take care of it
all.”
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“Do what you like,” RK said. The last thing he wanted on his return was a family
squabble.
“But a lot of it is your land,” Appu said. “Your money.”
Appu’s words stung, the memory of Unni’s mine and yours still played in his mind every
day. “What’s mine is yours, always has been.”
RK heard Appu’s sigh. Appu said, “I just don’t want what happened between me and
Unni to happen with your children. Don’t want them to see me as an evil uncle stealing their
birthright.”
“I’m meeting my boss tomorrow to help him select a replacement for me. Unni’s name is
in the frame.” RK didn’t know why he said this, only he wanted his brother to shut up about
birthright and partition and all such nonsense.
RK expected Appu to react with disinterest, but Appu’s voice perked up. “He is smart,
isn’t he? Not as good hearted as his uncle, but still, it’ll be a great opportunity for him.” Appu
talked as if Unni’s getting the job were a given. RK thought of telling Appu that Collier would
have the last word, thus washing his hands off the responsibility, but home was the last place he
still had respect and he couldn’t give it away. And he couldn’t take the coward’s way out.
“I tried talking to him the other day, about not talking to you. He insulted me.” RK didn’t
mean for his voice to come out so peevish.
Appu didn’t get angry for RK’s sake, though he cursed his son. “Sonovabitch lets the
woman control him. One day he’ll outgrow it and come crawling for forgiveness. Let us hope it
isn’t too late.”
After the call, RK spent some time fantasizing about forcing a reconciliation between
Unni and Appu. Twice he picked up the phone to call Unni, to let him know the power RK had
Shankar 288

over him, once again. But he’d never been ruthless and the slightly vengeful fantasies he had
constructed in his head were alien to him, as was this struggle in choosing a successor.
RK considered himself an ethical man and his occasional nepotism didn’t strike him as
hypocritical. His most important function in life, other than doing his job diligently, was to help
family out. If Unni had been kinder to him, more receptive to his words, the choice wouldn’t
have existed. He would have handed the baton over to Unni, let him serve and protect the next
generation. There were grandnephews and grandnieces to think about, after all.
The phone rang. It was Sidhant, calling before work. He talked about some accounting he
wanted RK to handle for him back home. It was a transparent attempt to keep RK occupied and
he felt a tide of affection for the boy.
“We’ll worry about that once I get home,” he said. “I’m trying to help Collier choose a
new Chief Accounts officer for his division. Mushtaq or Unni.” The boys had known Mushtaq.
Whenever RK hired a new Indian boy, he had made sure to bring the boy to his house a few
times and feed him, until he got settled. He hadn't wanted anyone feeling the same hapless
loneliness he’d first felt here.
“Mushtaq,” Sidhant said promptly. “Unni ettan’s an ass.”
“He’s family,” RK said, and thought again of a green leafy toy watch, and a lanky
teenage boy with the beginnings of a lush mustache playing with three much smaller, better-
dressed, better fed children. And now those three children could barely stand the man their
brother had become.
“He doesn’t act it. You don’t owe him anything.”
Shankar 289

And there was the problem. He didn’t owe Unni anything. If he gave the job to his
nephew, he knew that, for once, he would feel guilty for the nepotism. And if he gave the job to
Mushtaq, Unni might think RK was punishing him and withdraw even further from his family.
“I’ve decided,” RK lied. “Talk about something else.”
They spoke about the minutiae of packing, until Sidhant finally hung up.
RK turned on the TV to the B.B.C. and flopped down on a couch. Bombings in Israel:
camera focused on wailing families clutching at each other, on the shrieks of ambulances. News
from Iraq: horrible. Compared to this, his problems seemed so little, so mundane. When he
looked at the problem without worrying about the petty consequences, there was only one
decision to be made. But the petty consequences affected those he loved. His relationship with
his brother.
He turned off the TV and lay back against the sofa. He should have told Appu that Collier
would make the decision. He should have begged Collier to choose someone himself.

Collier brought up the issue after they’d ordered. They’d driven to a seafood restaurant
that Collier was fond of, owned by an Indian family whose only child had been classmates with
Sidhant. The boy was working when they arrived, and he’d seen them immediately to Collier’s
favorite table and taken down their order himself.
“I will miss this VIP treatment when you’re gone.” Collier said.
“You’ll have to bring someone else along, someone Indian.” RK could see through the
glass windows to the foaming sea, the waves coming crashing down on the brown rocks time and
again, insistent and unbeaten. “They’ll make sure you don’t get anything too spicy.”
“Maybe the new Chief of Accounts.” Collier smiled wryly.
Shankar 290

RK watched Sidhant’s friend, who’d hurried over to the entrance to greet another patron.
Revathi knew Nikhil better, from all the sleepovers that she’d policed in their house, yet another
part of his children’s lives he’d missed out on. “I’m not sure Mushtaq is very fond of seafood.”
Collier hid the stunned look quickly. “Great choice, great choice.”
“Thank you,” RK said, before he could lose his composure. Collier raised an eyebrow.
“For giving me a say. It has made these last days bearable.”
“You were their boss, you know them. And if you chose Mushtaq over your own nephew,
I’m sure he’s special.”
RK’s reply was cut off by the waiter, Nikhil again. As Nikhil set the food on the table, he
rattled out facts about the dishes. “And Uncle,” he said, when he’d finished. “Give my hello to
Revathi aunty.”
“I like that about you Indians,” Collier said when Nikhil stepped away. “The way your
kids just turn everyone into relatives. One billion of them.”
Sometimes you feel kinship with those not your own, RK thought. “Do me a favor,
Collier.”
“Anything,” Collier said.
“Keep this quiet for a day. Let me break the news to Unni.”
Collier shrugged. “All right.” He slurped a little of his soup. “But let me know if you
change your mind.”

At the end of the day, RK offered Unni a ride home. RK waited until he’d pulled out of
the parking lot before speaking. “Collier asked me to pick my successor. Mushtaq’s getting my
job.” His eyes were fixed on the rush-hour traffic, but he registered Unni’s sharp exhalation.
Shankar 291

“You want to know why?” He turned to his nephew. The boy looked out his window. It isn’t
vengeance; I chose him because he’s better. Better for the world. Choosing you would make you
and Smitha, and only you and Smitha, better off.
RK turned back to the road. They drove in silence until they reached Unni’s apartment
block. RK pulled to a stop, but Unni made no move to get out.
“You only did it because you didn’t like what I had to say.” Unni laughed bitterly. “I’m
glad. I’m glad because now I don’t owe you anything.”
You owe me everything. “I leave a week from today. Your mother has been asking for
photographs of you and your child.” Unni fumbled for the lock and pushed the car door open.
“You’ve earned the curse of your elders, you fool. Don’t bring that down upon the child.”
Unni said nothing as he leaped out and stalked off to his building.
RK watched Unni disappear. He would go upstairs, sulking, into Smitha’s comforting
arms. RK thought about driving off. He didn’t want to deal with these petty children, or think
about the problems that would now arise. He could leave, and the boy would brood and continue
not speaking to his parents, and now he would no longer speak to his uncle, either. Perhaps they
would be all right in the short term, but in the end you needed family and they needed you. If he
left now—Unni had at least been open and honest with him these last few times, rude but honest.
He’d spoken softly softly to the boy all these years and he owed him some of the same caustic
honesty in return.
He turned off the ignition with a heavy sigh, unclasped his safety belt, and stepped
outside. Perhaps the boy wouldn’t open the door, RK thought as he locked the car. Perhaps they
would let him upstairs, pretend to listen, let everything go in one ear and out the other. Perhaps
there was no convincing them.
Shankar 292

It was the girl’s hesitant voice that said “Hello?” when he buzzed the intercom.
“Smitha, open the door. It’s your uncle,” he said.
For a second he had only silence for company, then the door clicked open. RK stepped
into the building.

Shankar 293

No Country For Women
The evening Latha learned the girls had gone missing, her prayers, usually for her
husband’s health, focused on the girls, and not just because she felt a little guilty, though she had
no reason to be. Then she spent time calling and catching up with friends and she casually, neatly
threaded the information into her conversation—three girls from our school haven’t been seen
since Wednesday. She didn’t feel bad though the head had distinctly demanded that they keep
the news in-house, or consider it gossip—she just had to let it be known that she’d taught the
girls, that they were troublemakers, yes, but children still, and she wanted them safe.
When their car pulled up in the open garage outside the living room, she got off the couch
on which she’d been halfheartedly going through seventh-grade assignments and trotted to the
door, but waited until she head the familiar, soft, exhausted “Latha?” from the other side to open
it. Ashok was hefting a gas tank in one hand and dangling a bag of unsteady groceries in the
other, and she pulled the groceries away as he stumble-walked to the kitchen, his shoes already
off. And as she locked the door and inspected the bag—“Where’s the arugula? The sabola?”
“They were out” and “Aiyyo, forgot”—the groan of a heavy weight being heaved into place
resounded from the kitchen.
“In school today, something big happened,” she said to his back—his head was halfway
in the cupboard that stored the tank, adjusting the hose and connection. “You know those three
girls, Sadia, Fathima and Reshma, the ones I always talked about?” It had been a year-and-a-half
since she'd taught them but he grunted as his head rematerialized and he pulled himself up by his
knees to test the gas: a hissing sound pierced the air, and slivers of blue flame danced in a
harmonious circle. “They’re missing.”
Shankar 294

“Missing?” he said, scrubbing his hands with detergent before she could snatch it away,
and she could understand his befuddlement: Women, corralled and moved from place to place
under watchful male eyes, didn't usually go missing here.
“You’ll ruin your skin. It’s as rough as a buffalo’s already,” she said. “They've not been
seen since the weekend. The parents are frantic. The police can't find them also.”
“My God,” he said, wiping off on her dishrag. She didn’t say a word. “Didn’t they have
cell phones?”
“Cell phones were turned off.” Latha frowned. Cell phones were the school’s bane—five
years ago, they had been an uncommon luxury; today, parents kept arming their children with
them despite the school’s emphatic “no phones” policy. Problems the school had never faced in
its forty years had started cropping up—girls planning assignations with boys; synchronized
class cutting; and the latest phones even had cameras and the kids were young, impetuous and
stupid. This one time their use might have been welcomed, but they proved useless.
“What do they think happened?”
“The three were last seen together. They planned something and it went wrong.”
"Kidnapping?" he said, because when schoolgirls went missing what else could it be?
The phone rang insistently just then.
It was Padma, the last person Latha needed. “I just heard about those girls,” she said, in
her usual sly, insinuating voice. Really, Padma wasn’t a bad sort. She just had a tone that
sounded on the verge of blackmail, and took unedifying pleasure in relaying hurtful gossip.
She heard cupboards open and shut in the kitchen, and when she walked over, Ashok had
his hands in the biscuit tin that housed her homemade murrukku, and he smiled like one of her
nephews on being caught, the smile taking years off his face, making her wonder sometimes
Shankar 295

what a child of theirs might have looked like. Ten minutes, she gestured, as she walked back to
the sofa and heard the cupboard cautiously yawn open. Really, he had the impulse control of a
child. He’d blame it on her being on the phone, of course. He really shouldn't be eating these oily
snacks, and she oughtn't to be making them: his GP had said so. But he ate the lightly salted,
cautiously spiced curries she specifically made for him with the air of martyrdom and she hadn't
the heart to refuse him these little perks, especially when he'd ask, with a sigh, "Is this life any
life? Do you want me to live forever?"
Partly to placate him, she'd begun sharing his meals, which made him complain all the
more. “What are you eating this swill for? You're fit as a fiddle!”
“You can never tell,” she said, and he said, live a little.
She had told him that she was doing it for him, and he laughed, said she'd seen too many
films, was too invested in being the sati-savitri Indian wife and she'd cut him off, crossly. No
one would call her the ideal wife, not a barren woman. And that had been the end of that
discussion.
Having evaded Padma’s interrogation and shared their spiceless dinner, they retired to
bed, Ashok reading one of his self-improvement biographies—Leo Iaccoca, Steve Jobs, Henry
Ford: he collected and carefully distilled the wisdom from these great profiteers though he
seemed content to work his nine-to-five as an airport manager, and showed not an ounce of
business instinct.
She'd usually read one of her mysteries, and on the rare occasion the bodice-rippers that
had Ashok giving her sardonic looks, asking “Should I be worried?” But tonight, the romances
felt far too glib, and the exploits of Poirot and Miss Marple too real and grotesque. Instead she
tossed and turned, unable to sleep even, because of Ashok's nightlight.
Shankar 296

“When are you going to turn in?” she said.
“Sleepy already?” he said. “Why not watch a movie?” When she glared at him, he sighed
and turned the light off, and as she settled in the familiar curve of his shoulder, he laid a dry-
lipped kiss on her forehead. "They'll be all right," he said. "Don't worry so."
She slept uncomfortably.

The next day, Sunday, several teachers in the staffroom reported that their students knew
or suspected something. Latha felt momentarily guilty, then rationalized that she couldn’t have
been the only one who'd talked. And she'd known these girls.
“The headmistress is considering an announcement tomorrow,” said Asma, the
headmistress’ right hand and, everyone knew, staff informer.
“That’s a stupid idea,” said Janaki. Latha sent her a quelling look but Janaki's glare was
pinned on Asma. “The last thing we should do is make it official, so that busybodies can get
parents panicking.” Asma's lips thinned at busybodies.
“The Head should consult the girls’ parents,” another teacher said, hesitantly.
“Those parents?” Asma said. "As if they could control their daughters. How many times
have they been called in? Didn’t you have problems with them, Latha?"
"I taught them in seventh and eighth," Latha said, wishing Asma wouldn’t drag her into
this. She’d probably been the first teacher to go to the Head about them and she’d always prided
herself on getting along with the students despite her personal inexperience with raising children.
The admission galvanized Asma. “Smoking, harassing and beating other girls. Cheating.
What else? Insha Allah, nothing happened to them. But those girls disgrace this school.”
Shankar 297

“They may not have done anything wrong,” Latha said. Asma had never taught them,
what did she know? “Whatever else, they weren’t fools. They wouldn’t do anything stupid.”
Reckless, yes, stupid, no.
“It’s the headmistress’ decision,” said Asma primly, since she wasn’t winning converts,
but their word had gotten back, because there was no announcement the next day.

“You shouldn’t talk back to that woman,” Latha told Janaki later. The girl was much
younger, married only two years, and in a staff of largely Muslim matrons, Latha had felt
kinship, and admiration for Janaki's independence of thought and fierce cleverness. They were
also connected by their mutual and exclusive childlessness, though Janaki hadn't tried yet.
“She dislikes me, anyway,” Janaki said, shrugging. “Besides, the idea's stupid. You say
something now, officially, and you’re giving free license to every idiot to give their two cents.
And I don't mean Asma only!”
This was another reason Latha admired her: her blithe dismissal of staff-room politics
and the cut-throat hierarchy enforced through the veil of politeness. The girl didn’t worry who
she offended if she was right and didn’t think much of the scrabbling nastiness in the staffroom,
and Latha often wished she had a little of that self-possession and impermeability.
“We don’t even know if they’re alive,” Janaki said. “And we’re condemning them.”
Latha imagined those three stubborn, defiant faces, Sadia, the ringleader, always a step
ahead, and shivered. They'd been terrible students, but she'd never seen children so alive. To
think of them otherwise was impossible, but her head kept insisting her heart was mistaken.

Shankar 298

She had transferred to the girls’ section only because she hadn't been given a choice. She
preferred teaching boys: despite their wild energy, lack of couth, and pitifully narrow range of
interests—football, cartoons, films, and as they grew older, girls—they were largely
straightforward and eager to please, like shaggy Alsatians that would lope up and sniff you, tails
vibrating with joy, tongues warming your hand despite having growled at you mere moments
earlier. She’d taught boys of the most difficult age, the sixth to eighth graders, the ones just
started on the path to manhood, still possessing the mental maturity of younger children, who
treated group punishments as a chance to deliver physical comedy outside classrooms, who
wanted to be daring heroes, shanaas, but she’d managed them all. At home, she’d arrayed the
evidence in the living room showcase: clumsily crafted cards proclaiming her the bestest,
favorite teacher; impulsive art pieces; an imaginative little showpiece of preserved fruits and
vegetables in a glass case that had to have cost some poor parent; and a well-made woodwork
collection of nested Latha-dolls from a class that had started off as her collective worst. She
showed this last gift off to every guest, and she'd say every time, Every child has talent, has
ability. You just have to unlock it.
Girls were a different matter. Openly respectful, yet devious closed books really. Their
infractions were different, more slant, and it took her time to adjust.
But Sadia-Fathima-Reshma stood out—for one, she’d liked them initially, with their in-
your-face manner and the way they held themselves, broad shouldered and firm; the way they
fought, not with words but with hands and fists; the way they spoke, crude and ill-mannered, and
utterly, admirably, direct. In looks, they were different: Saima, the leader, was a big, strong girl
that excelled at multiple athletic events though that didn’t endear her to anyone besides the PT
teacher. The others were smaller, proper minions: fair, lithe Fathima with the beady eyes, sharp,
Shankar 299

sly face and large, blocky teeth, and Reshma, Southern, darker and flat featured, the dullest
looking and reportedly the most boy crazy. But the teachers always referred to them as Sadia-
Fathima-Reshma and this had trickled down to the girls themselves, who took great pride in their
symbiotic notoriety, always walking, stalking, fighting, suffering punishments together.
“Are they really girls?” Ashok had joked when she told him about them.
She’d reasoned that was why other teachers disliked them—they’d come to teach girls,
not boys in girls' shapes who spat and swore and slapped and socked those they didn’t get along
with. She’d been their class teacher in seventh and the recipient of every teacher’s angry
complaints, ones that she’d then had to relay to the girls’ apologetic, shamed parents, who sat
hunched like serfs awaiting blows during PTA meetings, which only made it worse because she'd
expected parents more in line with the children. Sadia's father, in particular, was nothing like
she'd imagined—a man who looked like a good gust of wind would blow him away, she
suspected he was secretly proud of his daughter's willfulness. Their crimes that year had been
mostly innocuous, though they’d given her a constant headache. She’d approached the
headmistress only because she’d been exhausted by the complaints and that had been a mistake.
The woman chose to interrupt her lesson and give the girls a public dressing down, which didn't
help. The tittering of their classmates as they stood, reddening, smoldering like sullen grapes in
the glaring sun, only made them meaner and more defiant.
That was why she hadn't informed the Head the next year when one of her students,
Mehr, an assiduous and budding informer who would go far in the corporate world, had come
up, vibrating with pleasure, and said that Sadia-Fathima-Reshma were smoking behind the
school. She'd handled it herself, even though she wasn't their class teacher anymore.
Shankar 300

She’d led them to an empty classroom and asked them bluntly if they had cigarettes on
them. Their immediate, overwrought ‘no’s telegraphed their lie so strongly that she almost
laughed. "Empty your bags," she’d said and Sadia had grabbed hers and emptied it before the
others followed suit, more gingerly. "The pockets, too," she said. And from Sadia’s pocket came
the carton of white Malboros, and the girl glared at Latha like it was her fault. Latha picked it up
gingerly, like the smell would cling to her through touch alone, and raised a brow at them, the
one that let students know Latha Ma'am now meant business. "Shall we go to the Head?"
"No, Ma'am, please," Reshma said, in a wheedling voice, and Sadia gave her shingdi a
poisonous glare that shut her up.
Latha opened the pack with the tip of her fingers to see it half-used. Whose pack had they
stolen, she wondered, their fathers? Did they have brothers old enough to smoke? Did they have
brothers? It was a foolish generalization: working-class Muslims came in the picture and she
automatically assumed they had an endless brood of undersocialized brats. But then, one of these
girls wasn't Muslim and Fathima wasn't even working class—her Father was a high-up manager
at Saudia Airlines and she lived in one of these western oases hidden in the city. She knew little
of these girls, she realized, though she didn’t think they were bold or foolish enough to buy it
themselves, especially in Jeddah. She was an adult woman and even she would raise eyebrows if
she walked in a store and asked for a packet of cigarettes. It wasn't even one of those light
cigarettes—those marketed especially at the nonconformist, upwardly mobile working women of
today. She dropped the box. Even as a college student she'd felt no particular interest in this
particular brand of boldness, though some of the older girls above her would occasionally let
themselves be seen smoking Marlboro’s like the dissolute, trampy characters in 70s films, the
loose women invariably left behind by the heroes for the sati-savitri, modest heroine.
Shankar 301

"Will you do this again?" she’d said, and as if reading from a script, they’d all agreed
they wouldn't, faces arranged in appropriate penitence. She’d let them go with a mere warning.
Knowing that it was probably useless to try, especially with a group where each member egged
the other on to assumed bravado, she’d still given them a lecture about responsibility and growth.
They’d listened quietly though she didn’t really expect the lesson to take or to last if it did
somehow take. She had taken the packet to the headmistress, though, as insurance.
The girls were more docile in her class the next few weeks, though the recurring staff
complaints, directed at their new class teacher, meant that it was a highly limited transformation.
She rewarded their good behavior by calling on them in class, rewarding their hesitant, vague
responses with reinforcement, thinking a teacher's attention might set them on the right path. It
might have worked. Reshma and Fathima had put in sincere effort, but while Sadia was
outwardly docile, Latha knew she wasn't getting through, that she had infuriated the girl if
anything, by ostentatiously forgiving her. And slowly, Sadia succeeded in dragging the other two
back from their retrieved reformations. So Latha was, to her shame, relieved as she set aside the
last of that year's papers, having passed the girls. They were no longer her concern.

Two days passed with no news—other than the gossip among the girls—and the teachers'
early fright and tension largely gave away in the face of the day-to-day, though Latha felt
uneasy: with each day, the chance of receiving good news shrank. In the midst of this came the
surprise inspection. It meant the usual game of hide-the-teachers-of-the-wrong-gender. This was
more difficult than in the Boy’s school, where the janitors, gardeners and watchmen could be
drafted into service as pretend-teachers when the Saudi ministry employees came to ensure that
the school was functioning within the rules—rules which included no gender-mixing in staff—
Shankar 302

boys were taught by men, and girls by women. But Asma's creativity, usually so squalid and
mean-spirited, was elevated and inspired during these events.
With the Senior Math teacher locked up in some corner room, Latha found herself drafted
to cover his class—the 10th standard girls—and Maths wasn’t her forte so she had the girls work
on their homework while she graded.
Halfway through, one of the girls, Mehr, raised her hand.
“Why is Najjar Sir not here, Ma'am? Is there an inspection?”
“Yes," she said, puzzled that the obvious required overt confirmation, and regretted it
when Mehr leaned forward eagerly and asked if it was a real inspection or about the missing
girls. "These are school inspectors, not the police," she said, hoping to kill that conversational
thread, but she now had the eye of the entire class, the classmates of the missing girls, and then it
struck her that if their school wasn't affiliated with the Embassy, the police might have
questioned these girls. Had the search been hindered by the school itself, unwittingly? Of course,
questioning the girls might have done little good, since the three had been quite self-sufficient.
"Do you know anything?" she asked, to cut off potential questions and caught the sudden
silence and meaningful glances. So, they did know something. She tried to make her tone curt,
demanding: "Girls?"
It wouldn’t work, she thought, these weren’t the eager-to-please seventh graders she’d
taught but almost-women, willing and possibly eager to keep their secrets from adults—she’d
been one herself centuries ago, after all. Perhaps she’d underestimated their lingering fondness
for her, or perhaps the insistent insularity of Sadia-Fathima-Reshma denied them the privileges
of sisterhood, but the girls talked. Not Mehr, who’d started the ball rolling and seemingly
intended to be an antenna rather than provider. But the others.
Shankar 303

“They always jumped school, ma’am,” said—she was pleased she remembered the
name—Haseena one of the most colorless students she’d taught. “They wouldn’t even wear
uniforms under their Abayas, and as soon as they got to school they’d run off.” Latha picked up
an undercurrent of jealousy in the too-pious tone.
Fathima lived far from school. So they must have waited for her, and then skipped as
soon as she stepped off the bus. It was tricky. Girls jumping school had become a rising concern.
They’d generally come to school, colored clothes stuffed in their backpacks, then leave around
lunch, long after roll had been called and the chances of their parents finding out was minimized,
to be picked up by whatever boys they’d called. Then they’d ride about the city or park
somewhere and…It was foolish, irresponsible and inconsiderate, the problems with raising
children from a culture that obsessed over chastity, but were taught that love was everything in
the films and songs they fashioned their lives on. At this age they probably thought they were in
movies. The problem was that they lived in Saudi Arabia and these reckless children didn’t take
into account what would happen if they ran into a Mutawwa or if words got back to the teachers
or parents—no one was more smug or judgmental than adults who’d missed out on the
passionate mistakes of youth.
But what these girls had done was troublingly stupid, skipping school entirely. Did they
not think that the class teacher would notice the frequent absences, inform their parents at the
next PTA or ask, concernedly, what the issue was? Like boys, she thought, impulsive and
thoughtless, incapable of thinking with their heads.
“Why were they going off so early?” She said. “Who were they going with?” Too
obvious, she felt, not the questions Poirot or Marple might ask.
Shankar 304

“We don’t know, Ma'am,” one said. “They had boyfriends.” She looked to the class, as if
asking permission. “In the Pakistani school.”
Pakistani! She stopped herself from blurting out. The Muslim kids probably had whole
districts worth of relatives in Pakistan; her response was of a Hindu woman raised through three
wars with Pakistan. So, Pakistani. “Did you tell your teachers?”
They didn’t ask, the girls informed her. She felt a slight pride that they’d chosen to let her
in, and that she had useful information, until she remembered that she couldn’t do anything with
it, after all—it wasn't as if she could go haring about in this country to find them. Perhaps the
police already knew about the boyfriends and were investigating that avenue.
“Do you think they’ll find them, Ma'am?” It was Mehr, fishing, and Latha fought down
her upsurge of irritation by reminding herself of Padma and how she was a good friend and
decent person beneath her occasional ghoulish curiosity. And she recalled that Mehr's nosiness
had resulted in the occasional beat down from the threesome, so the girl probably had reason to
enjoy this, somewhat.
“Yes, I’m sure they will,” she said firmly, tamping down on her own fears. “Insha Allah.”
With the Grace of God. She would have to depend on Him, since she couldn't do
anything herself.

She dreamed that night of the time she'd lost her child, or of the events surrounding that
day, because she had learned of the loss second-hand, had never seen it, her unnamed daughter,
or if she had she couldn't recollect. It had been their fourth time trying and she'd lost the other
three in the first trimester, and they'd never expected to lose one after getting so far. Their
families had even convinced Ashok to have her move back home with them for the pregnancy.
Shankar 305

“It's that place,” her mother-in-law had sniffed. “The air, the atmosphere. Besides, you're
at work all day and who'll look after her? Here, I'll be able to watch her. And I can take her to the
temples, and then everything will be okay.”
But it hadn't been okay, and while her in-laws had never quite blamed her, she still saw
in their eyes on her visits home a dimmed enthusiasm for her presence, imagined she felt the
lingering resentment that she'd stolen grandchildren and the survival of their name—Ashok was
their only boy, after all. She bristled too at the latent pity though she was a dutiful daughter-in-
law and never complained. She'd taken up making excuses to shorten their vacation trips—they'd
gone to Europe and Thailand and Malaysia, too, to avoid going home. It hurt all the more
because she actually loved her in-laws.
She dreamt of that last morning in Ashok's home before she'd been marked as, to use her
sister's words, a flop; heavily pregnant, she'd awoken feeling ill to find her hand grasped in her
mother-in-law's. The older woman had given her a concerned, comforting look and said, "It's
nothing. Sleep's something you've got to get used to losing these last few months. My god, how
Ashok used to kick!" And she'd folded Latha's hand in both of hers, the wide, blocky hands so
like Ashok's that Latha felt instantly comforted. They heard the peremptory, querulous call of
Nalini from Father's bedroom and Mother shouted back, "Coming, I'm with our daughter."
They'd shard a conspiratorial look—Men—and her mother-in-law had risen slowly, gently
brushed her forehead and gone.
She didn't return until she head Latha's screams.

It was Janaki who let her know.
Shankar 306

They’d sat down to dinner when the phone began ringing and Ashok grumbled that
they’d call back if it was urgent but she’d gone to attend it in case it was from back home and
seeing Janaki’s number she picked up all the same.
“Did you hear? They’ve been found.”
“No? Thank God!” She gave Him mental thanks and said, “Ashok, they’ve found the
girls. So, are they okay?”
“I don’t know about that,” Janaki said. “This is second hand news, of course, but it’s
likely they were being held by some men.”
“The boyfriends?” She remembered the whispered stories in her hostel during the
Bangladesh war of rapacious Pakistani men who'd violate Hindu women, even their corpses.
“Some other men. It's all confusing. But they're alive.”
“Good, they’re okay, I told you so,” Ashok said when she hung up. “Now come eat.”
“I’ll tell Padma,” Latha said and Ashok sighed women loudly as she dialed. It wasn’t
gossip, she told herself; Ashok wasn’t reacting with the appropriate joy, and she needed to tell
someone who would care, even if for the wrong reasons.

The elated, triumphant mood she’d gone to bed with didn't last beyond the assembly. She
had barely had a chance to ask Janaki anything after getting in, but the younger woman looked
grim, and at the end of prayers, the Head stepped up to the mike with that determined, pinched
look she plastered on before serious announcements.
“The last few days there have been many whispers about three specific girls.” There was
none of the usual rustle of movement and low hum of murmurs from children itching to disperse,
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only pin-drop silence. Latha wished she could bottle this for later. “The three of them broke
school rules and have been expelled.”
Still silence, though its nature had changed, shifted as the girls themselves did, wide-
eyed. Latha reeled, the words an almost physical, unexpected slap.

She was too caring a teacher and prideful of her professionalism to let the students notice
her frayed distraction but as soon as she had a free period she ran to the Head’s office.
“Latha Ma’am?” The Head said. Except Asma and a couple of her shingdis, the teachers
received the same formality the students did.
She settled in the chair opposite the head, struggling suddenly, realizing she might come
across as unbecomingly curious, like the catty gossips in the staffroom. Perhaps she should have
just waited till lunch and picked up the morsels of information that others brought to the table.
“Why did you expel them?”
The Head gazed squarely at her, and Latha flushed, sure the head was thinking less than
charitable thoughts. “Yes. You liked those girls, didn’t you?”
“Children make mistakes,” she said, relieved. The Head understood her intentions.
Really, the woman wasn’t a bad sort, if you ignored her inexplicable fondness for Asma.
“Mistakes? Latha Ma'am, this went beyond a mistake.”
“Jana—I heard,” she corrected herself—no need to drag Janaki into this. “I heard they
were kidnapped, held hostage.”
“Held hostage, yes. Kidnapped no. Do you know what those idiots did? They left with the
very same boys that sold them to the pimps that raped them.” The Head said this so casually, like
the girls were to blame, but Latha couldn’t get beyond one word.
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“Rape?”
“Yes, those pimps were dealing them out to others, the laborers and the rest. Probably our
own janitors too.”
Latha almost protested, thinking of the janitors she was friendly with, of old Wahab’s
tired, bowed gait, the pride he took in his children. Of course, she wasn’t talking about Wahab.
Other laborers. Other laborers forced to spend years away from families, their wives, and she
wasn’t a fool or naive. She knew what men were capable of. “But it wasn’t the children's fault.”
“Is it our fault then? That girl, Sadia, her father had the gall to try and pin the blame on
us. We didn't take care of his precious lamb. Lucky I had her disciplinary record, the complaints,
the suspension letters, and her history. Trying to blame me. There are six thousand girls in this
school and we can’t watch them every minute, but do they all get themselves into messes?"
She looked at Latha kindly. "I wish we had a report from—what was it, 7th grade?—the
first time you brought them to my attention. Even better, that time you caught them smoking, we
should have written them up but you were too kind. Maybe all of this might have been avoided.”
The Head was deftly settling a portion of the blame to her shoulders, but she felt guilty
anyway. “They must be traumatized.”
“Possibly,” the Head said. “Who knows, now they might learn to behave.”
The utter callousness left Latha stunned. “You’re really expelling them?”
“What happened to them was unfortunate, but the fact is they broke the rules, repeatedly.
They’re being punished for their actions, not the effects of those actions.” The Head settled back
into her chair. “Can you imagine what will happen if we don’t expel them? The other parents?
It’s the best thing for them, too. Think of what will happen if they come back. The other girls,
the stories….This way, maybe people will forget.”
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But the girls already knew and the stories were even now wending their way across the
seas back to Hyderabad and Lucknow, the girls' homes. Perhaps their absence would tamp down
the degree of interest, perhaps…
“Still, expulsion. And in 10th grade. Right before the Boards,” Latha said. She didn't
know why she was fighting when she knew the battle was lost.
“It’s not as if any of the three had strong academic futures.”
That was unfair, Latha thought. They were children and children could change. And it
wasn't as if the girls had done something horrible. Something horrible had been done to them.
The school may have written them off but she wasn't going to.

She wondered at her own audacity as she walked up to Apartment 2B. There were many
times in her past when she'd imagined herself doing something requiring nerve but the
pleasurable suppositions had always been contained in her imagination. Yet she'd decided as
she'd walked out of the Head's office that she was going to see the girls, and here she was.
The furious determination she'd felt on leaving the office was offset by the time she
reached home by practical considerations—where would she get their addresses from? Would
the girls themselves see her visit as an intrusion? Perhaps they didn't want to see anyone?
Somehow, though, she didn't talk herself out of her initial reaction, and now she was
knocking at Sadia's door. Reshma, she had learned, had been packed off to India already, and
Fathima's parents had been gracious and polite over the phone but insistent that she couldn't see
anyone. They had let Latha speak to their daughter, however, and it left her more dissatisfied
since all she could say were halting platitudes, since she felt sure she'd heard the sharp click of a
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second line being picked up. But Sadia—she was least sure of her, the girl who had tossed her
forgiveness in her face—so she hadn't informed her of the visit.
The door was cautiously opened by a little girl whose sharp, square jaws and chin
upthrust inquiringly held more than a hint of her sister's defiance. Latha quietly asked for Sadia
and the girl swiveled back her head and bellowed for her mother. Another head popped up from
behind the door now, a few feet above the little head, and Latha was reminded of the little
gophers on nature shows that popped out of the ground like snakes in a can. The girl's mother
stared with the same startled animal incomprehension of documentary gophers and Latha had to
bite down on her lip to keep from mistimed laughter.
The mother recalled her from PTA meetings past, and she was ushered inside and led to a
sofa set that had lived two iterations past its best years. She paused before sitting—in her friends'
homes she'd now have taken off the abaya and hijab but Sadia's mother had her hijab on. Latha
was also conscious of the fact that beneath the abaya she was overly dressed for teaching, in a
Kanchipuram saree she'd only ever used to visit major shrines, or on the rare, auspicious days.
She compromised by freeing her hair but left the inky black preserver of modesty on.
Between greeting her at the door and seeing to Latha's seating, Saima's mother's face had
cycled through several expressions—surprise, anxiety, happiness and suspicion were just the
ones that Latha read—and now she stood wringing her hands, unable to settle on a look.
The woman spoke little to no English, Latha recalled, and her own Urdu was kuch
kuch—she understood better than she spoke—and she looked between the uncertain woman and
her little girl, who stood tensed, arrested on the edge of flight. It was one of those absurdly long
pauses she'd seen only in art films, the stillness drifting from anticipatory to actively
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uncomfortable, and before they could all turn to stone, Latha said, in her atrocious accent,
“Sadia? Can I speak to her? How is she?”
The woman breathed out, a whole body exhalation that drove the wind from her, and
Latha was sure for an alarmed second that she'd burst out crying, but she only nodded decisively
and began speaking rapidly in Urdu. Latha only caught fragments in passing—although the
young girl, whom her mother seemed to have forgotten, was listening a little too avidly. As
suddenly as they'd begun the woman's flood of words died out, like a kink had formed in her
throat, and she rounded on her daughter. “Sadia ko bulao."
The little girl skipped from the room and Latha reached out and touched the sofa cushion
beside her. “Won't you please sit?” The woman crumpled down at the opposite end, a free seat
separating them, and turned her way. “What do you plan with her?” Latha said.
The woman had cottoned onto the poverty of Latha's Urdu because she spoke with
sweeping gestures and the rare English word tipped in, hesitantly.
Sadia's father had washed his hands off his daughter, it seemed. He wouldn't speak to her
or of her, wouldn't even look at her, and was barely speaking to his wife. They'd wanted to send
her back to live with his parents, but the parents headed a joint family, and his other brothers had
said they didn't want their daughters corrupted. That had made him angrier. “My sister, she's
offered to take her in. She has two boys but they're both in college and don't live at home.”
“That must be a relief. Family is family, after all.” Latha was dimly aware that she was
speaking like a politician, with merely her mouth and not her head or heart.
“Hmm,” the woman said, seemingly unconvinced. “My sister says I'm to blame. I didn't
punish Saima enough. I let her run wild, she says.”
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Latha could say nothing to that. What was the sister like—Asma, with her false
sanctimony? Padma: low cleverness and frighteningly pleased by others' suffering? Or kind but
brusque, like her husband's sisters, thinking her weak and damaged because she was childless?
“It's easy for her, she has no daughters. If her boys do something wrong, people will tut
and shrug or laugh and says boys-will-be-boys. I did punish her, you know. I even beat her, even
now when she'd so old and bigger than me. You carry them inside for nine months, see them
blindly reach out for you for succor and comfort from birth, teach them to walk and talk, hear
them say that first word—Ammi. You don't want to beat them. And what good does it do? She
never complains or cries, and as soon as it's done she walks away all la-la-la. I'm the one left
crying. What mother wants to hurt her child, after all?”
She looked over, beseeching, and Latha smiled tightly. It hurt her to punish students but
she never carried the hurt to bed.
“Her father never beat her, you know. So proud he was, of her medals and trophies—he
was a good athlete, too. Always he indulged her, and now it's my fault!”
The little girl had stealthily crept back into the room and she sidled over to her mother to
carry on a whispered consultation, but in that reaching whisper children often employed to
emphasize secrets, and Latha learned that Sadia didn't want to see her.
The woman smiled apologetically and strode inside, her daughter trailing her uncertainly.
A minute later, the little girl came out trailed by three kids, two girls and a boy, the boy closest to
Sadia's age, and they shot her curious, slightly embarrassed glances before leaving the apartment.
The woman returned and motioned her inside. “Come in, please.”
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A short, sharp corridor led to two bedrooms, and the thought alone of seven people in
this cramped space filled her with claustrophobia. One bedroom held three of the girls, she was
told, and the youngest slept with her parents. “And the boy?” Latha said.
“In the living room. Right next to the television, the way he likes it.” The woman said all
this unselfconsciously, as she picked up a stray garment lying next to the door with a foot and
nimbly flung it into the laundry basket inside. Latha felt admiration for this woman well up—
she'd have gone to pieces if some unannounced visitor saw her home in a state of disarray. She
supposed caring for five kids left little time for frivolous worries or over-consciousness.
The room was markedly feminine. She noticed almost absently the lacy-frilly brightness
all around her—the shining foldout posters of SRK and Hrithik Roshan, the latest 'it' boy, the
walls peppered with carefully covered artwork, ranging from the functional to the glaringly
fluorescent, likely by the child that had let her in. On a mattress thrust unforgivingly against a
wall, Sadia sat, shoulders hunched, fists rounded, her face deliberately turned from the door.
Latha walked up to her and hovered beside her. The girl wore no hijab and her hair lay about her
face in disarray, an unsettled curtain over her sullen face.
The mother began dragging a plastic chair over for her, but Latha waved her off and
settled on the ground opposite the girl. On a chair she would be looming, looking down on Sadia.
“Hello, Sadia. How are you?” Latha said, wincing at her unintended perkiness.
“Madam has taken the time to come see you,” her mother said, sharply, when the girl
didn't speak. Latha wanted the woman to end her anxious hovering, and she might leave if asked,
Latha felt certain, but before she could speak, Sadia looked up straight and sharp at Latha.
She didn't know what she'd expected. She'd tried hard not to imagine anything, but she'd
been certain the girl would be marked by her trauma. She didn't look indelibly changed, though,
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and Latha's heart lifted. Perhaps the Head had exaggerated what the girls had been through, or
perhaps the girl was stronger than even she'd imagined.
“She asked how you are," the mother said, and then the illusion fell apart. The girl broke
her gaze and her head swung back down as she whispered fine.
Latha wasn't sure how she knew for certain—she'd never seen this mother and daughter
interact—but the Sadia she knew hadn't been this pliant for anyone.
“I talked to Fathima,” Latha said, and the girl's gaze swung up sharply, hungrily, then
flitted to her mother before fixing on Latha.
“Is she okay?”
Before Latha could reassure her, her mother broke in. “How could she be okay? How
could they be okay? You couldn't be satisfied with ruining just your life only.”
The girl burst into tears. Latha rounded on the Mother, but the woman looked near tears
herself. This too was love—love so bone-deep you lashed out and hurt your loved ones.
“Can I—May I speak to her alone?” she said.
The woman hesitated and Latha felt certain she'd refuse, but then she clamped her eyes
shut, took a deep breath, and walked away.
They sat in silence for a minute, Sadia with her ear cocked towards the door until the
tinkling sounds of someone working in the kitchen started. "How is Fathima?" the girl asked.
"Her parents are going to home school her until the Boards. She'll take it back in India."
"She's moving back home, then?"
Sadia was Hyderabadi and Fathima Lucknowi, the cities a two-day journey by train. Back
'home' they'd never run into one another, and perhaps it was for the best.
Shankar 315

All the things Latha had thought to say—how it wasn't their fault; that they shouldn't
blame themselves; that they would get past this—she couldn't bring herself to utter, not because
she didn't believe them but because they rang false coming from her.
"I'm going to stay with my Khala," Sadia said. "I don’t want to."
"What is it you want?" Latha said—as though she could deliver the girl's dreams.
"I want to die." Sadia gulped down a watery sob. Latha had heard many children say the
same words in the same tone—she'd said them herself in college after a disappointed crush—but
it was the first time she'd heard it uttered with meaning.
"You don't want that. Think of how it'll hurt your family." She wished she'd said
something different—something validating Sadia for herself and not who she was to others.
"They don’t care. Abbi won't even speak to me." A little of the old sullen stridency
seeped back into that voice.
"You think if you die they'll happily move on with their lives?" Latha spoke with
deliberate sharpness; she'd used that tone on herself after losing the child.
"It will be better for them. My sisters won’t live with my shame." The words sounded
mechanical, the echo of overheard words.
Self-immolation for the family: how romantic: how familiar.
"You aren't responsible for your sisters. You're responsible for you."
Sadia looked rigidly disbelieving and Latha couldn’t blame her—years of reading
countless books on self-improvement and she herself couldn’t overcome her lifelong
conditioning—a girl's worth was measured through her family's eyes.
"Ammi says now people will think they're like me."
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She'd heard that one, too—don't do anything shameful or the shame will affect your
sisters. Who said Hindus and Muslims were different? They seemed to take the same pleasure in
unmaking their daughters. So Sadia though ending her life would absolve her family, somehow.
A self-directed honor killing. The girl didn’t understand that her mother spoke out of grief—but
Latha knew well how sudden grief turned your world into an endless, narrowing tunnel till you
couldn’t see a way out.
"If your sisters are anything like you, they'll survive, thrive."
The girl fixed her gaze on her. "Everyone knows. They're all laughing at me."
Latha wondered what Sadia hoped for—assurance that no one knew? That it didn’t
matter? That her old victims weren't feeling some jolt of pleasure in her misfortune?
"If I had a gun, I'd do it. Dishum, one shot. But I don’t know where to get one."
And suddenly she was a child again, thoughts framed in a childish fantasy.
"If you kill yourself, it'll get worse, believe me. People will look at your sisters and say,
didn't their sister kill herself because she was raped?"
Sadia flinched, and Latha wondered if that word was a wound, gaping raw and hurting,
but untouched and not allowed to heal in this house.
"It wasn't your fault, your parents know that, believe me, and I know that you're too
strong and stubborn to let this define you, to stop you from doing things."
She drew open her bag and pulled out the pride of her collection, the little Latha doll set.
The girl looked puzzled when Latha handed it to her, and she walked her fingers
cautiously over the flat features, and paused at the groove at the waist.
"You have to unscrew it," Latha said.
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Two tight counterclockwise turns: like cracking an egg, Sadia pulled the Latha doll apart
to reveal its child, a smaller Latha. Sadia's eyes glinted with recognition. "I've seen this—inside
one doll there's another, then another, then another—."
"There's just three in this one. They were made by my students. That's me."
The girl examined the doll face and looked back at her, evaluating. "It's clever," she said.
"It was a boy's section, the most troublesome kids I ever taught. Even more than you
three. Everyone said they were hopeless, they'd amount to nothing, and then they made this."
The girl slumped into herself. "I'm not artistic. I'm not good at anything."
"You're good at sports."
"I'm a girl,"Sadia said, scoffing. "I can't play sports for a living!"
“Then you can do something else. It doesn't have to be sports, but it doesn't have to be
science or maths either. You'll find this hard to believe but the world's bigger than just the
subjects we teach. You just have to find out who you are.” She took the doll back from Sadia and
cracked it apart to reveal the smallest Latha. “Who the Sadia is inside the Sadia the world sees.”
She felt a little self-conscious uttering her spiel. Her eminently practical husband found
her flights of fancies bewildering, and she'd imagined before coming here that her visit and
words might help Sadia, but she'd forgotten that the girl herself was more like Ashok than her.
“I'm not good at anything,” Sadia said, sullenly, and Latha clasped her chin sharply
twisting it towards her.
“Never say that. You're a child still, and you don't know all you're capable of. But I do
know this, I admired you—”
Sadia snorted sharply with disbelief.
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—“because you're brave and obstinate, and it might not seem like much, but in this
world, in our world, that's a great gift.”
Unfortunately, the gift was being turned on her, with the girl obstinately refusing to
accept her words. And Latha couldn't blame her; what did she know of Sadia's suffering, she
who'd only been reached out for by loving arms, who'd been the model student, the obedient
daughter and caring wife? She knew disappointment, though, and that crushing feeling of being
compressed, of being convinced that she was smaller than she was, a partial woman, a failed
wife and daughter-in-law because her body had betrayed her.
“You don't know, Ma'am, you don't understand. Nobody does,” Sadia said. She didn't
look defeated, just accepting, and that was worse.
When she'd come over Latha had only intended to let the girl know she wasn't forgotten,
to give her some courage. But to give her true help, she would have to give her something she
herself wasn't ready for— To let Sadia know why she understood. She didn't even discuss her
pain with Ashok, because a part of her feared glimpsing some resentment in his eyes. She didn't
discuss it with her friends because they couldn't understand, with their perfect two-child families
and she didn't need or want pity from those who thought themselves more fortunate. Her own
mother deflected any talk about her loss, like evading the conversation would magic away her
hurt. There was no place for women like her, even among other women.
But here, if she could overcome a lifetime of caution, if she could bring herself to open
up to this child—callous, thoughtless, heedless, possibly gossipy—she could perhaps help Sadia,
show her that life wasn't at an end.
She began anew.

Shankar 319

Driving Lessons

The sullen security manning the immigration booths, the bored, dismissive glances of the
Saudi soldiers guarding the gates, and Amma's habitual dawdling to avoid the congestion of the
first bus to the terminal, none of it bothered Sanjana. Usually, the return to Jeddah after the
sleep-stretchy summer vacations in Trichur left her slightly deflated: there was the eagerness to
see Zehra, always, but also sorrow that 9 and 10' clock wake up times, and lounging around all
day reading Femina or the romance novels nicked from her aunt's bookshelves would have to be
given up for the dreaded business of schoolwork. And it was bound to be worse this year, her
final year of high school, meaning the Boards and the countless entrance exams for colleges she
has no intention of attending. She was excited, however, because Acha had promised to teach her
driving once they got back, with that crafty smile that said, you and me against the world.
In the slow-moving foreigners' line, she daydreamed of settling in behind the wheels of
the car—only a year old—a new millennium product, pictured herself trundling through the
compound. Years ago, she’d sat next to Sidhant as he practiced within their compound.
Sometimes Acha had let Sidhant drive outside, and she’d step out from the car and watch them
pull away, Sidhant bristling impatiently as they slowly pulled up to the compound gate, impatient
for the Malayalee gatekeeper to deliver his greeting, before roaring away to the outside world.
That wasn't possible for her. Shamna Sanam's gang uncharitably said that she had the
build of a husky boy, with her broad, military-officer shoulders and the towering height she’d
inherited from her father, but she was still a girl in a land where girls couldn't drive, vote, or be
seen in public, at least outside the bubbled worlds of the compounds that housed westerners and
Shankar 320

well-off Easterners. Amma had pointed this out. “Why do you want to learn how to drive here?
You can’t go anywhere. You can learn back home, before you start college.”
The word medical had not preceded "college" but it was silently slotted in: Every second
conversation Amma had about her future, not just with her but with her grandparents, her uncles
and aunts, and their friends in Jeddah, had included an implicit understanding of this—Sanjana
would be a doctor.
Sanjana didn't say that learning in India would be counterproductive since the US has
left-hand drive, like Saudi. Sidhant had learned here and had seamlessly taken up driving on
American roads—was, in fact, delivering pizzas and covering his living expenses, making Acha
proud. But Amma had not been looped in on Sanjana's American dream, as Acha had been, so
Sanjana had said nothing.
Finally, they had their turn at the counter, and they stood fidgeting as the Saudi fiddled
with their passports, slapped them down on his desk, looked them over with the assessing look of
a customer eying bolts of clothes at the Syrian souk, and stared once more at the three of them
balefully. His gaze didn't linger on her face as some men sometimes did here, like they were
storing the image in some terrible part of their minds, and she felt grateful as he leafed through
their passports again.
“He probably can't read,” Amma whispered, and Sanjana bit her lip to keep from
laughing. That was the joke wasn't it—that the Saudis needed them all there—the Indians,
Filipinos, Americans,--because they couldn’t be b