Corporate Carnival (19 page)

17

Chilling in Chennai

M
y phone fell by my side. My heart stopped. In fact, every part of my body stopped, except, perhaps, the inside of my head, and even that seemed to have completely lost its bearings. It was spinning madly and meaninglessly like a fluffy ball that has got enmeshed in some kind of vicious machinery.

Why did something like this have to happen? A young couple had got together after such difficulty, and on the morning of their wedding they had to leave the thaali at home and have their maid lying in a pool of blood? What kind of justice was this? I would willingly take on several recessions and liquidity crises if only that could somehow take away this current problem. If only the maid were not dead. If only the thaali were in my hands this minute. Nothing could bring anyone back to life but, foolishly, that’s all I could pray for; at that moment, I wanted nothing else.

‘Where are you, Jack? Hello? Hello, Jack, are you there?’

Somewhere in the distance I could hear Harry’s voice but it didn’t register immediately. It took time for the voice and what it said to penetrate the layers of cotton wool that had been substituted for my brain. Once it did, I was filled with guilt. This was Harry’s first visit to my country and I had left him alone in a strange house with a dead body, after allowing him to shin up a twenty-foot water pipe. And leaving him there, I, Jai Shantilal Patel, had scampered like a petrified rabbit, at the mere sight of a handful of primary schoolkids armed with pebbles and small wooden rulers. I was disgusted with myself.

‘I’ll be there in a jiffy, Harry.’

I reached the house. There was no sign of the kids. Harry had kept the door open and was in the living room, walking around in circles, clutching his head and making low moaning noises. His face was pale and his lips were quivering. ‘This is terrible, Jack. This is utterly awful. What on earth are we to do?’ he asked agitatedly. ‘Do they have emergency services in India? We need to call a doctor. Though I think it might be too late. Jack, I’ve never seen anyone look so… so d-dead.’

He looked so weak and vulnerable that I suddenly found my strength. I needed to take care of two bodies – one dead, one barely alive. The hour had produced the man.

‘Stiff upper lip, Harry,’ I said bravely before running up the stairs. ‘Let me take a look.’

I was strong all the way up, but as soon as I reached the landing of the first floor, my feet stopped by themselves. My upper body tried to continue the impetus that my legs had briefly provided, but my feet just glued themselves to the floor and refused to listen to my brain. I was plain scared.

Nothing in life prepares you for this kind of thing. I had never seen a corpse at close quarters before and definitely not alone in a room. I hesitated, trying to mentally prepare myself. I hoped Harry would go in first. After all, he had seen it before. But the poor simp stuck close to my back. ‘Harry,’ I said, trying rather unsuccessfully to pivot my body around my stationary feet in such a way that Harry would come between me and the dreaded room. ‘But Harry,
why
is she dead? I mean, how do you even know she is?’

‘She’s sprawled on the floor in a frightfully weird way. There’s no sign of life; none whatsoever.’

‘B-blood?’

‘I don’t think so, Jack. I didn’t notice any.’

I inched into the room, dragging my reluctant feet behind me. There she was, right in the middle of the room, lying on her stomach, hands outstretched and legs slightly apart. But it wasn’t as grotesque a picture as I had imagined. And there was one thing that made hope suddenly surge within me, like a penny stock company that has suddenly struck oil. She was wearing a blouse and a long skirt but, more relevantly, she had used her dupatta to cover herself, as with a blanket.

‘Harry!’ I exclaimed. ‘There’s just a chance, isn’t there, that she… she might be sleeping. I mean, there’s no blood or anything. Besides, she is lying under the fan and has covered herself. Maybe she is asleep – in very deep sleep’, I added, trying to sound convincing.

‘But she looks so lifeless, Jack. Besides, surely she wouldn’t sleep on the
floor
.’

‘Why not? She’s a maid. She wouldn’t sleep on Kitch’s parents’ bed like Goldilocks.’

‘But then, why…’

The phone rang again. ‘What’s happening, you guys? We have just half an hour to go for the end of the muhurtham.’

‘Kitch, we are inside the house. The girl is lying on the floor,’ I reported.

‘Never mind where the girl is lying! The thaali is lying in front of the gods’ pictures on the ground floor. Get it and move.’

‘But Kitch, this girl, I’m not sure… she looks rather lifeless, but I’m hoping… I mean, there’s a small chance that she might just be asleep.’

‘Pull her up and see! Don’t waste time. Kick her in the butt! Stop loafing around, Jai, goddammit! Shout, pull her hair, throw some water on her and move your asses, both of you.’

‘Damini?’ I ventured, a shiver racing through my spine as I suddenly remembered every ghost story I had ever heard in my life. ‘D-Damayanti!’

‘Jack, I think I will try some mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,’ Harry whispered.

I patted him encouragingly and edged closer to the staircase. Harry shot in my direction a look that nicely blended fear and agony, summoned up courage, and then tilted her face up, held her by the chin and shook her head. He thrust his lips out like a goldfish and bent down. Suddenly the girl opened her eyes and let out a piercing scream.

In hindsight, I don’t entirely blame her. It couldn’t have been easy for her to be shaken awake by a strange, wild-eyed, tousled-haired white man apparently bent on manhandling her. But at that moment, I was paralyzed with fear. The scream was so unexpected that it sounded like the wailing of a banshee. The next second, she was sprinting down the stairs.

Harry looked at me. I looked at him. It was an inexplicably magical moment that we shared. A moment which, I knew immediately, would bond us for life. Once the first terrifying point in time – at the onset of that scream – had passed, the relief we felt was monumental.

By the time we rushed downstairs, the girl was nowhere in sight. We found the puja room. There was the thaali
, g
listening on a shiny silver tray, beckoning to us. ‘Kitch,’ I said, trying hard not to let the phone slip through my sweaty grip, and making no attempt to disguise the note of filmy triumph that had automatically entered my voice, ‘we’ve got it. I’m holding it in my hand. We’ll be there in twenty minutes, max.’

We slammed the door shut and ran to the cab. The cabbie fixed a pair of accusing eyes on me. ‘Dushta naai,’ he snarled. I didn’t know what the first word meant. But I knew the second one was Tamil for dog. The man had obviously got all fired up for some reason. Maybe he was just peeved at having been made to wait. But he didn’t stop there. He let forth a torrent of Tamil words, many of them words they would never teach you in school.

‘No understand Tamil’ I said untruthfully, hoping to stump the man.

But he was up to the task. ‘Then I talk English,’ he barked. ‘What you doing that poor running girl, bloody? Huh? What you doing, maira pudingi, son of a what-not?’

He suddenly shifted his savage gaze from me to Harry. ‘You come from damn foreign land to chase after our girls? To wipe the virginity of our holy womenfolk, what they are guarding like most precious jewel? I heard shouting that girl! Bloody common rowdy! I will break your legs and give it to your hands or my name is not the Kulandaivelu!’ he said.

Harry uttered a wordless cry of horror and staggered back.

‘No! I didn’t… I wasn’t… You misunderstand me, sir! I was just trying some mouth-to-mouth resusci…’

‘Mouth to mouth! Muruga! What bloody you think? You think you coming like white God for kissing and destroying the innocence of our girls? I call police and ask them hitting you with chappal and sending you jail! Wretched dog!’

‘I say, no! No, Mr Colin-day-way-loo! I-I didn’t do a thing. Jack! Tell him! Don’t just stand there, man! Talk to him!’

‘No, sir,’ I said, looking at the driver desperately. ‘Please understand, brother. We are friends of the owner of this house. His brother is getting married. They forgot the thaali. We came to get it… Look.’ I thrust the shiny tray at him. ‘That girl was sleeping. She just got scared when she saw us. My friend is having his muhurtham now. If we are late, the wedding will be stopped. He will have love failure, heart failure! Only twenty minutes for the muhurtham! Help us… sir, saar, anna!’

The man looked at me, then at Harry and finally at the tray. He lowered his eyelids. His eyes were not visible, but I sensed they had lost their fire. Bending forward, he briefly rested the bridge of his nose on his thumb and his index finger.

‘Feelings, saar!’ he said in a voice choked with emotion. ‘Total feelings! Too much, I’m feeling it!’ A pearly tear escaped his downcast eyes. Or it may have dropped from the beads of sweat that bathed his forehead. In Chennai, one can never tell. Tapping his chest with the index finger of his right hand, he continued, ‘Emotional is touching the heart, saar!’

Then he looked up. His eyes were moist but determined. He had the air of a man who had taken a decision and intended to stick to it. He stuck out his lower lip in a gesture of defiance and raised his finger. ‘Do or die, let us to try!’ he pledged, jutting his chin out.

We had won him over. Turning into a rugged man of action, he leapt into his car, shouting, ‘Come on, gentlemans, let us to go! I am the Kulandaivelu, I never say no!’

Poetry, I realized, was no more the privilege of noble princes or hungry philosophers. In the twenty-first century, it had descended to the level of the masses. And they had embraced it. Mina could take a lesson or two from this man. ‘It is never too late,’ he assured us, ‘come whatever the fate!’

For the next twelve minutes, we zipped, zapped and zoomed; we swerved, skidded and screeched. Once we crashed and twice we flew as Kulandaivelu set out to conquer kismet. Harry, in complete contrast, was huddled in one corner of the backseat, unable to share the driver’s enthusiasm. After his brief flirtation with bravado in Kitch’s house, he seemed to have resigned himself to being a puppet in the hands of destiny. His eyes were shut. Little murmurs emanated from his mouth – he seemed to be praying. For Kulandaivelu, however, it was clearly a case of the end justifying the means. He was a man with a frenzied mission. ‘My motto never to slow,’ he raged. ‘Today, even red means go!’ At the end of those twelve minutes, we were at our destination.

‘I’ll settle the fare, Harry,’ I said. ‘You take this thing and run inside.’

Harry hesitated. For a homegrown British gentleman of regular habit, it was not easy to thrust himself in the limelight in a foreign country, that too in a wedding hall packed with strangers.

‘B-but, I say! There are hundreds of people in there. How do I find Kitch?’

‘He’ll find you. Just hold the tray aloft and run. Go!’

For about four seconds, he stood there. He may have been praying or just frozen. He could have been savouring the moment or summoning the spirits of his ancestors. Whatever it was, it worked. The plucky lad was suddenly filled with renewed vigour. This was the India his ancestors had ruled for some three hundred years. He could not fear the country or her people. He picked up the tray, licked his lips and strode purposefully into the hall.

Meanwhile, Kulandaivelu, after starting off by saying he was loath to charge for such a noble cause, was now bargaining for a rather substantial sum. Having forgotten to bring any rupees with me, I persuaded him to accept dirhams and then rushed inside.

Inside the hall, there was drama aplenty. This, after all, was Chennai. Subtlety was not the city’s forte. A small crowd, whooping and rejoicing, had lifted Harry on their shoulders and was waving him around like a banner. He had been relieved of the precious thaali, which had found its way to the stage. Seconds later, the nadaswarams and drums took over, people crowded around the stage and the rest of the audience craned its necks to catch a glimpse of the defining moment. Tradition, after playing hard to get, had embraced young love and blessed it. Photographers clicked away, Harry their clear favourite, followed by Andy and Rachel.

Later that evening, the reception was held at the same venue. The highlight was a dance programme by twenty-odd students from the school behind Kitch’s house. Harry and I stood at the back of the hall, trying to remain inconspicuous. The tumultuous events of the morning were fresh in our memory. The teachers, helped by Kitty, had worked on a medley of two or three Tamil songs and combined it with two theme songs of the Chennai Super Kings. The kids wore yellow t-shirts, the boys with Rachel’s picture on them and the girls with Andy’s.

At the end of this programme, Kitch’s dad made an announcement that a very special family friend had agreed to be the guest of honour and had also consented to sing a song. Then he beckoned to me and took me to a room adjoining the hall. ‘I know you are very fond of music. Let me introduce you to our friends Sangeetha and her husband Shankar Mahadevan.’

Shankar Mahadevan! Here I was, once again, face-to-face with the man. One look at each other and I knew immediately that he remembered.

‘Y-you!’ he spluttered.

‘I can explain!’ I cried and proceeded to do so hastily. He looked at me for a moment and then threw his head back and guffawed.

‘He is not the first north Indian to have got confused between the two names. Don’t mind me, but I really thought you were a nutcase,’ he said, and his wife immediately jabbed him in the ribs.

Then he went onstage and rendered a Tamil hit number to thunderous applause. One by one, the schoolkids clambered up on stage and started performing an impromptu dance. It was the most heartwarming thing I’d seen in a long time. As the singer raised the tempo, the kids worked up such a frenzy that they were just a blur. Down below, the audience clapped madly. The song ended with a bang and another impromptu act. The kids bodily lifted the singer and carried him off the stage, cheering madly. One of the smaller kids left the group, went back to the mike and announced in a squeaky voice, ‘Shankar Mahadevanku o podu!’ It brought the house down.