Authors: Aatish Taseer
5
Before the metro claimed her house, my aunt had a Holi party every year. The house was in the centre of Delhi with a large lawn and the party was famous. Hundreds of people came. And armies of children, of which I had been one, attacked them at the door, shooting jets of blue and pink paint on to their white clothes. They shrieked, shielding cold glasses of beer and Bloody Mary. Their starched muslin clothes caved in and clung to their bodies; paunches and lace bras appeared through the cloth. Then grown-ups who had already been coloured came with handfuls of green, yellow and pink powder. They smeared the faces of the newcomers, who put up token resistance but knew that there was no isolation greater than being left uncoloured. By noon the colours began to coalesce into a single rust red. As the sun climbed higher, the festival became more adult. Clay cups of bhang and small portions of food in leaf plates went through the crowd. Glasses of beer were traded in for full bottles. Musicians appeared with drums around their necks. By lunchtime, as the children wandered around vagrantly, the dance floor began to fill. The sun’s blaze fell on the yellow bungalow and its pale reflection appeared in steel tubs of red water. These late-afternoon hours, a painted crowd with gleaming eyes and teeth, dancing on the lawn, were difficult for me as a child. I think, though I didn’t know it then, that I felt their menace. My good memories of Holi were formed by those hours that came before.
But at the
Times of India
’s Holi party, there were no hours that came before; it began after lunch. In the years since the metro claimed my aunt’s house, it had become the city’s main party. It was also in an old bungalow with a lawn, but had an impersonal quality. At the door there were bouncers in black T-shirts with pre-splashed daubs of green and pink on them and ‘It’s Holi!’ written in rubbery white letters below. One held a clipboard with a list. Sanyogita’s friend, Ra, slid ahead of us, saying, ‘Princess of Kusumapur and her boyfriend.’ I didn’t mind, but Sanyogita was embarrassed. She was not the Princess of Kusumapur, her mother was; and technically, even she wasn’t any more. The bouncers looked blank but waved us in. Ra turned back, rolled his eyes bitterly and whispered, ‘Happy Holi.’
We came into a large lawn protected by dark, heavy trees with strangler roots. On one side of it, a dance floor was full. A multi-headed sprinkler system spat clear water clockwise, then anticlockwise over the crowd below, making their colour run. A DJ with a goatee sat on a high stage, fortifying old film and Holi music with dull, electronic thuds. Beyond the dance floor was a wide makeshift bar crowded with people. It was the first time I had seen so many people since I arrived. My eyes played with the faces like with a hologram, but no one was recognizable. They were younger and more beautiful than I remembered them; many more Junglee-made bodies – and freer with each other. Couples kissed openly in the sun, the pink of their tongues showing like exposed flesh against their smooth, purple faces. Around us, forming a faintly threatening girdle, were additional security men in black, the splashes of pink and green on their T-shirts seeming to mock them.
Sanyogita knew many more people than I did. She had spent her teenage years in the city while I was in boarding school; she went out more often than I did; and her family, especially Chamunda, was well known. She liked to play the role of a protector when we went out together, making me seem unfriendly for her amusement. She now flashed me an urgent look as her friend Mandira came towards us. She had a strong, masculine face with prominent gums and small filed teeth. She carried silver paint, screeching ‘Sanyo!’ as she bounded up.
‘Mandira, please, no. Not this chemical stuff. It makes my skin break out.’
‘Don’t be silly, yaar. It’s Holi.’
Sanyogita dodged her and hid behind me.
‘Fine, then,’ Mandira said in her slow, booming voice. ‘Maybe your boyfriend won’t be so pricey.’ She laughed loudly, showing her stubby teeth, and with a silver finger drew a cross on my face.
‘No, not on his face,’ Sanyogita yelled, pushing away her hand.
Mandira laughed, flared her eyes and threw her muscular arms around Sanyogita.
‘So do you live in London?’ she asked me abruptly.
‘No, I’m here now.’
‘London has the best food. I love London. We go every summer,’ Mandira said. ‘Nobu, Zuma, Santini’s. So, yeah, I know London pretty well. Then I love this one place called Pucci Pizza. So sweet. You know, I just wish there were more restaurants in Delhi. Every time there’s a new place, like the Chinese at the Hyatt, it’s full because everyone has to go there. One doesn’t even want to go because you have to say hello to so many people. So much kissy kissy. No time to eat. How d’you like Junglee, by the way?’
Sanyogita grabbed my hand before I could answer and took me in the direction of the bar. The sun fell sharply on a line of cane pavilions with people lazing on white mattresses inside. The party here was at a more advanced stage. At a buffet nearby stainless-steel dishes shone like helmets in the sunlight. We settled down in one of these pavilions and soon I was sipping Sanyogita’s bhang from a clay cup and taking small bites of a potato cutlet.
The party affected each of us in different ways. It made Ra set off into the crowd with a pouch of coloured powder, which he patted lovingly on to the cheeks of people he knew. In Sanyogita it produced a kind of arousal. It was as if the sudden thrill of bhang and anonymity worked on her. She was normally fearful of Delhi’s reputation for malicious gossip. But now, as if playing with the excitement of masks, she pressed her open palm against my leg and groin and said, ‘Baby looks so good blue.’
Ra saw and laughed garishly. It made what was a frank but affectionate advance seem somehow humiliating. I gently moved her hand away. But perhaps not gently enough; she seemed wounded.
The afternoon wore on. The sun blazed, making the colour feel like a second skin. I was hot under it. And this heat was like anxiety. The grass on the lawn was stained. Coloured water dried in the mud. Clay cups lay about in broken pieces and the sun’s pale reflection slid into a puddle of muddy purple water.
Just as the sun was leaving the lawn, a flood of newcomers poured in. Among them was a fashion designer in a white suit. He was Kashmiri with red hair and blue eyes. He had slightly pointed, gapped teeth, which he displayed like fangs when he laughed. He was followed by three men of great beauty.
The first was tall with sharp features, high cheekbones and a prominent nose. He seemed vain and distant. The one next to him was shorter, darker and bare-chested. He had an open, friendly face and a horsiness that suited his solid figure. The third, the most beautiful of them all, was tall, with longish hair and a softness around the mouth and eyes. His features, like his physique, were strong and well defined, but covering the prominence of their lines, as if the work of their creator’s thumb, was a gentle effacement. It carried over into the clothes he wore: low, loose jeans and a close-fitting, faded T-shirt, threadbare in places. His beauty seemed to embarrass him, and as if nervous of its effect on any one person, he kept moving about, distributing his attentions. The only person he looked frankly at, with his dark, doting eyes, was the designer. He seemed to need the little red-haired man like a circus animal its trainer. And the designer, though he passed like a ball between the men, laughing and bowing, at once an object of fun and their leader, exhibited something of the showman’s coldness towards their beauty.
‘Mateen Butt’s models,’ Ra, emerging from nowhere, whispered in my ear.
‘The one with the long hair is pretty amazing-looking,’ I said, finding it difficult to be open about male beauty.
‘And guess where he was found?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘In a village in Punjab. Not a poor boy, but straight from a village. Mateen literally drives through Punjab, pulling boys like this out of their homes.’
‘And they come readily?’
‘With their legs open,’ Ra laughed, and seeing me recoil added, ‘No, seriously, why wouldn’t they? It’s a golden opportunity. That one, for instance, was a full Sikh, bearded and turbaned. Mateen had him transformed overnight.’
The models now danced in a circle around Mateen. The sprinklers rained down on them. They taunted Mateen with their dancing, moving clockwise for a few steps and then, in time with the sprinklers, anticlockwise. The handsome model danced with his arms in the air, moving just his shoulders. It was a folk dance from Punjab. His faded T-shirt rose, the holes in it stretched and the pale inner portion of his arms showed. With every shoulder movement, he flicked his straight black hair off his face. Mateen laughed fearlessly as the model closed in on him and drew back. In his hand he carried a packet of light blue powder. He now took some out, and like a genie, blew it in the model’s direction. The model closed his eyes and let the powder cover his face. When he opened his dark eyes, their sockets free of colour, he looked like a clown. He seemed to take a special pleasure in the desecration of his beauty. He smiled, then laughed at tasting the colour on his lips. But Mateen, as if he’d hurt him without intending to, pulled his neck under the sprinkler and the blue powder ran from his wheatish complexion.
It was difficult for any observer to look away or feel indifferent to their taunting. There was something equalizing in their physical beauty. It seemed to cut through the barriers of money and language. In Delhi, where these aspects of status had been encoded in people’s looks, in their bad teeth and skin, their shabby clothes, their scrawny bodies, this flowering of physical beauty, people rehabilitated, and the licence that came with it, felt like avenues had been driven through the city’s closed quarters.
A final arc of sunlight slipped away. The designer, his suit still mostly white, left the dance floor with a female model. She was in velvety tracksuit bottoms, and he drunkenly clutched her long, slim body. They staggered towards us, the designer speaking rapidly and the model responding with languid, filmy replies. I watched them vanish past the wall of our cane pavilion, their voices still audible.
‘How do you do it, Mattu? Tell us your secret, no?’ the model said.
‘Nothing to it, Oozma,’ the designer replied. ‘I just keep my eyes open and when I see a hot little country boy, like this one here, I say, “Oh gawd, you have such a hard life. Why are you slogging! Come on, tell me, where is aunty? We’re going to go and take her blessings. You are going to be the face of my new collection, Sher-e-Punjab.” ’
‘And then,’ Oozma asked, ‘what do they say?’
‘They come panting.’ And I heard an imitation of a dog panting, followed by raucous laughter. ‘Now, take this fellow,’ the designer continued, ‘short, pretty dark, hairy. But sexy eyes, great features and hot body. We give him a little stubble, mess up his hair, have it coming over the forehead, do up the eyes and wa-lah those black pink lips will…’
‘No, Mattu, stop. He can hear everything.’
‘Oozma, if he could understand, what use would he be to me?’
At this point I heard a third voice. ‘Ey-ey,’ it said in dialect, ‘we’ll see what aunty does when you bring this langur into my house.’
The voice made me sit up.
‘Oh no,’ the model moaned, ‘I told you! He understood everything. Now he’s going to bash you up.’ Then laughing, she added, ‘Dishoom, dishoom.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ the third voice answered, now in English. ‘Whaddyou think? I am an
ad
-ucated person.’
‘Oh gawd,’ the designer said, ‘and I thought you were a villager. Sorry. Ta-ta.’
I swung my head round. The designer was staggering away when a small, calloused hand pulled him back.
Through the cane lattice, I saw Aakash in a black T-shirt bedaubed pink and green. His lips were dry and his pointed tongue scraped over them as he spoke. He was standing close to the designer, his mud-coloured eyes burning with contempt.
They were in a grove of trees that had been wrapped in white satin. Where the Holi colour had stained the satin red, they looked like bandages. The shrill voice of a female playback singer broke through the afternoon.
The men in their pre-splashed T-shirts had stood out for their facelessness. It was what had struck me about them. Seeing Aakash reduced to this factory line jolted me. I hadn’t thought of his world beyond Junglee. I hadn’t thought it could include moonlighting at a security agency. The designer’s assumption about the security had hardly been different from mine, but seeing it now misfire, I felt some shame at my blindness. The designer had been wrong, and though he could see his mistake, he wasn’t willing to hear too much about it.
His little blue eyes flamed. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he screamed. ‘How dare you, you two-bit little man?’
‘Leave it, Mattu, no big deal,’ the model said in her languid way.
A few people turned around and looked. A man carrying a tray of Bloody Marys stopped and watched. Aakash saw them, and though his face didn’t show fear, a passivity crept into it. The designer yelled for the head of security; people were gathering round him, nodding obediently; and even as the head of security walked over, Aakash seemed to know he would be forsaken.
Outside Junglee he was bigger and his skin somehow darker. He seemed to be fighting to remain the person I knew. He had a hunted look in his heavy eyes. It was as if he needed to be reminded of who he was. And this was all that I did for him. I left the pavilion and appeared in the grove of bandaged trees.
In a few short moments, the situation had deteriorated. The fashion designer’s anger had grown into a performance; the head of security listened sympathetically; Aakash, every line in his face inflamed, couldn’t say a word. My appearance, but more importantly Sanyogita’s behind me, shifted the balance and rescued him from the worst of all Delhi fates: being a man with no connections.
I slipped my hand through the tangle of people and prodded Aakash’s pectoral. He fell back slightly and smiled with relief and fatigue. ‘This, Sanyogita, is my trainer at Junglee. The man I wanted you to meet.’