“What have they got?”
“No idea, yaar. All very hush-hush, but I have a contact, and we’ll soon know.”
“How about the High Commission?”
“All packed up and ready for the airport shuttle, same as the Brits and the Yanks.”
A young woman dived into the pool. Jayesh followed her closely with his eyes, then returned his attention to Max. “Besides, things are worse since yesterday. You know what Prime Minister Vajpayee did? He just went on up there, to Kashmir and the Pakistan border, and told his soldiers: ‘The hour for decisive combat has come, and we will win this war,’ or something like that. Same stuff from the Pakistanis. President Musharraf had his National Security Council meet in Islamabad and banged his fist on the table. These two nutbars are sharpening their knives on Kashmiri backbones. Then they spread the cloth and set the table.”
Jayesh could describe the generals’ “hors d’oeuvres”: the Indian bombardment of the Azad Kashmir, or Free Kashmir, controlled by Pakistan since Partition. Hajira had seen twenty dead in a week, nine of them the day before in Abbaspur, then the Pakistani response in Manyari near Kathua, where sixty houses were destroyed. All these fireworks against a backdrop of national mourning in Srinagar. Abdul Ghani Lone, the moderate Kashmiri leader just killed by Muslim extremists and buried amid much grief and anger …
In short, it was a complete train wreck.
But Max wasn’t seeing it. The country on the verge of war? That was hard to believe for any of those sitting around the pool at the Oberoi. He knew nothing of India, and even less of war. Perhaps this was how all wars started, with no one believing it, then, all of a sudden, fighter planes screaming overhead, refugees travelling in convoys, foreigners stranded in the airports. At least one thing was certain: with war on their doorstep and the embassies virtually closed, it would be much harder to catch the perpetrators.
“Do you think he’ll make it?” Jayesh was referring to the still-comatose David.
“I don’t know.”
The Most Welcome Restaurant still existed: Formica furniture, electric signs, colourful uniforms, but a different clientele. Max had previously seen only tourists here, those who were fed up with filthy dives (while the Most Welcome Restaurant would have flunked a health inspection in any major European city, it was still a notch above the local grease-encrusted spoons). But now there were Indians here in place of the foreigners, many of whom had probably already fled the country. They were well-dressed, even hip-looking young people who wouldn’t have been out of place in Soho or Greenwich Village. Most striking was the air of prosperity about them, social climbers eager to show off their nouveaux riches.
Jayesh had ducked into the restaurant briefly to make a phone call. “Some transactions don’t belong on the cellphone, yaar!”
After he climbed back into the Maruti, they drove for quite a while. It seemed as though they’d never run out of city. One slum hot on the heels of the next, growing back in like fungus after Indira Gandhi’s disastrous attempt to root them out in the seventies — that was how Jayesh summed it up. By all means, get rid of the symptoms of poverty, just not the cause. Nussbandhi (vasectomies) had been forced on the poor, civil liberties suspended, and a state of emergency declared for months on end. That was modern India’s darkest chapter. Then in 1991 came a sudden change. The country opened up to private capital and foreign investment and the results had been positive. This time, Max saw numerous changes: the young upstarts at the Most Welcome and the Maruti that Jayesh was driving instead of an old Ambassador, for instance.
There was no mistaking the general air of economic recovery, but the religious misery of India still showed through: the deformed and crippled beggars and the sadhus covered in ashes and barely clothed stole the spotlight from this new India, as though refusing to be pushed aside. At a red light on the way out of town, a leper approached the car, asking for change and waving his stump in Max’s face; next were the slums, the jhopadpattis, with kids in rags jamming the sides of the roads, so resigned to their situation that they didn’t even reach out for charity. Through all this wash of human catastrophe, Jayesh showed little or no emotion, just waving aside one beggar in exasperation, the way you’d listlessly shoo away a fly, knowing it would soon be back. Odd, this Jayesh, Max mused, wondering if the Srinivasans felt that their family monkey god Hanuman was playing a joke when they bore this playboy, homesick for the old Indian motherland.
Jayesh felt Max’s gaze on him. “Okay, we’re almost there. Next village.”
He braked for two starved-looking cows feeding on a pile of garbage by the side of the road, then honked his intentions of passing the cart in front of him. But the Maruti was still stuck behind a Mercedes — not the first Max had seen this time, though there had been none on his previous trip in 1991.
“Hey, it’s one of mine,” yelped Jayesh.
“The Mercedes?”
“I sold that one and some others.”
“Seriously, back in your father’s dealership?”
Jayesh roared in wholehearted laughter. He pointed to the slow-moving car in front, way too precious for these roads. “You know what the import tax is on a car like that? Three hundred percent. Big shots from Malabar Hill in Mumbai have to pay not just the price of the car plus transport, but bribe the Vajpayee government ‘legally’ three times the purchase price.”
Max hadn’t yet cottoned on, but he knew his young friend had made out on this somehow.
“It isn’t just the poor who are unhappy here, the rich are, too. Actors in Mumbai, computer whizzes in Hyderabad, crooked lawyers and lobbyists from Delhi — who do you think they turn to?”
“Mother Teresa?”
“Naaah. Jayesh. If they want a Cadillac or a Jaguar or a Merc, I get it for them.”
Honk … this time for a herd of pigs, something only the dalits are allowed to eat, so now they were in Untouchable country. This slum was their castle.
“The law is clear about this,” Jayesh continued. “Indians who buy toys overseas can bring them back free of duties and taxes.”
It began to dawn on Max.
“All those Indians working in Kuwait or the Emirates as cleaning staff, floor washers, and street sweepers spend, what, maybe a year or two there? Then they come home with the money, plus a little something for their better half,” said Jayesh.
“And with your help, a Mercedes they’ve never seen and never will,” said Max.
“Paid for by my client along with a small return for my contact and a commission for bibi.”
“The police look the other way?”
The same good-natured roar of laughter.
The Maruti now went down a dusty road flanked by small, modest houses, luxurious compared to the slums on the main street. Jayesh stopped in front of one, and two kids in filthy pants appeared in the doorway, but an adult male hand forced them back inside.
Max followed Jayesh into the house. A woman in a cotton sari bade them namaste, then immediately retreated into a back room with the children. Buckets beside the table told Max the neighbourhood had no running water, at least for now. The place was clean, with minimal furnishings. A policeman’s uniform hung behind the door.
“Ashok Jaikumar works at CBI headquarters,” Jayesh explained, as the man nodded left to right as Indians do to show agreement. “He’s in on all Chief Inspector Dhaliwal’s meetings.”
Jaikumar ran his hand through his oily hair and invited the two men to sit at the table. He had on a kurta pyjama, as always when he was inside, was about thirty years old, his head held high, even lofty, as shorter men often do. He seemed proud at being questioned, rather like the finalist in a quiz show. He offered them tea and barfi, boiled-milk