Diwali in Muzaffarnagar Read online

  How would Katy react if he told her that he has never seen a swimming pool in his life (the tiny one in his campus doesn’t count, for they never filled it with water), or that he has never set foot in the sea, or that he has never had sex, or that, quite simply, he has never before been to a place he didn’t have to go to.

  Between these thoughts, his eyelids become heavy. But his perturbation makes him fight sleep. He sweeps away thoughts of Australia and swimming. What will happen will happen.

  Because there is another reason why he doesn’t really want to sleep as yet. He wants to recall the sexual hope of the evening, to reconstruct Katy’s beauty: how her blond hair seemed favourable to touches; how her narrow waist met her curved hips; how she walked, her hips swerving as if to a rhythm. He decides to get hard thinking of Katy; to release his millilitres before sleep. The night would be wasted if it didn’t end like this; if all the anticipation he built up was to be forgotten and wasted in the vacancy of sleep. He has to make something out of it.

  So he thinks and thinks of Katy’s countless attractions. But it fails. Even when he fantasizes about them travelling together and engaging in a little fling. Katy, or the Katy of his imagination, proves enigmatically useless to the brief sexual purposes of his night.

  Minutes stretch ahead, sometimes long, sometimes short, and he grows frustrated out of stroking his benign penis. Then sleep traps him tightly and doesn’t let go.

  In the morning, he is woken by a persistent knock on the door. He fears it is Katy. Sucking his teeth, devoid of inspiration, he thinks of unresponsiveness as a good response, hoping that Katy will understand that he is sleeping and go swimming alone. But it isn’t her at the door. It is Miranda.

  ‘Arre baba, open please. Breakfast.’

  He breathes out. ‘Give me a second,’ he shouts. He puts on his jeans and approaches the door bare-chested. Miranda shrieks seeing him like that: ‘Eii. Go and wear a shirt.’ He goes inside the room and puts on his T-shirt. Miranda has already come inside with the breakfast tray in her hands. He looks askance at her and notices a scowl. She is mumbling something. She keeps the plate on his bedside stool and walks towards the door.

  ‘I didn’t order breakfast. Is it part of the package?’ he asks, hoping that the question will placate her and, by starting a conversation, serve as an apology.

  ‘No,’ she says without looking at him. ‘Someone ordered it for you.’

  ‘Who?’ he asks. The answer is already in his head.

  Miranda, for some reason, doesn’t seem to like the question; she turns at him with fiery eyes and says, ‘That Aussie girl you trying to loot. Who else? I knew you were a bad man. And now you run naked in my church.’ She hisses away, stomping down the staircase.

  Since when did the hotel become a church?

  The breakfast – scrambled eggs, two toasts and some black tea. Katy has ordered it for him, which means that she expects him to get ready in some time. What can he do to avoid this? Loose motions, fever, allergy from saline water – what can be his excuse? He doesn’t want to go to the beaches. He saw them enough yesterday, to the point of getting bored. But for him it is difficult to say no to Katy, not on her face anyway. Perhaps he should just confess that he can’t swim and stay on the sand.

  He finishes the breakfast and lies down on his bed again. Within minutes, there is a loud clanking of the latch on his door.

  ‘Yoo hoo. Morning!’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Katy enters the room, and seeing him flat on the bed, gives an exaggerated pout. ‘You’re not ready?’

  He likes the pout. To him it conveys a connection. He jumps from the bed. ‘Oh yes, just give me a few minutes,’ he says.

  ‘So see you downstairs in ten?’

  Their rented cycles buzz along, sometimes side by side, sometimes one trailing the other. Swimming-wise, he decides that he should just wait and see what Katy is capable of. If all it really involves is a little dip in a knee-deep sea, why not?

  ‘There!’ Katy shouts, and starts pedalling faster. Down the road, far to their left, is the first beach. They race towards the final stretch. Katy wins. Upon reaching their destination, they leave their cycles among the short bushes by the road. Katy locks their back wheels together using the chain lock on her bicycle, and keeps the key in her backpack. This locking of cycles leads to a dirty thought in his head. She removes her clothes to reveal a black bikini. Two Indian men stare at them from the other side of the road. For the next minute, while she spreads her sarong at a spot shaded by a coconut tree, B has to try extremely hard not to look in her direction himself. But he does look finally. He sees Katy loosening the thin elastic strap of her lower bikini, and his eyes rest on the thinnest line of tiny hair which starts from her navel and stretches down the taut stomach and then slips under the black cloth.

  ‘Wooh,’ she shouts, then breaks into a sprint that ends straight in the sea. She disappears under the water for a few seconds.

  ‘It’s amazing,’ she shouts upon emerging from the water. ‘Come on in.’

  He weighs his crotch before removing his shorts and T-shirt. For a second he mulls the dangers of the sea. Then he walks towards it. He wets his feet. Katy urges him to jump in, reasoning that the sea is very mild. He lets go.

  The sea water. In his stomach, it feels like what it is – a non-potable, alien liquid. He splashes desperately, in panic, to seek an exit from the swerving-receding medium. And he hears her laughter. Katy is laughing! As if his travails with choking and drowning are a flimsy drama he is playing to evoke some seaside mirth. Suddenly, his feet touch the ground and he scampers shoreward. He emerges a bit from under the ocean, and as flushes of relief come to him, he scampers faster. Faster and faster till a mild undertow sucks his feet and he falls, face first, on the withdrawing waves. A million sand particles prick his face, especially around the eyes and on the edges of his ears. From here on, he decides to crawl; his palms are now gripping the shore.

  And she is laughing!

  On the shore, he lies on his back, aware now of the validity of his fears. Nausea clasps his belly. Haplessly he gags, but nothing comes out. When he is done, he looks at Katy swimming blithely, romping in the waves in delight. Under a large surge, she dives into the sea, using the momentum to surf towards the shore; then she walks back to the earlier point and waits for the next wave. This is sport for her. But for him this is risky sport. Life-threatening. Each time she takes the wave and disappears under the sea for a few seconds, he panics. What if she misjudges a trick and is sucked in a whimsical current? He cannot, will not, go inside the sea to save her. He lies on the sand, gaping at her actions with terror. He gauges the horizon behind her to check for any onrushing tsunamis. He knows this is ridiculous, that he is getting paranoid. Sharks and sea-snakes are conjured up too. From time to time, Katy looks at him and guffaws and her teeth look agonizingly white and shiny – a little larger too, somehow; perhaps because her mopped hair makes her face seem differently proportioned. She doesn’t look beautiful to him then, although large parts of her breasts are visible every time she emerges from the sea. Her shoulders make him trip over the adjectives tender and strong. He wants to leave. Will he be wrong in leaving her here on her own? She doesn’t need him to enjoy. She doesn’t need him.

  He stays, burping a salty gas every now and then. Thoughts of her drowned death keep him busy, though.

  Finally, after fifteen or so minutes, the torture ends, and she comes out of the water with a ‘wooh’. His fears instantaneously mutate into anger.

  ‘Wooh. The sea does well,’ she repeats, the grainy skin on her body dripping water. Her body, its musculature.

  Katy dries herself and puts on her clothes over the wet bikini. He too doesn’t change his underwear. Without sharing many words, they look around for a place for lunch, and settle on a dingy restaurant called ‘Sun ’N’ Shore’. Katy orders a grilled fish and beer. He feels cheated, as if her choice is infringing upon some accord signed the previous even
ing against eating fish. He orders an Indian meal – the most Indian meal he can find. Also, to vent his anger and to make her feel a part of his sense of betrayal, he doesn’t order beer. He goes for Pepsi instead. He hopes his resentment is palpable without his trying too hard, with the little gestures that he has already made. But why is he resentful? What will that earn? What does he expect of Katy when she realizes that he is angry? Anyway, she doesn’t look perturbed at all.

  ‘Ah, the sea does well … and makes one hungry too,’ she says, before pouncing on her fish with her fork and knife. He breaks his roti into little pieces and dips them into his yellow daal and green sabzi.

  ‘You don’t know how to swim?’ she asks. ‘And you didn’t tell me.’ She laughs a long laugh, tapping him on the shoulder in between.

  He chews his food. Swallows.

  ‘Hey, you alright?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, glancing up at her from his plate, flashing a brief smile and then looking down again, as if the meal were an overpowering vocation that doesn’t allow any distractions.

  Beer after beer. Three beers. Katy grows talkative, making the lunch slower than he wants it to be. He is done sooner than her and has to order a lemon soda. After a while, in which Katy talks about a long and passionate love affair with an Australian air force pilot, the lunch is over. He gets up from his chair hastily, feeling jelly-like in his stomach. The food was terrible. Lucky, though, that he did not order beer.

  ‘Ah, amazing fish,’ she says as she gets up and gives out a little burp. ‘Oops. Sorry.’ She guffaws again.

  At her suggestion, they go back to the beach to ‘have a nice walk’ before another dip.

  And so without any major incident, in the throes of a receding anger, the rest of the day trudges along for him. Only that the wet underwear dries out and the sand inside abrades some of the skin on his balls.

  During their return, he notices the width of the seaside roads. Traffic is still non-existent, yet he prefers now to cycle not beside but behind her. What irks him slightly is that even she makes no effort to align with him.

  He made no effort to speak to her after lunch, did not dip even his ankles in the sea. That she is less and less effusive and is keeping her enthusiasm to herself is noticeable.

  So Katy … transformed in his eyes now. Her zing, which had only yesterday evening been a swirl for his senses, is now nothing more than an inane jest. There she is, a couple of metres in front of him, pedalling her cycle, displaying the contraction of her strong calves with each up-and-down. She has become what she is – a Katy; a pretty Australian; a pretty alien.

  They return the bicycles to the shop they had rented them from. Katy looks at him only when necessary. Her relative quietude is an acknowledgement of him snubbing her since lunchtime. As they walk back to the hotel, silent and side by side, he makes an awkward excuse about wanting to roam around the town.

  ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘I’ll probably see you at the hotel,’ he says.

  ‘It’s alright,’ she replies.

  He walks through the streets of Diu then, in front of small, gaudily-lit shops. Slowly he forgets about Katy and the day. A sad feeling wells up inside him, and for the first time he acknowledges that solo trips might not be that much fun after all.

  After an hour or so of aimless walking, in which he circles, twice, an uninteresting part of town, he feels hungry. He asks some shop owners for a good restaurant. It takes him fifteen minutes to reach the place most recommended: Tango Restaurant.

  Inside, he sees the two Iranian girls from the hotel sitting at a corner table, opposite each other, as if on a date. He walks towards them.

  The girls recognize him and are glad to have him join them. They enquire about his day with Katy. He is surprised that they know. It was Miranda who told them.

  ‘It was okay,’ he says. ‘We went to the beaches.’

  There is no more talk about this. He orders beer and egg fried rice.

  He comes to know that the girls are Iranian–Americans. And since one of them talks about a boyfriend, he concludes that they are not lesbians. For some reason, these things make him think of Katy as stupid.

  His beer arrives first and he takes a large gulp. ‘I guess I’m done with Diu,’ he says. ‘I’ll leave when I figure out which place to go to next. Where are you going from here?’

  ‘Ah! Good question, actually,’ one of the girls answers.

  ‘I ask because I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know where I should go.’

  ‘Well, one can only go back,’ the other girl says.

  ‘Hah. What do you mean?’

  ‘She means go back to Ahmedabad,’ the first girl answers. ‘Diu is a bit of a dead end, haven’t you seen on Lonely Planet? Unless you want to see starving lions in the Gir Reserve.’

  Dead end. He finishes his beer, then orders another one. The restaurant is dimly lit, and the light of a pale bulb gleams softly off their greasy table top. He feels tired. Outside, the night darkens, and the world moves forward minute by minute. ‘Diu is a dead end,’ he whispers to himself. ‘I didn’t know that,’ he says.

  ‘It’s just how you say some things, right?’ one of the girls says. ‘How did you end up here?’ the other one adds.

  ‘I don’t know. Someone at college said that they had some fun here,’ he says. ‘They said it’s nice and quiet and there is cheap beer. I never thought what could be next. I don’t plan that way.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘So, by going back you mean what?’ he asks.

  ‘Where did you come from?’

  ‘Ahmedabad.’

  ‘Go back to Ahmedabad, then. The entire country opens towards the east.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You really didn’t know where you’d be going next?’

  ‘No.’

  The girls laugh at this. ‘Guess that’s the sort of people who end up coming to Diu.’

  The Iranian girls go to a party being organized by a set of foreign tourists. He senses he is not invited. He returns to the hotel and goes straight to the vestibule to collect the room keys he had deposited in the morning to allow the cleaning of the room. Presently, Miranda and Winston are standing there, and their cold stare suggests that something is wrong.

  ‘We waiting for you,’ Winston says.

  ‘Really? Why? There is no barbeque today, right?’

  ‘No, not that. Katy checking out fifteen minutes back,’ Miranda says. ‘And you drunk.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it means you made me lose customer,’ Miranda says. ‘You made me lose foreign customer. Now she will talk about hotel with her friends and no one will be coming here. She’ll say Indian backpacker comes here. I don’t like Indian backpacker. I told you.’

  ‘You get your stuff and you check out,’ Winston commands. ‘I’m angry at you.’

  ‘But why? I want to stay here tonight,’ he protests.

  ‘Not possible only,’ Winston replies.

  ‘You’re pushing me out because Katy left?’

  ‘Yes. And I’m not pushing you.’

  Something in Winston’s voice suggests that he can’t be reasoned with right now. ‘Okay. So how much do I owe you?’ B asks.

  ‘We’re respectable people,’ says Miranda, sobbing. ‘We running this hotel for years.’

  Her voice angers him. ‘I’m sure you’re respectable people. You’re respectably kicking out a guest for nothing at all,’ he says.

  Winston doesn’t like the sarcasm. ‘You want to fight me?’

  ‘I don’t want to fight. But I want to say that I’m not responsible for any of your guests leaving.’

  ‘But in the morning she order breakfast for you,’ Miranda says. ‘And now she is leaving even without telling you. And you go out together in the day. Meaning you did something wrong in the day.’

  ‘That’s bullshit,’ he says, raising his arms in complaint.

  And then, like a rabbit lunging a
t his face, he glimpses a flash of Winston’s fist. He tries to duck it, but fails. Sharp pain sears through his right eye. He falls to the floor. Winston is abusing him, but the words sound like a distant gong. He is angry and wants to hit back, but knows that it will be difficult to stand up. He can’t open his eyes.

  ‘Go,’ he hears.

  He struggles to stand up and turns away, but Winston catches him by the collar and shouts ‘money’ into his ear.

  His mind isn’t really functioning. He takes out his wallet and pays the room rent. Winston keeps holding him by the collar and pushes him right up till the staircase. On the stairs, he regains some of his clarity. It is then that the humiliation strikes him. ‘Give me half an hour to pack,’ he manages to say.

  In the mirror inside the rotten bathroom, he notices that his eye is already beginning to swell. His head hurts stupendously. He washes his face and gets into the room. While packing his stuff, he wonders if he should look for another hotel to spend the night. There is also the option of the night bus that goes straight to Ahmedabad. He has to go there anyway, so he decides that he should leave this stupid town tonight itself. He steps down the staircase slowly, and begins to walk on the narrow path that had brought him here. After getting to the main road, reaching the bus station takes him another ten minutes. There, he buys a ticket on the bus that leaves earliest.