The Girl with the Golden Parasol

TWENTY-FIVE

It was a five-day bone-shattering fever. Yet Rahul still stood in front of the window gazing toward the field below. The bobbing yellow spot, the little butterfly fluttering up from the valley toward the university — Rahul didn’t see either during those five days, not once.

“Dehydration’s the real danger. Drink lots of water. With sugar and salt,” said Govind Nema, who lived in C. V. Raman Hostel and was doing research in pharmacology.

Pratap, Ataluri, Niketan, Kartikeya, Madhusudan, Parvez, Praveen, Masood — everyone came regularly to visit Rahul in his room. They’d play cards. Sing a few songs. Smoke beedis and cigarettes. They even held a meeting of the SMTF.

Shaligaram and Shailendra George from the Hindi department both came. Rana, Manmohan, and Raju too. Rahul was feeling so distressed he asked everyone about Anjali. How was she doing? What was she doing? Has she said anything? Why hasn’t he been seeing her from his window?

On the third day, Hemant Barua arrived, smiling, and placed Rahul’s hand around a little slip of paper. “Message from your bird. She gave this to me on my way to the department.”

The little slip of paper was light green, and in a scrawling, childlike handwriting was written in blue, “Get Well Soon.” And below, in blue letters, was her signature, A-N-J-I, “Anji.”

Hemant had learned that for the past few days Anjali had been coming to campus by car, with a driver. She was a bit distraught. Then Hemant added, laughing, “But don’t lose your head, Rahul. I happen to know she really loves you. From now on, I’m putting the two of you in a joint de facto file, which will be updated daily.”

So much sweat was pouring out of Rahul’s body that he had to constantly wipe himself off with a towel.

“See! I told you the kind of paracetamol that would really cure this bastard,” O.P. said. “I ran over to the dispensary for no reason. Now that he’s got his love note, his fever will go away.”

“Oh, so it’s not dengue!” Hemant exclaimed. “It’s that Nana Patekar disease.”

“Not malaria, but ‘love-aria,”’ the six-foot ostrich wailed.

“Shut up,” Rahul said, and started to cough.

Yet this period of time wasn’t so bright and happy. It wasn’t simply that drops of dew were falling on its leaves; the leaves were also being ravaged by fire and ice.

Two of the three students Rahul had been tutoring stopped coming. He found out someone told one of his students, the sales tax officer Jaiswal’s daughter, that he was an indecent character. Someone had informed M. L. Gupta, of Gupta Transport and Travel, that Rahul had once been caught in the act of teaching the Kama Sutra to a girl and, after a good beating, was run out of town. He would have lost his third tutee had Pratap not rescued him by saying something to his uncle, a policeman.

It all added up to this: the critters were on the move. They were the proprietors of the biggest rumor and falsehood factory in the history of India. If they wished to eradicate any individual or group, first they’d unite and, once together, they’d erect a heap of rumor and lies. The apprenticeship, passed through the centuries from generation to generation, came in very handy. Brahminical texts and all of the puranas lent proof to the lies. Just a few years back the Babri Masjid incident in Ayodhya gave all Hindi newspapers occasion to support the lies. VC Agnihotri, the students learned, had indicated at a meeting of the university’s governing body that he’d recently come into possession of information that certain Communists and Naxalites living in the hostels were fanning flames among the other students. The names of Kartikeya Kajle and Madhusudan were mentioned, both of whom had spotless academic records, and it was suggested they had criminal records in Maharashtra and Kerala.

Dr. Dangwal and Dr. Loknath Tripathi took the girls to the side and warned them, “Keep your distance from Rahul. He’s an indecent character.”

Rahul’s head was spinning. Why was this happening to him? Because he was a hardworking student? Because he didn’t kiss up to any of the teachers? Because he and the other members of the SMTF got together and stopped the goondas from robbing, beating, and acting savagely toward students who’d come from different regions, different states? Was it because he had the kind of body and face that could not be made corrupt?

Or was it because he was of indeterminate lineage, but not a Brahmin, who, by accident, crawled into the medieval cave of Hindi literature while pursing a girl? Or was he some African slave who’d arrived in the middle of a Roman city? Or an outcaste with a gong tied around his neck so he can sound the alarm on his own, and give warning: “Please, kind Brahmin sir, keep your distance, as a vile untouchable is now passing! Kindly save yourself from contaminating your lordship’s self and have the good grace to avoid contact with the shadow of this base creature! Come, see how some Shabuk-like untouchable is again doing penance in your glorious Vedic language, and off with his head! At the hands of a Kshatriya. Then cut up the severed head with Parashuram’s blade. Throw his wife into the fire, kidnap her, and if that still hasn’t done the trick, call her a whore, a loose woman, and banish her from town.

“But keep in mind that this time, somewhere beyond the city limits of your capital, she’ll find refuge in a little hut inhabited by an outcaste. And this time too, that very outcaste, who you’ll call a bandit, will write another enduring epic poem.

“And now, dear bastards, once again I give you — the great poet Valmiki!”

Woo whee! Woo whee!

At eleven o’clock at night there was an uproar in the hostel. O.P. came rushing in with the news that Niketan and Masood had gone to see the film Satya at the Ganesh Talkies, where Lacchu Guru and his lackeys caught sight of them. They goondas surrounded the two boys and beat them senseless. They drew blood from Masood’s left eye and fractured a rib, his right wrist, and left thumb. Niketan had also been injured.

In next morning’s edition of Janvani on page three, which promised “All India” but gave only local news, ran the headline, “Lust-Crazed Hostel Student Beaten for Harassing Girl.” According to the story, a male member of a certain minority community was physically harassing a girl of a certain other community in front of the Ganesh Talkies when an agitated crowd formed and beat the living daylights out of him and his associate. Police officer in charge Vijay Narayan Sharma told Janvani that charges have been filed against the two students.

According to the de facto file at the Max Cyber Cafe, the publisher of Janvani was a regularly attending darbari at VC Agnihotri’s court. Monthly installments were paid to conceal news about corruption and chicanery connected with the university. Puff pieces on VC Agnihotri were continually printed in the newspaper along with regular reports commending his activities. Most evenings the publisher could be seen with VC Agnihotri, drinking whiskey and burping loudly in curtained cabin no. 2 in the family section of the only bar in town, the Asiana. He was that breed of animal who in political terms is a “socialist” and in cultural terms a “fascist.” In other words, a true Brahminist.

Hemant Barua and Kartikeya were sharing a joke. Hemant said, “I’ve changed the spelling of ‘globalization’ by changing the ‘b’ to a ‘c.”’

“What do you mean?” asked O.P.

“Here we don’t have ‘globalization’ but rather ‘glocalization.’ In other words ‘g’ plus localization.” It wasn’t clear from Hemant’s tone of voice if he was angry or being sarcastic.

“Tell us, Hindi literature recruit, how do you translate that into Hindi?” Kartikeya Kajle asked Rahul. He was from Pune and his mother tongue was Marathi.

“Well, the ‘g’ gives us ‘grisly,’ and localization stays the same, so, ‘grisly localization,”’ Rahul said in a weary voice.

“That’s the true reality,” said Kartikeya.

The reality was also that the centuries-old factory of falsehood and rumors had begun clanging and banging away, ready to take on Rahul and the others, whose only crime was to be neither immoral nor corrupt. That and — in this age of profiteers, conmen, and vice — they were poor, their pockets were empty, and they were guided by conscience.