The Girl with the Golden Parasol

THIRTY

Things were changing fast. A store selling seized customs goods opened next to Max Cyber Cafe. Pepsi, Coke, and Miranda stalls were springing up everywhere. So were fast-food joints, and in one of them the waiters even wore Nawab-style plumed turbans and creased uniforms. There, the same burger you could get in a regular dhaba or snack van for 5 rupees would cost you 20. The dosa that normally cost 12 would cost 22 rupees. What was surprising was that this kind of shop was most prevalent. Noodles, pizza, fried chicken, ice cream, burgers, Manchurian — a whole new menu of things to eat and drink had arrived. A big store selling greeting cards, cake, and gift items had opened next to the university’s supermarket. There were four shops on campus selling paan and cigarettes. One was right in front of the hostel, and under the guise of selling Ayurvedic medicine sold everything from “honey raisin” bhang balls to the same thing in a form you can inhale: ganja and hashish, brown sugar, and white powder. Condoms (both domestic and foreign brands) and oral contraception were now completely out in the open. Everywhere were AIDS posters and slogans, and advertisements for ultrasound and abortion.

At night, everything from the hard stuff (Boney Scott, Macdowell, Old Monk, Diplomat, Director’s Special) to the cheap stuff (bathtub mahua sold in plastic pouches) to the rough stuff (liquor made from a herb said to revive the dead) was sold at the fruit juice stand behind the post office. The police took their weekly cut, and that was that.

Numbers games and the lottery made for big business everywhere. There were three local cable channels that showed porn late at night—“blue films.” During the day the same stations basically showed sermons of Asaram Bapu, Murari Bapu, and others like them. As religious programming proliferated — the bhajans, the revivals, the preaching — so increased crime, rape, abortion, murder, thuggery, and theft. Commerce in women, and violence against them, increased in proportion to the number of beauty pageants and fashion shows.

Temples were springing up everywhere. It was a way to “clean” illegally seized land and black market cash. Untold amounts of money were circulating among just a few people. Some 45 of every 100 rupees in the country was undeclared, illegal, black. Every day new businesses were set up that existed only on paper, only to disappear in the middle of the night along with people’s money. Fake companies were openly exchanged on the stock market, defrauding honest citizens of their life savings. Farmers, unemployed youth, conned women, all were committing suicide. NGOs and private schools were sprouting like mushrooms and making a killing.

Apparently, twenty women from the girls’ hostel frequented the Asiana bar and the new three-star hotel, Naurang, and worked as call girls. Everyone knew who they were, but kept quiet. The girls’ connections went right to the top. Cars came and went from the girls’ hostel. These were the “empowered” women. A certain brand of feminism had taken over, dictating that a hardworking girl could become a nurse, teacher, stenographer, typist, or a working “lady” who also attends to household chores. Or, she could become a “read the Gita, become a Sita” kind of overworked, downtrodden yet pious wife. But if she becomes a sex worker, in no time at all she’ll have that nice house and start riding around in cars.

What sort of paradox was this? No one objected if a woman sold herself in the market. But it was verboten for her to want to establish a human, private connection with someone.

If Anjali were to win the crown of Miss Femina India, the personal prestige of PWD Minister L. K. Joshi would only increase. But if Anjali cultivates a human, emotional, and real relationship with me, she’ll get nothing but notoriety, Rahul thought.

This is the way the market doled out its funds. This was how profits were turned. All roads leading to power and wealth were guided by the same equation.

The Hindu Raj was more or less already in place. All that remained was to stretch one’s patience for a few more riots, a bit more bloodshed, and the completion of a single temple.