The Girl with the Golden Parasol

THIRTY-THREE

Rahul had filled O.P. in on everything. He was so excited it was as if his own long-awaited dusky she-elf were coming to visit. “I’ll padlock the door from the outside and come back at four thirty. Don’t worry about anything, yaar!” said the six-foot-three ostrich, wiggling his camel-like neck back and forth.

And it was the camel who had bought, with his own money, a little plastic “packet.” For the last six days, Rahul had stood in front of the chemist’s, hand in pocket. But in the end, out of embarrassment, he couldn’t go through with it, and had returned empty handed.

Rahul playfully hopped onto the back of the camel and swung from his neck, exclaiming, “My dear bony fellow, I can’t quite figure out who I love more, you or her!”

“Mogambo khush hua! Mogambo happy man! Heh heh heh heh,” gushed the camel.

Anjali was going to set off from the department as soon as Padmashree Tiwari’s Vidyapati class ended. Rahul didn’t have to go to the department today. Anjali, however, had to first take the road surrounding the sports field, go between the two rocky overhangs behind the equipment storeroom, get through the bushes, and then very carefully climb up the hill to make sure no one saw her.

The back door of Tagore Hostel, always locked, had been left open by O.P. Anjali was to use the back stairs to get to the second floor, then keep by the side wall of the hallway and make her way to Room 252. At that hour all of the students were in class, and the doors to their rooms were padlocked. But if, by chance, someone appeared, Anjali could boldly put on an act, carefree, fully self-confident, since O.P. would simply tell the boy that Anjali was his sister.

Padmashree Rajendra Tiwari’s class ended at eleven thirty, so Anjali could be expected by noon.

Rahul was in a state of nervous excitement. As if a top were spinning inside of him. Or a toy jumping dog were leaping around, ceaselessly, since its coil was perpetually wound. Rahul’s heart was racing with the same speed as when he watched from his window for the yellow parasol bobbing its way up from the valley. And now, too, the sound of his heartbeat reached right to his ears. Tick-tick, tick-tick.

But was it love or malice thumping in his heart for Anjali? He himself didn’t know.

And exactly at five minutes past twelve, she arrived. Her face looked dipped in copper from the sun and fatigue and she was out of breath and exhausted.

O.P. had filled up the thermos with chai and placed a packet of sugar biscuits next to it. In one fluid motion he scooped up the padlock from the table, flashed Rahul a quick smile, left the room, and closed the door behind him. Then came the sounds of O.P. fastening the bolt from the outside, and his footsteps trailing down the hallway.

As he left, the dear camel bellowed a tune in a frightfully off-key voice.

My crazy heart — but where’s my sweetie!

It’s crazy — from explaining!

Rahul looked at Anjali, who was enthusiastically looking around Rahul’s room. “So, Miss Joshi, here you are. . finally,” Rahul said.

“You have no idea! It wasn’t easy. The path was awful, and I kept slipping,” Anjali said, beaming with a smile of success. She flipped her sandals off. “Look, it broke,” she said, pointing at her sandal. Her feet were covered in dirt. Then she twisted her elbow around to show Rahul.

He winced. Her elbow was completely scratched up and bleeding.

“Get me the Dettol,” Anjali said, as if she were in her own house and knew a bottle of Dettol was kept on the middle shelf on the left side of the cabinet.

But: there wasn’t Dettol. Rahul grabbed a can of aftershave spray, took hold of her arm and pushed the nozzle. . pffffffffffff.

Anjali gritted her teeth. The aftershave spray sharply stung the fresh wound.

Rahul looked at her again. Her hair was a mess, and she was clearly tired. There was a cut on her big toe, her elbow was scraped up, yet there was such a look of innocence on her face, a kind of singular tranquility seen on someone who’s finally found their way back home after an arduous, tortuous, strange, meandering journey.

“Where’s your parasol?” Rahul asked with some surprise.

“I hid it under that bush.”

“What if someone finds it?” This clearly troubled Rahul a bit.

“No one will find it.” Anjali was certain.

“What makes you so sure?”

“What do you mean what? I said so, didn’t I? No one will find it,” Anjali replied.

Tiny bells of laughter rang inside Rahul for no reason at all. He took Anjali’s hand into his own, and that’s all it took. The electromagnetic cloud burst inside of him; the two began to soar within its field. Rahul kissed each of Anjali’s eyes, then her forehead. The storm gathered itself into a whirlwind. Anjali and Rahul’s lips explored each other’s faces, searching for something.

“This is O.P.’s bed,” Rahul said, breathing heavily.

“What!?” Anjali said, quickly getting up. Rahul pulled her down onto his bed.

“So is this the window where you used to. .?” Anjali asked.

“Yes — this is the window where your yellow parasol meandered,” Rahul said, covering it.

And suddenly he realized that the two of them, even when out in the open, under the sky, on campus, had never felt so free as they did now. Was it possible that the outside world was more constricting than this little tiny room whose door was closed and locked from the outside?

Anjali looked at Rahul so intensely her eyes penetrated his face. She clasped her hands around the base of his neck, drew herself up, and began kissing him.

Just then Hemant’s words flashed through Rahul’s mind. Is it true that I’m just a sentimental clown who will be left with nothing? I’m always a loser. When it comes time to make a choice between one of her own caste and me, she’ll choose one of her own. She’ll take power, not me! Why? Because she is the daughter of L. K. Joshi, a cabinet minister of this corrupt government, and a Brahmin. It’s the same caste whose wicked reign has been like a curse to me and millions of others like me. They’re the same “critters” who have for centuries created this unjust, corrupt, gluttonous, vile hell on earth. They are the children of Ravana who kidnapped Sita, destroying Ram’s life in exile from his kingdom.

The terrifying faces of Acharya S. N. Mishra and Balram Pandey leered at him from above, both of whom wore moustaches like tiny black moths seated below their noses in the style of the Führer. It was the same fear that prevented him from sleeping that night. These conspiratorial, indestructible hypocrites ripped people like Rahul out of the ground and with a snap of their fingers threw them away like a simple blade of grass.

The fish in Rahul’s arms got agitated. The little red river running through the veins of his body where, up until a few seconds ago, had been playing a sweet-sounding melody for two teeny-tiny shining swimming fish, now portended a maelstrom. His hand advanced to her shirt, where he started jerking open the buttons.

“Wait, wait, what are you doing, Rahul?” Anjali wanted to grab his wrist. Her appeal was in vain, since by now her shirt was totally unbuttoned. Rahul’s hands were insistent.

“Rahul!” Anjali said, her voice cracking. “What are you doing? Please! Why are you in a hurry?”

“Because I’m not Rahul, I’m a leopard, a panther,” he said as he unzipped her jeans.

The leopard attacked his prey with full ferocity. Anjali stopped resisting. She gazed with the startled eyes of a doe at the animal atop her.

“Girls like to be roughed up, don’t they? They’re aching for Shahrukh Khan, aren’t they? The guy who he played in Darr.” Or, Salman Khan, who eats deer — Black Buck.

A fierce storm and the excitement of a wild, vicious animal surged together inside Rahul. With all the strength he could muster, he took revenge for centuries of injustice against downtrodden castes. Thup, thup, thup. His every thrust was a sting of revenge; his every movement part of the business of payback.

Anjali’s eyes were half closed, her mouth hung open, and her face glowed like hot embers.

It surprised him that as his vengeance on behalf of the oppressed castes grew deeper and sharper, Anjali’s eyes showed a look of near bliss, while her lips drew into the outline of a faint smile. “Oh, oh!”

A scene from that movie flashed in Rahul’s mind — no, it was a novel, Coetzee’s novel, In the Heart of the Country, the part when the black servant, after killing his white master, takes revenge for centuries of slavery and oppression of the black race by raping his daughter. But his revenge turns out to be something pleasurable for the girl.

Is it possible that Anjali. .? At the very heart of her biological makeup she’s inherited genes that make her prone to be a pleasure-seeking sensualist — hedonism is present in her DNA. Isn’t it possible she traveled all this way, braved rocky roads, climbed over hills, whacked her way through thorny thickets, just to get to this room, just to get her kicks and have some fun?

Rahul was suddenly swept with a strange feeling of inferiority. What if he was just a pleasure-giving plaything to her? Just some sex toy? A dildo?

Rahul was nearly at a loss. The leopard gathered every last bit of strength in his body and pushed for one more attack.

“You are really insane,” Anjali said afterward. “You said that you’d ‘arranged’ everything. Now look — what if something happens?”

Rahul experienced an entirely new sensation from the way she was looking at him. Her eyes shone with guilelessness, suggesting their deep physical intimacy, and it was a look she’d never given him before.

Rahul’s gaze fell on the bedsheets; there was Anjali’s blood. A lot of it. He looked at Anjali, froze, and stopped thinking altogether. It was like a blow to the senses.

She was looking at him with an unwavering gaze of deep maternal affection and warmth, her eyes brimming with the twinkle of a faraway star.

Her elbow was cut up, her feet were bruised, her sandal had broken, the bedsheets were soaked in blood, and on top of it all the scratches and fingernail marks on her back and arms, all of which she’d endured without so much as a peep, and now she was looking at him with such a deep, wordless compassion, sensuality, and tenderness. They were the eyes of some small child, incredibly innocent, free from the foul and filth and shame of the times. They were like newly sprouted, fully formed blossoms.

Rahul placed his head into Anjali’s lap and began to cry like a baby. Anjali kissed his forehead continually. She cradled his head in her arms and tried to calm him. She still wasn’t wearing any clothes; her thighs, stomach, and breasts were moistened by Rahul’s tears. His teardrops mixed with the blood and come on the bedsheet.

“Why are you crying? Shhhhh. . shhhhhhh. Someone might hear.” Anjali couldn’t understand why Rahul was crying. She kept repeating, “You are a real clown! Johnny Joker. My crazy boy.”

Finally she guessed why Rahul was crying and began to kiss his forehead. “Listen! I really do love you, you know. No one can separate us, I promise. Now please calm down.”

“Please, calm down!” Anjali said more loudly, teasing him, without caring that her voice was a girl’s voice that could carry outside, a voice that had never been heard coming from a room in this hostel.

Rahul became frightened. He kissed Anjali and began to laugh. A laugh on a helpless face covered in tears, anguish, and regret.

That Thursday, until four o’clock in the afternoon, Rahul and Anjali made love two more times with impatience and longing to be united with one another, as if they were two little fish swimming toward one another in a choppy sea. A pure, primal, ancient, eternal, natural impatience.