Cover

Priyanka

Hedon

PENGUIN BOOKS

HEDON

Priyanka Mookerjee is engaged in what appears to be a lifelong battle to understand modern technology. She has learnt how to use a computer and google things, but the finer points of smartphones and Wi-Fi still elude her. She copes with all the stress by reading, eating too much cake and writing. This is her first novel.

Dedication

For my grandfather, who told me to learn the rules before breaking them

Button & the Small Fry

4 January 2008

Tars, can you please stop grinning at the blackboard? Basu’s going to think we’re up to something.

Yeah and it’s creeping me out.

I read the note dropped on to my desk and gave Button and Cookie a discreet finger, holding up the glossy cover of Macbeth as a shield.

My ponytail took a dive backwards, taking my head with it, and I yelped loudly.

‘Nayantara and Atreyi, please leave the room.’ Rina Basu, our stolid English teacher, dismissed us without any fuss, returning unruffl ed to her discourse on the complex conflation of the male and female within Lady Macbeth and the three witches.

It was interesting stuff, sure, but I had more important things to discuss.

Cookie shot us a reproachful glare as we exited the classroom, shaking with the effort of holding in our laughter and glee till we were safely outside. The first day back in school after the winter holidays, and we had already got ourselves kicked out of class. Cookie didn’t approve at all, but really, we had been perfectly sensible about it and chosen the least hysterical teacher to piss off, even if it was the only class that was actually tolerable to sit through.

‘Okay, so.’ Button turned to me as we walked down the corridor, heading towards our favourite library. ‘What was all that grinning about?’

I told her. She held her stride and shook her head.

‘Why didn’t you call me right after it happened? Moron.’

‘I did! Thrice! Your mom told me you were studying each time.’

Button sighed. ‘She’s gone nuts with these stupid board exams coming up.’

‘She hates me, I think.’

‘She hates all my distractions. Whatever. Tell me what the deal is, then? You met this guy—’

‘Man.’

‘Okay fine, you met this man—’

‘Actually, gentleman—’

‘I’ll kill you.’

I sniggered. ‘All right, all right. Go on—’

‘So you meet him at the wedding, you talk, you dance, and then what? What about the other parties? Did you see him again?’

I hadn’t. Not for lack of trying, of course. I had acquired the habit of scanning every room I entered, alternating between apprehension and hope. It was to no avail, however. The liveried kept trailing champagne around cocktail hours and dinners and receptions until, finally, the suspended week celebrating the wedding drew to a close. I had averted my eyes from the carcasses of the last party as we drove away from the fort, taking the executive decision to not spoil a happy illusion with images of dark, wiry men pulling down colourful canopies and dead fairy lights, exposing the splintery beams beneath.

‘Nope. Didn’t spot him anywhere. He must’ve left.’

‘So, what? That’s it? You’re just never going to meet him again? And that’s that?’

‘Well, he gave me his card and told me to call or email him if I ever needed help, or just to talk.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I think I said I would, but I don’t really remember.’

‘La-ame. Give me more details. Where’s he from? What does he do?’

‘Delhi. Don’t know what he does, but the name on his card is Vijay Dhillon.’

‘Woah, wait. Is he one of the Dhillons? Dhillon Paints and Fans and whatnot?’

‘I think so. Simi didn’t know jack. All she said was that he’s a friend of her sister’s and had just graduated from Princeton. Her mum’s been bugging her to ask him to help with her college essays.’

‘That’s it, then! That’s what you should do!’

‘What? Bug Simi? You know she doesn’t even want to go to college—’

‘God, you’re dumb. Ask him for help with your essays!’

‘I don’t need help with my college essays.’

‘You haven’t even started on one yet! I heard that Zarine bitch bragging about how she’s already done with all of hers.’

‘Seriously? Fuck. Fine, I’ll ask for help. He’ll probably be good, too. Seemed like he was super smart. Quoted this philosopher person and everything.’

As we approached the library, Button stopped short. ‘Dammit. I hope Basu doesn’t go off nipping to Roshan after class.’

‘Shit. Yeah.’ It was an unwritten pact between us that however much we pissed off every other staff member, we would never bother our vice principal, Dr Roshan. Mrs Basu was quite a good sort, but rules were rules, and The House had nothing in as much abundance as it did rules.

We looked at each other, concentrating. Button bit her lip and I scrunched up my eyes, both of us following the path of our conjoined thoughts without words. For a second, I dwelled on how infinitely better my life was with her in it, and I think now that sometimes we recognize moments of true happiness only after they’ve passed us by.

I came to a conclusion. ‘So, we have to get Roshan out of the offi ce in the break between periods. Basu won’t bother complaining if she can’t find her right away, I don’t think.’

‘But how?’

‘Say that she’s needed somewhere for something?’

‘Too risky. We’ll wind up with two ends to cover.’ Button was a firm believer in minimizing risk.

‘So we make sure that whatever reason we give her to leave the offi ce is a solid one.’

‘Well, I could go pretend to have a fall while walking past her room. You know how she is—she’ll insist on taking me to the nurse herself if I yowl loud enough.’

I nodded consensus. ‘Yeah, that’ll work. But let’s get one of the minions to do it? I still have more obsessing to do.’

‘Bloody minions can’t do anything right, man. Remember when we used that idiot chit from class five to tell The Raccoon they’d seen a mouse in Wood Hall? Stupid goat made a complete hack job of it. We didn’t even get twenty free minutes in the period!’

‘We’ll pick something easy then . . . fainting! She can pretend to faint. No talking required.’

‘Fine. Let’s go over to the junior side now and find one.’

‘Button?’

‘Tars?’

‘We are terrible people.’

We looked at each other, again. We willed ourselves not to laugh, again. And then we laughed a little, and then we laughed a lot, because yes, yes we were terrible people, but we were also young and brilliant and irreverent, and our lives gleamed heady and victorious ahead of us.

I noticed a little girl, probably from the third or fourth grade, trotting down one of the innumerable winding dark staircases that dotted The House.

Built for India’s governor general during the late nineteenth century, the grand Gothic towers of The House still imbue Calcutta’s skyline with a claim to architectural pride. All us girls who spent over a decade of our lives walking in through the arching green gates of The House carry the school around with us for the rest of our days, in the ankles we can never uncross, the backs we can never slouch, in the pleases and thankyous and old-fashioned curtsies that are now ingrained in us. In the sense of being set apart, of belonging to a privileged club removed in both space and time from the loud, sweaty, dirty city outside.

Inside, bookshelves are lined with William and Wodehouse, staff rooms are lined with Dickensian relics, and classrooms spend more time dispensing etiquette than economics.

‘Oi, small fry! C’mere.’

In the years before the Internet grew kids up before it was time to grow up, the pecking order of seniority still held great rank in school. Unwavering obedience, cited as honourable loyalty, was insisted upon, the looming threat of ostracization maintaining our order for us.

And so, the tiny junior clutched her fat red water bottle to her chest and blinked apprehensively at us, her eyes wide and not just a little afraid.

‘Listen up. You need to go and pretend to faint outside Dr Roshan’s offi ce. Give us away and you’re dead, understand?’

The small fry looked terrified enough at the idea to give us hope that she might not even have to fake the faint.

Having sent Small Fry off to take care of business, we settled into the woven cane chairs in a secluded nook at the back of the library. Our black Mary Janes dangled above cold grey stone, and Button listened with tempered excitement, cocking an eyebrow in trepidation as her friend, who generally suffered from verbal tirades and tangents, struggled to answer the basic, scary, inexplicable question—why?

I shook my head, trying to find the words. ‘It was so weird, Button. Like all these random thoughts and memories rushed into my—not even head, no. Like, into my senses or something. The colour of sunlight at three in the afternoon and the smell of unplucked lavender and an image of the house I was born in but don’t even remember. I guess it felt, I don’t know, inevitable?’

I broke off at Button’s expression, somewhere between mirth and nausea. ‘Shut up!’

‘I didn’t say anything!’

‘Shut UP!’

‘Call him tonight.’

‘I’ll slap your ugly face.’

‘He gave you his number! Just send him a message!’

‘No.’

‘Say that again.’

‘No—ow! Don’t punch me!’

‘Send him a message, then.’

‘FINE!’

She snorted, satisfied. ‘How old is he?’

‘No idea. Old.’ I thought about the information at hand, tried to do the math. ‘Maybe twenty-four or something.’

‘Holy shit! That’s almost twenty-five!’

‘He’s a hot fossil.’

‘A dashing dinosaur.’

‘A regal relic!’

‘Sexy uncleji?’

‘Too much. Listen, read this. Wrote it when I got home yesterday.’

‘Instead of doing the psych project. Idiot.’

‘Whatever, I’m topping the class anyway.’

‘Zarine’s catching up, though. She got two marks more than you on the last test.’

‘Shut up and read it.’

Button finished reading the crinkled page torn out from my favourite notebook and nodded. Looking very serious—a rare look on her—she gathered up my holes and buttoned them into place.

‘It’s really nice, Tars. But let’s not tell anyone except Cookie about this.’

‘Wasn’t planning on it, but why?’

She folded up the sheet and slipped it into her pocket. ‘Because we don’t care that you’re a raving loon.’

Button was, as always, just convincing me that it was okay to want what I wanted. She couldn’t have known then how it would go on to change the very fabric of the air around me, flush as it was thereafter, with a million tingling frequencies.

You see, when Jay Dhillon walked into my life, I was labouring under that omnipresent delusion of youth, convinced the world was mine for the taking.

With the discovery of purpose, I realized the loss of my freedom. But this was before that bothered me. It was before I learned that nothing is ever what it seems, and that our lies are just dressed up versions of hopeful truths—they are dreams.

Besides, it was one of those things that happened because it had to. The universe had built me in such a way that had Jay and I met inside fading bodies, closer to ash than flesh, at eighty-three, I could not have but lost myself to him just as instantly, just as irrevocably. And I suppose that is what made the whole matter so terribly sad. The inevitability of it, you know; discarded time and irrelevant space.

This was always going to happen.

Caroline’s Ship

25 December 2007

It was a grand party, unfolding, as all grand parties do, in a full swing of champagne, ribbons, livery and politics.

Devika Das was getting married. But that means nothing, of course. It was Debi Mullick’s eldest granddaughter getting married.

Debi Mullick had been Chief Minister of West Bengal for thirty-four years now. In that time, he had established an authoritarian rule, while cloaked in the genteel figure of a soft-spoken barrister. The state had slowly crumbled; dust from what remained of business and industry mingled with the ashes of bureaucracy, even as people took to the streets waving loyal red flags. And through it all, Debi Mullick had sat upon a simple throne, gilded only ever so slightly, a sombre expression upon his pleasant face.

I was there because Devika’s younger sister, Simi, and I had been close since second grade. We had been assigned seats next to each other in fourth-period maths, which we had both failed. She had light-brown gossamer hair, a rosebud mouth set against very fair skin and constantly fiddled with a plain silver band on her right index finger.

Simi was very pretty, and because I was ugly as sin, I had to be her friend.

Her name is an anomaly: Simone Das. On paper she sounds like she speaks a little bit of Bangla with a pronounced Parisian accent. In reality, she speaks flawless Bangla and not a word of French. No one knows why her earthy, staunchly Bengali parents gave her this floaty, foreign name. I like to think it was a moment of whimsy, a shy hand grasped by a tentative paw one week before an arranged marriage. Maybe a character in some book they had both read times over (because when two people—even strangers—discover a book they both have loved, it feels like a shared secret).

Over time, I developed a great fondness for Simi. She was adorable and a fool. Anyone could take advantage of her with the merest show of friendship, and my affection for her grew out of a fierce protectiveness that wanted both to stop her from being so open to hurt and yet never, ever have her change.

Devika’s was a destination wedding, a novel concept at the time. Since the facade of upholding communist principles had to be maintained, the destination was in West Bengal itself, at an imposing old British-era fort on the banks of the Ganges. The fort had been converted into a plush five-star hotel by Sunny Arora, the groom’s father, but thankfully, the architects, designers, landscapers et al. had been able to resist the urge to stain warm red brick with cold stretches of glass and steel.

The Aroras had rammed all their Punjabi aesthetic into the wedding parties. The fort lay silhouetted against lawns laden with festivities. In a nod to his immense wealth, Sunny Arora had asked that the traditional dhol and shehnai players be supplemented with an international DJ—‘from the Europe only, ji.’

All around, everything was awash with the bright fluorescence of lights under a canopy of alternating royal-purple and rani-pink bands. The canopy stretched so far and wide that the eye searched in vain for a single spot of sky. Finding none, it moved down to the party below, where beautiful people moved about like the heartbreaking strains of a violin, resplendent in silk and chiffon and rouge and polki. The only breaks in the riot of colours were tables draped in white linen and studded with Baccarat dinnerware, glittering like calm pebbles against an endless shore.

I felt intolerably gauche in my powder-blue Swarovskistudded lehenga. The luxurious fabric swam around me, making me look like an imposter. I was better off in my refuge of jeans and an oversized T-shirt.

‘Shoot, Ma’s coming.’

Aunty was heading to where Simi and I stood cornering jacketed waiters and clearing out their platters of hors d’oeuvres, ostensibly to drag us off for another round of introductions. I wished again that Button and Cookie had been allowed to attend the wedding.

My family had been loath to let me partake of Debi Mullick’s hospitality as well. The politician was a pariah amongst the old order. He had been born into our world, for shame. How greed had led him astray! He had become a follower of Marx, of all the wrong ideas. He had wasted the good blood (Bengali, Brahmin, pure), and that was unforgivable.

In the end, I had been allowed to come only because my parents adored Simi.

‘Simi, Tara, come meet Choruji.’

Choruji was Debi Mullick’s wife, and my grand-aunt by marriage, thrice removed. She stretched like a corpulent octopus over a large length of a brocade couch, and as Simi’s mother ushered me towards her, I had the distinct, uncomfortable, ridiculous notion of feeling like a sacrificial lamb.

Aunty made some unfunny joke about how our families were connected through generations. So sweet that Simi and I had become such good friends, na?

Known for being as sparing with her words as she was extravagant with her diet, Choruji took me in slowly, in detail. I remembered being deathly afraid of her as a child. The expanse of her fat swallowed up her features, and I used to be scared because it looked like she had no face.

Without warning, she grabbed my cheek and gave it a hard pinch.

‘Good nose. Still too fat, no?’

I gaped at her. But she was done with me and had moved on to Simi. Her gaze held approval now, and she smiled as she asked her how old we had become.

‘Seventeen, Choruji.’

‘Too young still, no? Three, four more years, and then we can find you a boy.’

I felt a strong rush of dislike for Choruji. Hate, almost. To be fair, it extended beyond just her. I was holding her up as a representative, symbolic and universal. And I wondered, is this really all people see when they look at other people? A nice nose and bad body? Is this all we could be? And why was this not all I could see?

That old familiar, a great blue sadness, crept up beside me. I tugged at Simi’s mother’s sari, the zardozi border pricking points into my skin. ‘Aunty, I’m not feeling well. Could I go lie down in my room, please?’

I knew of a little path, largely obscured by untended shrubbery, which led straight down from the lawns where the party was being held to the banks of the Ganges. It was muddy from the high tide, but that damn lehenga had caused me so much grief that I merely rejoiced at the wet earth collecting on my hem.

As I walked, I stopped trying to battle the sadness. I had found that letting it wash over me was therapeutic, in a way.

I am a liar. I am gauche. I am confused. I am seventeen. And I am young. Too young.

At seventeen, we don’t realize what it means to be seventeen. We can’t quite see the world for what it is, though we’ve started to feel it a bit. And it gives us, it gives me, a hint of how horribly alone the going will get.

I stood at the bank for a long time. The water had been blue when I got there, but began turning a deep gold as the sun started going down. The bobbing boats dotting the vista seemed to be moving shoreward, heading back home. But I’d been concentrating on what lay past the boats, further down, closer to the horizon, because I was still seventeen and the horizon still looked like freedom.

I would be glad to leave. The wedding, the fort, the city, the country, the home. I wasn’t sure which part of it all made me feel like this, foreign in my own skin. But I think it was just that I had started to sense that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. What was I supposed to do, here in the middle of this big fat Gatsby party? Who was I supposed to be? I wasn’t like everyone else. Of course, this is not to say that everyone is the same, but they are, at least, some personal version of sane.

All this while, the evening had been stealing away, bringing the night closer and closer. And I’d been staring at the water, the sun dying upon it, spreading as it melted and sank. Burned, and drowned.

I felt quite mad.

Recently, my parents had started staging frequent weekend getaways to this fort-hotel. We spent a lot of time swimming and eating, and when they retired to their room to sleep away the blazing afternoons, my brother and I explored the grounds.

While Polo clambered down to the banks of the river and asked the local kids to teach him how to skip rocks, I walked down to the caretaker’s cottage, hoping to get a story and a biscuit out of the wizened old man. He had lots of stories to tell, but I always asked him to repeat the enduring legend surrounding the fort: Caroline’s story.

She had been brought here when she was just eleven; her father, Commodore Harringdon, had been stationed at the fort over a hundred years ago, when the Raj still ruled. The river-bound fort was one of the most important British outposts in Eastern India, under constant threat from French forces in the neighbouring district of Chandernagar, and Caroline grew well into her teenage years without ever being able to leave the premises.

In the spring of her sixteenth year, as a fresh new regiment drew into the harbour, relieving those who had served too long under a hot sun, Caroline met Charles.

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

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