Noon (6 page)

Sumitra smiled coyly. The Rajamata beamed; the crow’s feet around her eyes scattered. ‘Good, beti. I’m glad he’s spoiling you; you deserve it.’ Sethia knew before
she clutched his hand, at once apologizing for her lateness and asking swiftly for a Scotch and soda, that his resolve had shattered. And when guiding the Rajamata into the house, they passed the
glass doors of the dining room, through which she spied the table laid for ten, he said, in response to her question – ‘Dinner already?’ – ‘Take your time, Rajamata.
There’s no hurry; it’s a buffet.’

In that instant he hoped that someone present might see the gesture as a gallant one. But turning into the drawing room, Sethia knew from Mahapatra’s dancing eyes and the sad contempt in
those of his wife that no one had forgotten his bluster of a few moments before.

At first, Sethia had no regrets. But when the guests had resumed their places in the drawing room and cheer returned to the party, which Mahapatra was now savagely dominating, Sethia felt a stab
of pain. From the corner of his eye, past two sets of glass doors, he saw Bharat Singh snuff out the candles on the virgin dining table; a rapid stream of smoke climbed into the spotlit emptiness
of the room. More lights came on and one by one the dinner arrangement was undone, cutlery reassembled and re-laid. A tall stack of plates, interleaved with napkins, appeared at one corner of the
dining table. Sethia could see rapid figures moving across the greasy pane of tube light in the kitchen door. He imagined his wife trying to salvage the pasta; or simply binning it, and wondering
how she would present her delicate starter of lettuce and pâté, so clearly intended for a small single plate, in the form of a buffet.

When the first plates appeared on napkined laps in his drawing room, Sethia saw in the lettuce drooped sadly over the pâté, in the heap of soggy orange pasta around which the pink
juices of the meat ran freely, the full calamity of what had befallen his dinner party. His wine, which was to have been decanted, stood precariously, like some university plonk, on a stack of
coffee-table books.

Mahapatra was entertaining the room, and especially the Rajamata, with a story of Sita Baroda, the last wife of the Maharaja of Baroda, who after Independence, had made off with the Baroda
jewels.

‘When they realized they were gone, she was already in Ceylon. She was at a state dinner when a message came from India to the Governor General of Ceylon, instructing him to “Arrest
that woman.” The Governor General replied, “I can hardly arrest her; she’s on my right.” ’

The diplomatic women shrieked with laughter. Brigitte Servain said, ‘No, it’s too good.’

The Rajamata smiled with pleasure, then said, ‘Maggu, tell the story of Honey Hohenlohe and Sita Baroda.’

‘From the Club Marbella?’ Maggu asked.

The Rajamata nodded and sipped her whisky.

‘Well, Honey Hohenlohe, as you know,’ Maggu began, ‘
owned
the Club Marbella. And so one night Sita Baroda was there and was banging on about Baroda and titles, and how
she was HRH and Honey was only HSH, Her Serene Highness, and so finally she says, “And in Baroda, I receive a twenty-one gun salute,” at which point, Honey, a big blonde Texan, who
couldn’t give a fuck, says, “I bet you do, darling. Right up your big black ass.” ’

As laughter filled his drawing room Sethia felt his hatred reach a pinnacle and crystallize. Look at these mediocrities, he thought, eating my wine and drinking my food, while holding me in
contempt. Who are these people with their false manners, making me feel small in my own house? These third-rate princes, who were meant to defend us from foreign occupation, and who each became a
worse toady than the other. Here, their descendants sit now, with the ambassadors of the same powers that ennobled them and turned them into puppets, regaling them with banal tales of European
drawing rooms. While I, who have worked twice as hard and given back twice as much, am like a sort of businessman fool footing the bill.

But what could he do? His protest was gone, his fight forfeited. And to complete the last of what had been an evening of incomplete gestures, he rose, and without a word to anyone, went upstairs
and got into bed.

His last memory was a late-night image of his wife in blouse and petticoat, taking off her jewellery before a dimly lit dressing table.

‘I hope I was not too rude . . .’ he said in sleep and partial hope.

‘Don’t worry,’ she replied archly, putting the last of her gold bangles in a shallow silver tray, ‘they didn’t even notice.’

*   *   *

The years crawled and then raced. A new energy seeped into every corner of life in India. The memory of that time of shortages faded. And with that change, as purchasing power
parities turned to real terms, men like Sethia grew into giants overnight. Business ceased to be one of many stories; it became the only story. And the people who visited India in those new decades
did not seek out the princes as they once had; they sought out men like Sethia.

But Sethia never forgot. He never forgave himself that on that night, now lost in the darkest folds of the 1980s, when no one had known that the country was on the eve of change, he had not had
the courage to be the man he intended to be. And he was not above settling scores. In fact his antipathy for the princes had surpassed the Rajamata’s person, now old and frail, and had
extended to all the descendants of all those families to whom gun salutes of any number, ranging from one to twenty-one, had ever been offered.

Just before the close of the decade, he had tried to avenge himself with the Maharaja of Gwalior.

The Maharaja had entered politics and wanted to meet Sethia as part of the regular fund-raising activities politicians conduct at election time. Sethia readily agreed to see him. They sat in the
study of his old Lutyens Delhi house. Across from them, on the desk, were crested silver frames containing pictures of the Maharaja’s family with other princes and British dignitaries as well
as a large collection of coloured stone lingas.

Sethia, after several minutes of stilted conversation, over the course of which he agreed to give the Maharaja the ten lakhs he wanted for his campaign, looked somewhat aimlessly over at the
desk and muttered, ‘The junk the princes collected!’

The Maharaja was not sure he had heard right.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said,’ Sethia repeated, ‘the junk you princes collected.’

At this the young Maharaja laughed uproariously. ‘You couldn’t be more right,’ he said, ‘when I go through some of my father’s and grandfather’s things,
I’m filled with shame. I think of the incredible bronzes and stone sculpture that it was possible for them to have made collections of. And what do we have instead? Porcelain seals.
Paperweights. Models of European landmarks. Nudes by forgotten artists. What can I say? Except that I think, with colonization, we forgot our points of reference.’

Sethia sank into a dissatisfied silence. This was not the reaction he had hoped for. He felt like a man forced to swallow a ball of phlegm he had been ready to spit out. Then, tucking in the
crimped and fan-shaped end of his lungi between his legs, he said to the Maharaja, ‘How come you have chosen to meet me in your bed clothes?’

The prince looked puzzled. He gazed down at his kurta pajama, and with great hesitation, fearful he was compromising his ten lakhs, said at last: ‘I’m not sure I know what you
mean.’

‘Ah!’ Sethia said, and continuing with musical fluency, added, ‘I was told by my elders that pajamas were to be worn between the bathroom and the bedroom, and never, if it
could be helped, in the corridor.’

The Maharaja’s confusion grew; he felt perhaps that a joke had been made, but he was not sure. He smiled uneasily; Sethia’s expression remained stern and expectant.

‘One has to compromise,’ the Maharaja said at last, in as mollifying a tone as he could manage.

Sethia’s face turned to disgust, as though he had lost respect for his adversary. He rose to leave. ‘You’ll have your money, Gwalior. You should have asked for more while you
had the chance.’

With this, he was gone.

*   *   *

The nineties, which with the coming of Coca-Cola, Ruffles potato crisps and MTV brought more hope than the high principles of the years before had ever done, made a new man of
Amit Sethia. In this spring of liberalization, when most men his age were consolidating their gains, the possibilities that opened up returned him to the full bloom and vitality of his youth. He
bought new cars, Brioni suits, he travelled abroad every month, he switched his drink from Black Label to Dom Pérignon, he fell in love again. He thought of the years that lay on the other
side of the change as wasted years; he summed up Sumitra in his heart as ‘pre-liberalization’, dooming her to the deadest of dead pasts. And though she remained in his home for many
years, he had begun to see other women, particularly a young lawyer. But, at dinner on her barsati only a few weeks after they met, Amit Sethia was reminded that the past was not yet behind
him.

It was May. They ate outside on one of the last nights when it was possible to do so. Udaya had lit the terrace with glass fanooses; they had, between the two of them, drunk the champagne Amit
had brought as well as most of a bottle of what Pappu, the bootlegger, his cellars now brimming with new varieties, described as ‘polee fussee’.

‘Use mine,’ Udaya had said, when Amit asked for the bathroom. ‘Rehan is sleeping in the other room.’

He had gone in good spirits, but returned with a contemptuous smile.

‘So,’ he said, ‘I see that you’re one of those.’

‘One of whom?’ Udaya asked in confusion.

‘One of those who run behind every third-rate little shit of a prince.’

‘Excuse me,’ Udaya said, hardly able to gauge his meaning past the violence of his language. Seeing her face fall, Amit controlled himself, and began speaking in more measured tones.
‘I see you’ve put up a picture of Maggu Mahapatra and that gandu prince, what’s his name, Tuttu . . .’

‘Retaspur,’ Udaya asserted firmly, ‘both old friends. And one now dead, so please go easy on him.’

‘Good, good that he’s dead. What else do you expect when you drink all day, and get it in the ass from truck drivers and servants at night. Yellow fingers, the lot of them, all
yellow fingers.’

‘What’s wrong with you, Amit?’ Udaya said, flaring up. ‘I said that he was a friend and he’s dead. What is this venom?’

‘Venom!’ Amit exploded. ‘Calling me venomous? And praising those shits, those third-rate good-for-nothings. Friends! They’re nobody’s friends; they just collect
courtiers. That’s what you were: a courtier, a little hanger-on. And me, I suppose I’m nothing to you. I don’t see my picture anywhere in your house.’

‘Is mine in yours?’ Udaya asked, frigid with anger, smiling slightly.

Amit Sethia lost all composure. His eyes bulged, his lips ran dry, and the voice that broke from his throat was as loud and coarse a thing as Udaya had ever heard. ‘You’re just a
little climber! Why don’t you go and suck Maggu Mahapatra . . .’

In all fairness to Amit Sethia, he had not meant for the words to come out that way. His idiomatic English was not entirely under his control, and he had, in all probability, meant something
more along the lines of ‘suck up to’ rather than what he actually said. But, under the circumstances, it was impossible for Udaya to say anything other than what she did say, in an icy
threatening whisper: ‘Get out!’

Amit Sethia rose and swept his spectacles off the table, glancing for a moment at what must have seemed like an apparition in the doorway of the barsati. When he had gone, Rehan, in his white
night suit, approached his mother cautiously. ‘Who was that man, Ma,’ Rehan asked with trepidation, ‘was he the same one who came that day on Dussehra? Who is he?’

For a moment she didn’t answer. Then clutching the little hand that rested on her shoulder, she swung around, and with eyes glittering in the candlelight, said, ‘A good man, baba. A
good man. Just one who is a little angry.’

The next day, before Udaya and Rehan woke, the early morning joggers and walkers of Golf Links were treated to the spectacle of a dozen bouquets, half a spring almost, and at least two entire
flower shops – and not just roses, but orchids and lilies in May – encircling the watchman’s bunk at number 187.

And then, one cold winter day, almost in our present time, when Sethia’s hair had turned white, and he had grown it to shoulder length, during a period of his life that
Udaya described as ‘Menoporsche’, the opportunity to settle his ancient score arose.

That year, the World Economic Forum, due to the terrorist attacks in America, was being held in New York. Sethia was staying at the Four Seasons on 57th Street. After a breakfast session with
Musharraf, he returned to his room, turned on the television and picked up the phone to call Udaya. When the long, mournful ringing gave way to her voice, he put the television on mute. The images
flashed silently before him as Udaya’s energetic chatter filled the space that the television’s noise had left. She wanted to know what the weather was like; how was Musharraf? Did he
seem serious about peace with India? Had Amit bought the three bottles of Jo Malone’s Tuberose that she had asked for? Amit half-listened while resting his gaze on the television. Udaya was
trying to convince him to visit the college Rehan was due to attend that summer.

‘How can I, darling? It’s in Massachusetts.’

‘So?’

‘What do you mean “so?”? I’m in New York. It’s like asking someone to see a college in Amritsar on a trip to Delhi.’

‘You know, Amit, unless he feels you care . . .’

‘Tch, Udaya! I care, but I’m not going a hundred and fifty miles to see his college. Besides, they’re all the same, these liberal artsy places. If he really wants to do arts
and literature, he may as well do it in India. I don’t see why I should pay thirty thousand dollars a year for him to read novels in America.’

‘Suit yourself, but then don’t complain to me that . . .’

‘Wait, wait, Shhh, Udaya, one second.’