Department Of Denials , livre ebook

ANURAG MATHUR
The Department of Denials
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE DEPARTMENT OF DENIALS
Anurag Mathur was born in Delhi and educated at Scindia School, Gwalior, St. Stephen s College, Delhi and the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, He is a journalist in the print and electronic media and loves music, eating out and tennis-besides reading, of course. His published books include the best-selling novels The Inscrutable Americans, Scenes from an Executive Life and Making the Minister Smile .
This book is dedicated to Biji and Papaji, my late maternal grandparents .
One
I, said Babar Thakur (Babs to his friends), dangling his feet in the fast-flowing waters of the Himalayan stream beside which they were sitting, am going to become the prime minister of India.
Get your filthy feet out of the water, advised his friend Jeet Lamba, as he was to advise about so many things, so many times, in so many situations till that terrible, never-to-be-forgotten night. You haven t washed your feet all day and the dirt is poisoning the fish.
You didn t hear what I said, complained Babar, I m going to be prime minister and I don t care about any damn fish because they don t even vote. They can all fry, for all I care.
Well, I care about eating fish, but certainly not if they stink of your mouldy feet. Go sit somewhere else, Jeet demanded.
Babar reluctantly moved up the little bank of the rivulet he and Jeet had come across during their trek around Dehra Dun. It was a hill-time dusk, as if a blue-bodied god had risen and enfolded the world. The trees glinted a few colours and the stars were starting that cascade of glory you see only in the hills. Jeet came squelching up to Babar, carrying two fish and started the process of cleaning and cooking them. Babar sat with his back against a rock, his hands behind his head. They had just finished taking the final exams at their college, St. Stephen s, and had given themselves this holiday, after all those months of cramming and sweating.
Now Babs looked at the sky, darkening as though to act as a celestial curtain to the battle of light that the stars waged nightly. I m going to be like one of those stars, he swore. I ll start small, then I ll grow, I ll collect people in my train and before anyone knows it, we will be like a comet, eating up the smaller stars unfortunate enough to lie in our path. We ll blaze the trail, the others will follow and we ll dominate the entire Indian firmament. We won t just be stars, we ll be the suns and India will revolve around us. Does that vision turn you on, Jeet? Hey, Jeet, what d you say?
The fish have got burnt, we ll have to eat biscuits. Any left or have you hogged them all?
When I m prime minister, I ll make you home minister, but not if your only interest in life is fish and biscuits. You should be a housewife, feet, spending your life cooking, cleaning and getting laid. You have no vision, no sense of glory.
And no more matches to relight the fire. Okay, so it s bread and biscuits for the prime minister tonight. Do you think any tribal girls come down to this place at night to have a bath or wash their clothes? I m sure I could show them a few interesting things or two.
I m sure you could and I m sure the local cops could show both of us even more interesting things. I would be the first prime minister in the world to launch his career while hanging upside down from a village thana while the daroga conducts a dialogue with his trusty cane on the soles of my feet. In any case, what d you think?
About what?
Babar sighed. I just told you. I m going to be PM.
Great idea, agreed Jeet, I ll handle the women s wing. Think of it.
Babs breathed deeply and then looked at the roar of stars above. When heaven is within touching distance, it does something to an ambitious young man. Babar watched as the stars took on individual characters. Some seemed familiar, some actually smiled, a few were delighted. He felt it was a sign.
Jeet began to snore beside him. Babs gave him a kick, Say something. I told you I m serious, don t fall asleep.
I can t think, protested Jeet sleepily, besides you ve got a Muslim name. You ll never get to be PM.
I know a way to use the minority angle. It ll be an asset, not a liability. But are you with me? He gave Jeet another kick.
Jeet snored loudly.
I suppose that means yes, conceded Babar. Tomorrow we start planning. And he too turned and dropped off to sleep.
So that s where it started, beside a forgotten brook, when the stars chandeliered the skies and inspired one young man onto a path he could never have imagined. How strangely it ended. Such is ambition.
The next morning they walked back to the highway and waved at an approaching truck with Love is sweet poison painted above the front window. The driver, despite his apparent disappointments in matters of the heart, proved friendly and let them clamber into the back with their rucksacks.
They sped towards Dehra Dun through hills awash with colours as though nature itself was perpetually playing Holi. But as they got closer to the city, the countryside became more bare, the air dirtier, the road more crowded.
You don t actually enter an Indian town anymore, Babar was constrained to note, you go to war with it. What a mess we ve made of our cities.
They went into the main road and the air was the colour of stale chocolate, a mix of vehicle fumes and dust.
Fitting, Jeet agreed, sneezing. And this place is supposed to be the pensioner s paradise.
I don t think pensioners live here anymore, Babar refuted, I think anyone who lives here for any length of time just looks as though he s a pensioner.
The truck driver dropped them off at the bus stand.
Just make sure it s not a video coach, Babar yelled to Jeet as he got their backpacks stowed away in the back of a bus. I m not sitting through five hours of pelvic thrusts.
Mercifully it proved to be an ordinary, air-conditioned coach, with no sign of a video, particularly one with its volume turned to maximum, which had been the case on their journey from Delhi. This status was confirmed by the conductor who thought they were complaining about his bus s video-less state.
What to do, sahib, he lamented. My fate itself is bad. But if you wish, he added generously, not wishing them to share his fate, you can wait for the next bus. That has a first-class video.
Hastily, they sat down.
During the entire journey, Babar sat quietly, waiting for Jeet to speak. Not a word came from the young man who dozed all the way. Finally, as they entered the suburbs of the sprawling capital city, Babar spoke up.
You know, unemotionally he spoke to Jeet who had woken up, you re the worst best friend any guy ever had.
Jeet looked at him in astonishment.
But I haven t said a word, he protested.
Babs glared at him.
Exactly, he ground out. After what I told you last night, at the very least I thought you could have something intelligent to say.
Say? Say what? Jeet tried to remember, What did you say?
Babar rested his head on the seat in front.
I don t know why I bother with you, he said irately. I told you about the PM thing.
What PM thing? I haven t seen today s papers. What happened to the PM?
Nothing s happened to the PM. I told you I was going to be PM. Babs was really exasperated.
Oh that, Jeet remembered. Yeah, fine.
Fine, is that all? I just told you my life s ambition.
You ll get over it, Jeet consoled him, trying to doze again. Last month your main ambition in life was to star in porno films.
Babs saw the futility of trying to speak to such a friend.
You ll see, he promised, you just wait and see, if you don t sleep through my inauguration, that is.
They got off at the bus terminus and Babar took an auto-rickshaw to Lodi Estate where his family lived in one of the senior government officers flats. It was late afternoon and he wasn t expecting anyone to be at home. His father would be at work, his mother at the Gymkhana playing rummy, and his sister would probably be out helping shoot a film for the television production company for which she worked.
He was surprised to see his father s car parked outside their ground-floor flat. He rang the bell and was even more astonished to find his mother opening the door.
He s been caught, she told him right away with unconcealed bitterness. For years I ve been warning him and now he s been caught.
She walked away from him and went back to the bedroom. Babar could hear her berating his father who, as usual, said nothing.
Babar dragged his backpack to his room and could easily imagine what had happened. He supposed his mother, or Mrs T, as she was universally known, had reason to feel the annoyance she was so loudly expressing. But then her temper was quite celebrated in bureaucratic circles. He grinned.
He had never been close to either of his parents, having grown up in a succession of boarding schools while his father was transferred from one town to another during the course of his career in the excise department. He was now a Joint Secretary in the income tax department, and a fact that he had hidden all these years could no longer be concealed, as direly predicted by his wife.
The fact was that his father, Bahadur Prasad Thakur, was completely and utterly honest.
His subordinates regarded it as frighteningly abnormal. His wife regarded it as suicidal. But so far, most people had overlooked it as the eccentricity of an extremely competent, exceptionally hardworking, but somewhat quiet and self-effacing officer. If he was intent on being peculiar, most people who dealt with him felt, that was his business. But no one ever doubted his knowledge, his ability, or even his genuine humaneness especially in a career where nearly every sin