Free The Way Things Were by Aatish Taseer Page A

Sanskrit than he first thought.
    Kitten Singh returns.
    ‘I wanted to ask you,’ she says, with sudden urgency. ‘Did you tell your mother you were coming here?’
    ‘No, we haven’t spoken . . .’
    ‘Good move. I’m fine with her, of course; and I’m in touch with your Isha Massi—’
    ‘Will she be coming?’ he interrupts.
    ‘Here? No, no. But I see her occasionally. Your mother, however, I think she still bears a grudge from the old days, from Gulmarg, you know.’
    He feels a stab of guilt – he should not have come, he knows – but before he can say anything more, she says, ‘But the reason I came to find you is to tell you – I can’t believe I just thought of it! – you know what day it is today?’
    ‘No?’ he says.
    ‘It’s 26 June! The day I first met your father, some thirty-five years ago. Would you believe it? And what a night we had that night. We were at Bapa’s house, I remember – it was just after the Emergency was declared. And we went from there to the Cellar after Bapa’s . . . you’re too young to remember: it was a famous nightclub of that time. And then, finally, we ended up, all of us, at the Oberoi coffee shop. We must have been out till dawn that night. Drinking, smoking joints, phalana-dhimkana . . . What times those were, mad times! There was such a . . . I don’t know. I see you children today and you’ve seen it all. We were such innocents. But willing to try anything. Once, you know! And, your father – tobah! – was
he
a wild thing! So bold.
    ‘We had to get him out of town that night, you know. Because – this is so funny! – while we were in the Oberoi, the lights suddenly went out – you know, the usual power cut/shower cut. And, with everyone several sheets to the wind, he leaps up onto a table, your father, and makes an announcement in the dark, if you please. He says he will give any man willing to assassinate Mrs Gandhi £1,000. Now, my God, Skanda, all hell broke loose. Can you imagine: a man, just after Mrs Gandhi has declared a state of Emergency, offering money to an assassin to kill her. Meri to uddhar hi nikal gayi. When the lights came on, pin-drop silence. Not a squeak. I said, “Toby, tu iddron nikal. There are intelligence men everywhere; the management is up in arms; you’d best get out of here.” He said, “Kitten, I was meant to leave for Hampi in a few days.” I said, “Leave now. This minute. Phoran. Just go.”’
    Gauri says, ‘But how would they have known it was his voice if the lights were out?’
    He likes her for asking this; nothing passes her by.
    ‘Gauri, my dear, don’t be so silly. They have their ways. And the accent, no? Unmistakable. How many people would have spoken like that? And a prince, to boot; they would have flayed him alive. Old Mrs G, you know how she despised the princes!’
    ‘And did he leave, my father?’
    ‘Oh, that very night. Or morning, rather. At sunrise.’
    ‘With my mother?’
    ‘I don’t think she was in the picture yet.’
    ‘I’d always heard they met that night?’
    ‘Well, maybe she was there. I don’t remember. But romantic, no? Foolhardy! An outlawed prince leaving town at dawn . . .’
    ‘When the sun was but an orange-brown infant?!’ Gauri offers.
    ‘Screw you,’ Skanda says, laughing.
    ‘It’s straight out of . . .’ Kitten begins, ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Mills and Boon?’
    ‘No, no, silly girl, Shakespeare, Cervantes. Not Mills and Boon. Chalo, I must tend to my guests. You two are fine?’
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘Good. I’m sure you’ll get along famously.’
    He thinks not, but then he wonders . . . It feels like one of those remarks one remembers later. And even this meeting, it has an odd feeling of significance to it. There’s something about Gauri.
    Once Kitten Singh has gone, she says abruptly, ‘It has a bad reputation, you know, your great language. Here, at least, it has been co-opted by all the worst people. Every Hindu nut from here to