Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
They raised their arms in identically enthusiastic greeting when I approached them, although each was pleased to see me for his own reasons. Cliff De Souza had developed a passionate affection for Kavita Singh since I’d introduced them, and he’d hoped I might influence her in his favour. Having a far longer acquaintance with her, I knew that no power could influence Kavita toward anything not fully consonant with her will and her wish. Still, she seemed to like him well enough, and they had much in common. They were both almost thirty and unmarried—a status so unusual in the Indian upper middle class, in those years, that their families anguished over it at every feast and festival in the crowded calendar. They were both media professionals who prided themselves on their independence and artistic flair. They were also driven by the same instinctive tolerance to seek out, and fairly examine, each point of view in any apparent conflict of interests. And they were attractive people. Kavita’s shapely figure and perilously seductive eye seemed the perfect complement to Cliff’s rangy angularity and the boyishness of his artless, lopsided grin.
For my part, liking them both, I saw no reason to resist the matchmaker’s urge to meddle. In public I made it clear that I liked Cliff De Souza, and in private I praised him discreetly to her whenever the natural opportunity arose. They had a chance—a good chance, it seemed to me—and my heart put a wishing star in my eyes for them.
Chandra Mehta, on the other hand, was pleased to see me because I was his closest link to the black money in Salman’s mafia council, and the only link he could describe as amicable. Like Khader before him, Salman Mustaan saw great advantage in the access to Bombay’s film world that Chandra Mehta provided. New regulations at federal and state levels had tightened restrictions on the flow of capital, making it ever more difficult to launder black money. For many reasons—not least because of the irresistible glamour attached to the industry—politicians had exempted the movie business from many of those monetary and investment controls. They were boom economy years, and Bollywood films were going through a renaissance in style and confidence. The films got bigger and better, and had begun to reach out to a wider world market. As the budgets for successful films soared, however, producers exhausted the traditional sources of revenue. That convergence of interests drove more than a few producers and production houses into strange syzygies with gangsters: films about mafia goondas were financed by the mafia, and the profits from hit movies about hit men went into new crimes and real hits on real people, which in turn became the subjects for screenplays and new films financed by more mafia money.
And I played my part, so to speak, by working as the connection between Chandra Mehta and Salman Mustaan. The relationship was a lucrative one. The Salman council had put crores, each crore being ten million rupees, through Mehta-De Souza Productions, and drew clean, untraceable profits from the bottom line. That first contact with Chandra Mehta, when he’d asked me to find a few thousand American dollars on the black market, had fattened into a nexus that the portly producer couldn’t resist or refuse. He was rich, and getting richer. But the men who poured their wealth into his company frightened him, and every contact with them was menaced with the scent of their distrust. So Chandra Mehta smiled at me, and was glad to see me, and tried to pull me tighter into the tremulous clutch of his friendship whenever our paths crossed.
I didn’t mind. I liked Chandra Mehta, and I liked Bollywood movies. I allowed him to drag me into the worried, wealthy world of his friendship.
Next to him at the table was Lisa Carter. Her thick, blonde hair had grown long enough, after the short cut, to fall beside the oval cameo of her face. Her blue eyes were clear and glittering with passionate intent.
She was tanned and very healthy. She’d even gained a little extra weight—something she decried, but that I and every other man within her sight-horizon was bound to admire. And there was something new and very different in her manner: a warm, unhurried softness in her smile; a willing laugh that won the laughter of others; and a lightness of spirit that looked for and often found the best in those she met. For weeks, months, I’d watched those changes shift and settle in her, and at first I’d thought they’d grown from my affection. Although no formal relationship had been declared—she continued to live in her apartment, and I lived in mine—we were lovers, and we were far more than friends. After a time, I realised that the changes were not mine, but hers alone. After a time, I began to see how deep the well of her loving was, and how much her happiness and confidence depended on drawing that love into the light, and sharing it. And love was beautiful in her. It was a clear sky she gave us with those eyes, and a summer morning with her smile.
She kissed my cheek when I greeted her. I returned the kiss, wondering, as I stepped back, why a small concerned frown rippled from her brow to her cornflower-blue eyes.
Sitting next around the long table were the print journalists Dilip and Anwar. They were young, only a few years out of college, and still learning their trade in the anonymous vaults of The Noonday, a Bombay daily. At night, with Didier and his little court, they discussed the big breaking stories of the day as if they’d played key parts in the scoops or had followed their own instincts to the investigation’s end. Their excitement, enthusiasm, ambition, and limitless hope for the future so delighted everyone in the Leopold’s crowd that Kavita and Didier felt obliged to respond, occasionally, with sardonic sniping. Dilip and Anwar reacted well, laughing and often giving as good as they got until the whole group was shouting and pounding the table in delight.
Dilip was a tall, fair, almond-eyed Punjabi. Anwar, a third-generation native of Bombay, was shorter, darker, and the more serious of the two. New blood, Lettie had said to me with a smile, a few days before that afternoon. It was a phrase she’d once used about me, soon after I’d arrived in Bombay. And as I made my way around the table and looked at the two young men talking with such passion and purpose, it occurred to me that once, before heroin and crime, my life had been like theirs. Once I’d been just as happy and healthy and hopeful as they were. And I was glad to know them, and to know they were a part of the pleasure and promise of the Leopold’s crowd. It was right that they were there, just as it was right that Maurizio was gone, and Ulla and Modena were gone, and that I, too, would one day be gone.
Returning their warm handshakes, I moved past the young men to Kavita Singh sitting beside them. Kavita stood to give me a hug. It was the tender, close hug that a woman gives a man when she knows she can trust him, or when she’s sure his heart belongs to someone else. It was a rare enough embrace between foreigners. Coming from an Indian woman, it was uniquely intimate in my experience. And it was important. I’d been in the city for years; I could make myself understood in Marathi, Hindi, and Urdu; I could sit with gangsters, slum-dwellers, or Bollywood actors, claiming their goodwill and sometimes their respect; but few things made me feel as accepted, in all the Indian worlds of Bombay, as Kavita Singh’s fond embrace.
I never told her that—what her affectionate and unconditional acceptance meant to me. So much, too much, of the good that I felt in those years of exile was locked in the prison cell of my heart: those tall walls of fear; that small, barred window of hope; that hard bed of shame. I do speak out now. I know now that when the loving, honest moment comes it should be seized, and spoken, because it may never come again. And unvoiced, unmoving, unlived in the things we declare from heart to heart, those true and real feelings wither and crumble in the remembering hand that tries too late to reach for them.
On that day, as the grey-pink veil of evening slowly enclosed the afternoon, I said nothing to Kavita. I let my smile, like a thing made of broken stones, fall and slide from the peak of her affection to the ground beneath her feet. She took my arm and steered me into an introduction to the man who sat beside her.
‘Lin, I don’t think you’ve met Ranjit,’ she said as he stood and we shook hands. ‘Ranjit is … Karla’s friend. Ranjit Choudry meet Lin.’
I suddenly knew what Lett
‘Call me Jeet,’ he offered. His smile was wide, natural, and confident.
‘O-kay,’ I answered evenly, not really smiling. ‘Pleased to meet you, Jeet.’
‘And it’s a pleasure to meet you,’ he countered, with the well-rounded and musical inflection of Bombay’s best private schools and universities: my favourite accent in all the beautiful ways to speak the English language. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’
‘Achaa?’ I responded without thinking, exactly as an Indian of my age might’ve done. The word, in its literal translation, means good. In that context and with that inflection it meant Oh, yeah?
‘Yes,’ he laughed, releasing my hand. ‘Karla talks about you often. You’re quite the hero to her, I’m sure you know.’
‘That’s funny,’ I answered, not sure if he was as ingenuous as he seemed to be. ‘She once told me that heroes only come in three kinds: dead, damaged, or dubious.’
He tipped his head back and roared with laughter, his mouth open wide enough to reveal a perfect set of perfect Indian teeth. Still laughing, he met my eye and wagged his head in wonder.
So that’s part of it, I thought. He gets her jokes. He likes her play with words. He understands her love of them and her cleverness. That’s one of the reasons why she likes him. Okay.
The rest of it was more obvious. He had a lithe build, and was average tall, my height, with an open, handsome face. More than just the sum of good features—high cheekbones, a high, wide forehead, expressive topaz-coloured eyes, a strong nose, smiling mouth, and firm chin—it was the kind of face that once would’ve been called dashing: the lone yachtsman, the mountaineer, the jungle adventurer. He wore his hair short. The hairline was receding, but even that seemed to suit him, as if it was the preferred option for healthy, athletic men. And the clothes—I knew them well from the shopping expeditions that Sanjay Andrew, Faisal, and the other mafiosi made to the most expensive stores in the city. There wasn’t a self-respecting gangster in Bombay who wouldn’t have pursed his lips and wagged his head in approval of Ranjit’s clothes.
‘Well,’ I said, shuffling my feet to move around him and greet Kalpana, the last friend sitting in the loop of the table. She was working as a first-assistant director for Mehta-De Souza productions, and in training to become a director in her own right. She looked up at me and winked.
‘Wait,’ Ranjit requested, softly but quickly. ‘I wanted to tell you … about your stories … your short stories …’
I turned to flinch a frown at Kavita Singh, who hunched her shoulders and raised the palms of her hands as she looked away.
‘Kavita let me read them, and I wanted to tell you how good they are. I mean, how good I think they are.’
‘Well, thanks,’ I muttered, trying once again to move past him.
‘Really. I read them all, and I think they’re really great.’
There are few things more discomfiting than a spontaneous outburst of genuine decency from someone you’re determined to dislike for no good reason. I felt a little blush of shame beginning to spread across my cheeks.
‘Thanks,’ I said, putting truth into my eyes and my voice for the first time. ‘It’s damn nice to hear, even if Kavita wasn’t supposed to show them to anyone.’
‘I know she wasn’t,’ he said quickly. ‘But I think you should—show them to someone, I mean. They’re not right for my paper. It’s not the right forum. But The Noonday, well, it would be the perfect forum for them. And I know they’d buy them for a very fair price. The editor of The Noonday, Anil, is a friend of mine. I know what he likes, and I know he’ll like your stories. I didn’t show him your work, of course. Not without your permission. But I did tell him that I read them, and that I think they’re good. He wants to meet you. If you take your stories to him, I’m sure you’ll get on well with him. Anyway, I’ll leave it at that. He’s hoping to see you. But it’s up to you. Whatever you decide, I wish you all the best.’
He sat down, and I moved past him to greet Kalpana and then take my place beside Didier. I was so distracted by the exchange with Ranjit—Jeet—Choudry that I only half-listened to Didier’s announcement of his planned trip to Italy with Arturo. Three months, I heard him say, and I remember thinking that three months in Italy could become three years, and that I might lose him. The thought was so strange that I wouldn’t let myself consider it. Bombay without Didier was like … Bombay without Leopold’s, or the Haji Ali Mosque, or the Gateway Monument. It was unthinkable.
Pushing the thought away, I looked around the laughing, drinking, talking table of friends, and filled the empty glass within me, pouring their successes and their hopes into my eyes. Then I returned my attention to Ranjit, Karla’s boyfriend. I’d done my homework on him in recent months. I knew that he was the second eldest—some said the favourite—of four sons born to Ramprakash Choudry, a truck driver who’d made his fortune resupplying coastal towns in Bangladesh that had been hit by cyclones. The first government tenders had grown into major contracts, requiring fleets of trucks and, eventually, chartered aircraft and ships. Along the way, Choudry had acquired a small-circulation Bombay newspaper as part of a merger with a more diversified transport and communications firm. He’d handed the paper to his son Ranjit, who’d just graduated with a business degree and was the first, on both sides of his family, to complete high school and to attend any kind of further-education college. Ranjit had been running the paper, re-badged as The Daily Post, for eight years. His success with The Post, as it was known, had allowed Ranjit to segue into the incipient field of independent television production.
He was wealthy, influential, popular, and possessed of an entrepreneurial élan in print, movies, and television: a media baron in the making. There were rumours of resentments stirring in the heart of Ranjit’s older brother Rahul, who’d joined his father in the transport business in his early teenage years, and had never enjoyed the private-school education lavished upon Ranjit and the younger siblings. There was gossip, also, about the two younger brothers, the wild parties they sometimes threw, and the large bribes required to keep them out of trouble. There was no criticism of Ranjit, however, in any connection; and apart from those few simmering concerns, his life seemed almost charmed.
He was, as Lettie had once said, quite a fat and shiny catch. And as I watched him with friends—listening more than he talked, smiling more than he frowned, self-deprecating and considerate, tactful and attentive—I had to admit to myself that he was a very likeable man. And, strangely, I felt sorry for him. A few years or even months before, I would’ve been jealous that he was such a likeable man—such a very nice guy, as more than a few people said to me when I’d asked them about him. I would’ve hated him. But I felt nothing like that for Ranjit Choudry. Instead, as I watched him, remembering too much of what I’d felt for Karla, and thinking about her clearly for the first time in … a long time, I felt sorry for the rich, handsome media baron, and I wished him luck.
For half an hour I talked across the table with Lisa and the others and then I looked up to see Johnny Cigar, standing in the wide doorway and gesturing to catch my eye. Delighted to have an excuse to leave, I turned to Didier and drew him around to face me.
‘Listen, if you’re really serious about going to Italy for three months—’
‘Certainly I am—’ he began, but I cut him off quickly.
‘And if you’re really serious about needing someone to look after your place for you while you’re away, I think I’ve got just the guys for the job.’
‘Oh, yes? And who are they?’
‘The Georges,’ I replied. ‘The Zodiac Georges. Gemini and Scorpio.’
Didier was appalled.
‘But these … these George people … they are, how can I say it?’
‘Reliable?’ I suggested. ‘Honest. Clean. Loyal. Brave. And, above all, the most important qualification for
‘Decent?’ Didier scoffed. ‘What do you mean, decent? My apartment is without parallel in Bombay, Lin. You know that. Excellent, I can understand. Superb, I can accept. But decent—non! It is like saying that I live in the fish market and, er, what do you say, whoosh it out every day with a water hose!’
‘So what do you think? I’ve gotta go.’
‘Decent!’ he sniffed.
‘Come on, man, will you forget about that!’
‘Well, yes, perhaps you are right. I have nothing against them. The George from Canada, the Scorpio, he does speak some French. That is true. Yes. Yes. Tell them I think it is a good idea. Tell them to see me, and I will speak to them—with very careful instructions.’
Laughing as I said goodbye, I joined Johnny Cigar at the doorway of the restaurant. He pulled me close to him.
‘Can you come with me? Now?’ he asked.
‘Sure. Walking or taxi?’
‘I think taxi, Lin.’
We pushed our way through the breaking waves of walkers to the road and found a taxi. I was smiling as we waved the taxi down and climbed inside. For months, I’d been trying to find a way to help Gemini and Scorpio George that was more meaningful than the money I gave them from time to time. Didier’s holiday with Arturo provided the perfect opportunity. I knew that three months in Didier’s apartment would add years to their lives: three months without the stress of street living and with the secure good health that only a home and home cooking can provide. And I also knew that, with the Zodiac Georges in his apartment while he was gone, Didier would worry just enough to make his return to Bombay a little more likely, and a little sooner.