Thanks to a New Yorker critic, J is finding reasons to connect with me; another mail from him!

Dear Mayank,
I’m not like you. I do not carry my books in the shoulder bag. I do not care about editions. I can read War & Peace from a xeroxed copy which has no cover. But since the time I discovered Pauline Kael, I’m no longer sure.

Till a week ago I had never seen her. This was surprising since this city has just so many books; everyone reads here. You go to any street, market, or home, and you would find books - rare, first editions, second hands as well as new ones which reach here within a week of their reviews being published in journals such as The Economist and The New York Times Book Review. One never has to depend on amazon.com. This place is like the American library of Congress. Every book that is published on the land finds its way to stores here. But I never saw any Pauline Kael. Perhaps this is the curse of having so many books that it is difficult to sort through each of them.

OK, last Tuesday I was driving down home. There was a traffic light on the way and as I stopped the car, a man appeared with his stack of second hand books. One title was 5001 Nights at the Movies. Now I have never been mad about movies but I purchased the book. Later, as I sat down with it at the terrace, I discovered that the author was a long-time film critic of The New Yorker. The introduction was by William Shawn. One passage struck me:
Yet in this volume she has assembled several thousand reviews – written for the Goings On About Town department of The New Yorker – that are not only dazzling but brief, are models of compression. Nothing like this collection of short reviews has ever been seen before. They can be read by moviegoers or television viewers as a guide or they can be read for their own sake: either way they are a marvel.

True enough, the short reviews were a delight. Before I could finish the entire book (I threw away The History of Sewage Construction in the Indus Valley Civilization I was reading), I saw another Kael at Book Lights, my neighboring bookstore. For Keeps – 30 Years At The Movies. I’m now reading it. It is so intelligent, witty, cunning, sensitive that you don’t have to love movies to love it. While her pieces are very smooth, you could make out Kael must have worked hard to make each review work. They are sharp in their construction. But the problem is that the book has 1,250 pages and I’m at the 201st. Unlike you, I usually do not pick another book while I’m reading another. So while at Book Lights, I could see other Kaels, I must first finish For Keeps. What are you upto?
Keep in touch,
J

Two parts of me in two different Delhi bookstores suddenly merging into one

In Paharganj. In Khan Market. No money. Paying Rs 500 for The New York Review of Books. Into Jackson’s second-hand bookstore. To Lodhi Garden. Anyinetrestingbookanyinterestingbook. Stephen Greenbelt on Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. Soros, Sebastian Faulks, Osho, Kellerman, Patrick French, Betty Mahmoody… She got the Bookers but never cared for it… Anita Shreve, Eric Newby, Billie Letts, Bruce Chatwin… Bruce Chatwin… Wolf Hall is a startling achievement… sniffsniff, pages smelling of wetness… Mantel invites us to forgo easy irony and to suspend our awareness of what is going to come to pass… an Alice Munro… but my novel has its end in the beginning… hardbound, published in Canada… all novels are different… no, I already have too many Munroes and haven’t finished even a single… but damnit, this isn’t happening. Have to write so many things, tie so many loose ends, so why this? Am dropping my head on Shakespeare (circa 1946)… not knowing how to steer on but no turning back… the novel will end… it must be good, must be read, must get Bookers, must change my life, must give me money to buy all the books I want. But, before that… have made up so many folks… Kasim, J, Wickham, MomDad, Kasim’s mother, Velutha, Me. The reader must feel their flesh, watch them naked. But hell, I’ve seen J naked. I felt him; he was real. Like this novel.

Carrying Jane Austen to Paharganj, all the time thinking of J, I realise my last rupee is spent but... hey, I just got a rare sms from J!

Mayank, how are you? Discovered a new author. Pauline Kael. Arundhati Roy of movie criticism. J.

As I start Sense & Sensibility in Jama Masjid, Kasim’s mother runs away and I come across an Urdu bookstore where I'd bought books for J

Perhaps it was my fault. I think I should’ve warned her. But… I thought that she… she must’ve gotten used to the fact that he’s no more… and well, that’s what it seemed. I mean she would ask me to write something on him, she would daily go to the kabristan, talk about how things were when he was all right… and yet, when I started reading the novel… maybe I should’ve… but it affected her so deeply… and come to think of it, while I’ve read it half-a-dozen times, I did not realize that it begins with two deaths… First the old guy who owns the Norland estate, then Mr Dashwood, the old man’s inheritor and nephew… he dies leaving behind a widow and three daughters… and she felt it so deeply… but when she was crying, she was not crying for these people but for Kasim… and God, the way she was crying. So oriental, so exotic. Like a woman gone mad… suddenly starting to beat her breasts… she had always been so dignified… I was shocked, embarrassed but… why she had to be so loud, so uncontrollable… why so raw… he’s under the earth… his story’s over and she knows it; she visits his grave daily but… poor woman… she just went away. I wanted to accompany her to her home but she got up, and before I realised and looked up from the book she was already crossing the courtyard, crying all the time, her shoulders shaking, and I followed her, through gate no. 1, but she was walking fast, running down the stairs, and I almost jumped over the queue of beggars, but there were too many people down there in Matia Mahal, and I lost sight of her, and I intended walking to her home but there was… Kutub Khana Anjuman-e-Taraqqi-e-Urdu… that Urdu bookshop… and it all came tumbling back… the hardbounds that I once bought from here for J…

… Oh J, I miss you. I’ve many books. I think I’ve got the best personal library in Delhi but I miss being with you… or maybe it’s not even about you. You know, J, sometimes I think I don’t love you. There are moments when I’m surprised... what you have in you? There are folks who have read more books than you, who can talk more intelligently than you, who have more hair on their chests… and then I feared what if suddenly you appeared at that confusing moment in front of me expecting love... and I could not... this would be sad, for am spending so much time of my life on you. What if one day I discover that I never really loved you?

…You know, J, there was a time when I was mad about Toni Morrison... oh, The Bluest Eye, Sula, Paradise, Beloved… J, I remember its first line... 184 was spiteful... I was so mad about Toni. I would be reading her in the bus, at home, at work, over dinner... I remember the second time I finished reading Beloved. I was in Central Park. It was evening. The sky was coloured as nonsensical as a mad poet’s purple prose, and I was lying on a bench, and at that time Central Park was still not given a facelift. The metro station was still not there. The park still had its wild grass, old trees, cruising homos and Rs 10 whores. And that evening when I finished Beloved... it was better than the first time... then I was too eager to reach the end but that evening I knew what would happen and so I was reading the lines slowly, savouring not what Toni wrote but how she wrote... and when I reached the novel's last word... it was as if I'd had just came out, but later when it was dark in the park, I was horny and so I chased an ear-cleaner and sucked him inside the loo... but well, I was talking of Toni. She no longer stirs me. I've many editions of Beloved, and I still buy its different copies, but she’s so melodramatic, so manipulative. Why was I so crazy about Toni Morrison? But I was. Yes. Just the way I'm for you, J.

J, will you too go the Toni way? But such moments when I think I’m not a limb of you are very rare, J… Sometimes I miss you so hard, my heart almost tears apart, my throat gets choked, my head start whirring, and then if I jack off, and of course I fantasize of you… you making wild, animal love to me... and then I come out and then your face fades away and I feel I don’t need you, that I could do fine with Jane Austen alone… oh J, tell me, is it only lust that binds me with you? J, will one day I stop loving Jane too?

Jama Masjid, Kasim’s mother, Jane Austen… what, J!

Now when Kasim’s mother is sitting beside me, and am about to start Sense and Sensibility once again, and the pigeons are soaring up to the dome, and the shadow cast by the northern tower is spreading further into the mosque’s courtyard, and people are lying down for an afternoon siesta, and… and suddenly… J… blowing over me like a dry winter wind.

Once there was another Jama Masjid. But it looked like this one. Then, too, methinks, it was an October. Kasim was alive. He still had to take me to the northern tower; I still hadn’t met his mother. But there was J. And we were in that Jama Masjid. It was evening and very cold. Must be November then, not October. We walked inside the prayer hall, and there under the middle dome, some mullah, surrounded by a small crowd, was preaching some dos and don’ts of decency. But the corners were empty, unlit, and there J pressed me against the wall (the cold of the sandstone burned the back of my neck), and came closer, and I, hesitatingly, spread my arms round him, and he moved his lips to mine, and I brought down my arms, and he pressed deeper, and I held his raised self, and his lips held my upper lip, and I tasted the warm wetness of his tongue, and he pulled me closer to him, and suddenly he withdrew his lips, and I saw his face, and he was smiling, and he was looking as if he loves me, and then his lips again moved in, and my hardness stroked against his, and suddenly the ground beneath our feet started shaking, and the Masjid’s roof cracked and stones came falling down, and he cloaked me in his body, and I felt protected, and so I wasn’t buried under the rubble when the trembling stopped, but I never wanted to let go of his tongue… later that evening, back in the Paharganj hotel, he came inside me while we were reading out Rumi’s love poems. But that Rumi was not that Rumi, but Coleman Barks. Even that Paharganj wasn’t that Paharganj. That Jama Masjid, as I said earlier, was some other Jama Masjid, in some other country… And this Jama Masjid though looking the same is so different… and anyway that Jama Masjid fell down in the quake. It is no more. In its prayer hall, J had loved me. In its tower, Kasim had tried kissing me. But now am with his sonless mother. So much is lost… what’s gained? I haven’t read even a single Dostoevsky.

We are now sitting in Jama Masjid; Kasim’s mother is asking me to start with Sense and Sensibility

“Shall I read, or you?”

“I haven’t read for many years. Why do not you?”

“Fine… I’ve read it many times. One of my favroites…”

“I read only this Jane Austen and it… well, forget it.”

“And last time when we were here… with her and Aga Shahdi Ali…”

“Did you manage to read his poems?”

“I want to, aunty, but somehow I can’t get into poems… I mean I sometimes try them in the New Yorker but their sense make no sense to me.”

“I have not read much, son, but I collect novels, and I am older, and so I can tell that one day you would wake up, and flip through a book of poems, and you would understand the meaning, the deeper meaning of the lines.”

“It happens even now… uhh, not exactly, but still, when I try to read some poetry, say, by, Elizabeth Bishop or Emily Dickinson, they were famous poets, aunty… and while the idea, the bigger picture evades me, but there is something about the words these poets choose, and the way they place it on their lines, and so the lines sing in your mind when you read them… Ya, I don’t understand those poems but I feel something about them, and I’m then sad.”

“Why sad?”

“It’s funny. I don’t understand anything, yet, I feel as if the poetry was mournful. You see aunty, when I’m reading a poem, I start to see the poet, sitting on her desk, facing a window looking out to… and here I always see a Jane Austen countryside… green meadows, woods, perhaps sheeps… and aunty, it’s drizzling, and the poet’s husband is not at home... he doesn't love her as much as she loves him... and the servants are far away in the pantry or something, and she is feeling a certain something, and she doesn’t have the words to give that ‘feeling’ a certain shape, and so she is thinking hard, staring at her notepad, looking up outside the window, glancing towards her right, left, right, left… all around invisible words are buzzing like flies, but.. what’s the point… she is thinking of ending her life... and suddenly a word is flashed in front of her mind's eye.”

“Mayank, son, I said this the last time also… when we were here… but will you… you must son… please… write on him.”

“But what… poem?”

“Whichever way you could express him best.”

“Then it must a poem, aunty. In poetry, we need no contexts, plots, introductions, climaxes… nothing. We just need the right words, the pure words…”

“You must please you must…”

“But right now I can’t even read a poem.”

“You said you feel them…”

“Ok… anyways, let’s start Jane.”

“Let us start...”

Just as I was sitting settling down at Jama Masjid to read Jane Austen with Kasim's mother, Bahrisons' accounts department sends me this e-mail

Dear Sir,
Please find enclosed update entire statement of A/c. as on 21.10.2009 of due Rs.64,391/-.Kindly clear this amount ASAP.
Thanking you

for BAHRI SONS
Accounts Deptt.

Sheet2

	A	B	C	D	E
1		BAHRI SONS
2		OPP. MAIN GATE, KHAN MARKET, NEW DELHI - 110003. (INDIA)
3		Ph.:24694610, Fax: 24618637
4
5		STATEMENT OF ACCOUNT
6	To,
7	Mr Mayank Austen Soofi
8	Noor Manzil, Nizamuddin Basti
9	New Delhi
10
11	Date	Particulars	Bill No	Dr Amount	Cr Amount
12
13	01.04.2008	Balance B/f		24,745.00
14	30-4-2008	By Ch.No.248502			2,225.00
15	8/5/08	Sales-Magazine	M/1731	3,630.00
16	9/5/08	Sales Books Credit	B/1739	2,732.00
17	23-5-2008	By Ch.No.174147			10,000.00
18	11/6/08	Sales-Magazine	M/1886	4,740.00
19	8/7/08	Sales-Magazine	M/1988	4,560.00
20	9/7/08	Sales Books Credit	B/1993	800.00
21	11/7/08	By Ch.No.174148			15,000.00
22	18-8-2008	Sales-Magazine	M/2149	4,440.00
23	18-8-2008	Sales Books Credit	B/2154	3,675.00
24	5/9/08	Sales Books Credit	B/2227	4,352.00
25	9/9/08	Sales Books Credit	B/2253	3,289.00
26	4/10/08	CASH ACCOUNT			15,000.00
27	6/10/08	Sales Books Credit	B/2360	4,040.00
28	6/10/08	Sales Books Credit	B/2366	1,169.00
29	12/11/08	Sales Books Credit	B/2495	3,820.00
30	12/11/08	Sales Books Credit	B/2499	1,071.00
31	6/12/08	Sales Books Credit	B/2603	4,163.00
32	6/12/08	Sales Books Credit	B/2604	2,508.00
33	5/1/09	Sales Books Credit	B/2706	6,360.00
34	6/1/09	Sales Books Credit	B/2731	3,829.00
35	10/1/09	By Ch.No.194159			10,000.00
36	3/2/09	Sales Books Credit	B/2831	3,209.00
37	3/2/09	Sales Books Credit	B/2840	2,239.00
38	9/3/09	Sales Books Credit	B/2978	3,677.00
39	10/3/09	Sales Books Credit	B/2985	3,880.00
40
41	31.03.2009	Balance B/f			44,703.00
42				96,928.00	96,928.00
43
44	01.04.2009	Balance B/f		44,703.00
45
46	4/4/09	Sales-Magazine	M/3119	950.00
47	7/4/09	Sales Books Credit	B/3144	1,111.00
48	8/5/09	Sales Books Credit	B/3253	6,335.00
49	9/5/09	Sales Books Credit	B/3285	2,552.00
50	3/6/09	Sales Books Credit	B/3368	4,961.00
51	3/6/09	Sales Books Credit	B/3371	1,349.00
52	9/7/09	Sales-Magazine	M/3507	4,013.00
53	9/7/09	Sales Books Credit	B/3533	445.00
54	5/8/09	Sales Books Credit	B/3612	4,121.00
55	14/9/2009	Sales Books Credit	B/3742	3,851.00
56	30/9/200	CASH ACCOUNT			10,000.00
57
58
59
60
61		Total Due Rs…….		74,391.00	10,000.00
62
63		DUE AS ON 21.10.2009.,,,Rs..			64,391.00
64

Entering Jama Masjid, I dream of J being dead; inside, I tell Kasim's mother a fairy tale of books instead

“What, son?”

“I… no, nothing.”

“But you just cried out. Are you feeling OK?”

“Aunty, I saw a dream.”

“People see dream while sleeping, son. You saw one while climbing these stairs. You are like me”

“Aunty, it was a… no, nothing.”

“Tell me, what you saw.”

“Nahin aunty, forget it…”

“Was it bad? You know sometimes when I’m walking… going down the lane… going to the mandi to buy vegetables… or to ITO… or sometimes when I go to Turkman… Mayank, I see dreams. I see him, my Kasim, again as he was. Before the cancer. Before the hospital. You know the way he used to look…”

“Oh.”

“Tell me, what did you see just now? Tell me.”

“I… Aunty, I… no, it was… Aunty… I suddenly found myself in Manderley…”

“Manderley? Manderley! What is that? What does it mean?”

“No, it has no meaning. It’s the name of a place in a famous novel… no, well… Aunty, I saw nothing horrible.”

“But you cried as if you were terrified of something?”

“Trust me, Aunty.”

“Son, you do not have to hide anything from me.”

“I know, I know. Well, you know, I saw that novel… Rebecca. Yeah, that’s the name. I was in a second hand bookstore and I saw the first edition of Rebecca. And I also saw MFK Fisher’s The Art of Eating. Yes. yeah. And I saw the first edition of AS Byatt’s Possession… it was a US edition… Random House… hardbound, of course… and also an Ian McEwan paperback… Amsterdam… very sober cover…black and white… and yes, Hemingway’s A Movable Feast…. Aunty, I’ve its first edition but I never read it for fear of spoiling it but this is a paperback so I will read it finally, and it has a very evocative cover picture of Paris. A bridge on the Seine… yes, Aunty… I’m not lying… I saw no bad dream… no car crash… nobody died… no fire, no flames… all was good… good books all around…”

“If that is what you saw, then I'm not worried..."

"Yes, yes, this is what I had seen... and... I don't know why I cried out..."

"Son, shall we sit there?”

As I'm entering Jama Masjid with Kasim's mother, I see a vision - J is dead, Manderley is burning, and where's the book!

Unbelievable. Car crash. J dead. Only this morning we exchanged a sms. Now, he’s… dead! I’d thought of this moment, thought I'll straight kill myself after hearing such a news. Yeah, but now, am running up the stairs, locking myself in the room, lying down, next to Henri Cartier Bresson. What now? Insides tearing apart into a blackness, but no pain. It’s as if am drowning. Suddenly the room converting into Rebecca’s Manderley. The doors are locked from outside. Can’t go out. And Mrs Danvers coming to kill me. But before that the house would catch fire and I’ll die. But J’s dead, can’t live now, and the book? Am looking for a book, my book, which is here somewhere but don’t remember the title, but it was somewhere here and I need to find it, but what’s the point for J’s dead and oh, I can smell the fire, or is that Mrs Denvers… oh, the flames… must run, but can’t go out, and the book... and am totally broken, my J’s dead, he no longer exists, his story over, must’ve been buried by now, but am still not under the ground, but the fire’s coming closer… the book… Aunty! J!

Choked by his book, Wickham finds Velutha outside his home, and then what follows is Hope

I feel it, sense it, dream it. It’s right in, but not coming ou… Velutha! You should’ve called me. Just got back. Yeah. Not long? Ok. You'd dinner? We could order something. Sorry, it’s in a mess. Velutha... what... Yeah. No… Velutha. Velutha. Yes. Veluthaveluthavelutha…

He gently pushing him down to the bed, pushing Arundhati to the corner right, the pillow falling down, he laying the length of his body against his. It standing there, wanting him. Urgently. He putting his arms around him, then bringing the arms down, his fingers unbuttoning his jeans. They laying there. Skin to skin. His blackness against his whiteness. His hardness against his softness. He putting out his tongue on his smooth ebony chest, tasting it. On the dimple of his cheek. He kissing his head, his mouth, demanding a kiss-back. He kissing him back. Cautiously, urgently, then he rising, taking off his polyster trouser, throwing it off on the floor, then spreading his legs, taking out his spit, rubbing it, smoothening it, and entering. He sighing, pulling himself from him, but he coming closer, thrusting forward, he recoiling back, then coming forth, legs slithering around legs, he moving in, he pulling him to himself, he and he coming out of the world, walking away, and the novel too will come. Wickham is now sure.

I follow Kasim’s mother on the stairs of Jama Masjid; we plan to read Jane but before that I see my death in her eyes

Zuhr just got over, Asar won’t happen till four hours. Not many people here. Stairs empty. Am following her. She so different from mom. Mom’s fat. She not that much. And she’s chewing paan. Mom would never. But why she bent on me? Can’t be Jane Austen. What if she got to know what was cooking between him and me? And I wonder if Mamma even knows about Jane. And here she wants to read her with me. She’s turning, her dupatta slipping down onto the stones, she giving me her arm, am giving out mine, holding hers, coming up. We on the same stair now. Am taller. She looking up. Her wet, shining eyes. Her head bending down... coming to rest onto my right shoulder. Methinks she crying. Aunty, let’s get in. We’ll go to the balcony and read Jane, Sense and Sensibility. Tell me why you insist on her alone? Each time I see you, you talk of reading her. Why can’t I, too, focus on just one author? My day started with Alex Ross even as the heart was divided between him and Proust, later I dreamed bout Lear, then I had a sudden yearning for John Cheever, now it’s this mysterious copy of Jane… And even as we're entering the masjid, am thinking of the kiss that I almost had with you son here, and that is making me long for Edmund White’s gay novels… A Boy's Own Story... The Farewell Symphony... The Beautiful Room is Empty... my novel should have some such nice name... good, you’ve stopped crying, your eyes looking old and clear, oh, am seeing myself in them, but there’s a shadow on my face… look, a crow flying behind me. What that means?

The fourth page on my copy of Ruined by Reading

Special Overseas Edition
2011

First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 2011

Copyright  Mayank Austen Soofi

Mayank Austen Soofi asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work

This is a work of fiction. The characters in it are all fictional.
Liberties have been taken with the location of tombs, dargahs,
mosques and graveyards.

ISBN 0 00 655109 2

Photograph of Mayank Austen Soofi  Shaheen Sultan Dhanji

Set in Monotype Baskerville by
Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

While I climb the Jama Masjid stairs with Jane Austen and Kasim’s mom, Wickham leaves his office at the British Council, with a novel inside him

I’m walking. Two girls are walking behind me. Talking in incorrect English. Nothing is coming into the head. How to carry it forward? I have the people. I must go to the park. I’m there; and there is Velutha and there is She. What should happen to them? How would they grow? I know the ending. The moon is so pale and it is not perfectly round. Everyone has to die. But how to reach that point? That is the question. But I cannot see Her not alive. She must live long. She must always write as she writes. There has to be a logical flow. It cannot be a mad man’s ranting. I’m no James Joyce. It needs to have sense, some meaning. It must possess a certain depth. He is following me. It should bring you closer to the truth. It should stay on with you. Look down at the shadow of tree leaves! It has to bring you back to it. But how?

Kasim’s mother saw Kasim in Khooni Darwaza and found a Penguin Classics Deluxe edition of Jane Austen – with my name on it!

Mayank, son, why are your lips white? Why are you looking scared?

No. No, Aunty. How are you?

I saw you outside the door. I saw you standing there but before I could wave at you, you turned and went away…

… I was meaning to come Aunty. I thought I’ll visit you after paying my haziri here…

… I followed you. I have something important to tell you…

… I think I’m having fever…

… That is why I sent an sms…

… I’ve headache…

… I had gone to krabistan on jummeraat to visit him…

… Oh, is he ok?

… I planted a flower beside his grave… but when I was returning, I could not get the auto and it was dark and there were no buses stopping at the stand… I had to walk down…

… Aunty, it could be dangerous…

… I know… I was walking very fast. But when I reached in front of Maulana Azad Medical College, there in the road… in the middle of the road… there, there was him!

What you saying!

I do not imagine things. He was there, in his white terricot pant and blue full sleeve cotton shirt… I had got it from Sarojini…

… But, but how could he…

… He smiled at me, he opened his mouth to speak but there was no sound coming but I knew what he was saying…

What was he saying?

… Ammi. Then, and then he lifted his right arm and signaled me to come to him, and so I walked onto the road but he turned and started going into Khooni Darwaza…

… Oh, there! No one goes there… a Maulana Azad student was raped there…

… I followed him, and he walked straight inside the Darwaza, and I followed him, and there it was dark, completely black, and I could not see him… Kasim, Kasim, beta kaha ho?... I was carrying a torch and when I put it on, there was nobody…

Where did he go?

… I cannot say but on the other side, I saw something on the floor and when I went there, I saw this book and when I opened it, I saw your name was written on the first page…

What! Showmeshowme… where… yeah… true! And what a beautiful edition…

… You must have come to Khooni Darwaza some day and forgot it here…

No, I’ve passed in front of it but never been inside… and anyway this Jane Austen… I never had this copy… Aunty, it’s so beautiful…

… Yes, it is, and it has all her novels but it is not yours?

Yes, her complete novels… and an introduction by Karen Joy Fowler… you know her?

I… No, tell me…

She wrote Jane Austen Book Club… look, this is Penguin Classics Deluxe edition and wait…

How it got there…

… It was published in 2006…

… and you say it is not yours…

… But aunty, what about Kasim? What happened to him? Where did he go?

I do not know, son, I did not see him but he was there, looking just as he looked before he fell ill…

Aunty, you know, a few days ago, in the Nizamuddin dargah, you know…

…Yes, what?

… No, nothing, I mean can I have this Jane Austen?

You are like my Kasim. You do not have to ask…

Thanks aun…

But pick your books and bag, take me up to Jama Masjid. There we will read Sense and Sensibility…

Yes… yes, you know sometime ago I was having this craving for John Cheever…

Huh?

Cheever was a short story writer. He is now dead but Aunty, now I want to read Jane all over again. This edition looking so lovely… are you sure you did not see all this in a dream…

This book is real, son.

Yes.

So was my son.

Ya. Ya, aunty.

My premonition of death in the hands of Kasim’s mother makes me suddenly crave for John Cheever

I’ve a feeling I’ll die soon. This sight of Kasim’s mother… she suddenly changing from King Lear into herself… is sort of confirming my fears. It’s irrational but I know she would be my end… with J, of course. But now when she's turning to me, when her lips are parting to speak something… and, you know, this is happening in just a fraction of a fraction of a second but it’s as if the time has stilled; the outside noise is quieting down, the red colour here on the walls is losing its glow, and am looking down, down onto the frayed carpet I’d never really looked at before and now I see these random shapes are actually flowers and hexagons and even as I’m looking at them, they’re growing distinct, and expanding. This flower is starting to bloom; these hexagons are spreading out… now look, I was afraid… I wanted to avoid her, thought of never meeting her again but now it’s clear she'll follow me wherever I go. There’s no running away. I‘ve to die and so I’ll not be able to be with J, nor will I manage to read all the good novels… but both these things wouldn't had been possible even if I'd lived but I wish this was just a novel but it’s real. Oh look, she’s carrying a Jane Austen in her hands; she's saying something but am suddenly thinking of John Cheever. I want him. Not Alex Ross, not J, not Shakespeare, not Kasim, not Marcel Proust, but Cheever. I want to read his short stories. I’ve three editions of it. I’ll take out the hardbound one but it’s at home… what till then… she’s speaking but my ears are numb, my palms sweating, am clutching tightly to Ross, am scared… am counting from hundred to one… ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven… Granta, Margaret Atwood, Madhur Jaffrey, Ruth Rachel, Pultizer Prize, Taylor Branch, Barack Obama, Arvind Adiga, Carol Shields, Ian McEwan, New Yo… ohIcanhearher!

While sleeping at Sarmad’s, I have a nightmare in which I see King Lear

The world shedding its skin but not showing new skin underneath; looking all raw, ugly; its flesh showing, its bones exposed. Like a burnt body. A crow flying in, settling down at Sarmad’s tomb, curdling my innards with fear. A platoon of red ants entering through the stone jaalis, they together lifting my shoulder bag, carrying it out into the courtyard. Inside were printouts of J’s old e-mails, and the chewing gum he once chewed. Now lost for ever. Now silverfishes crawling onto the Marcel Proust, lying opened on my face, eating into its pages, embroidering a lace work through them. Don't know why but am unable to move. Nothing's in control. The Alex Ross, below my head, changing shape, turning to a worm-ridden hardbound of King Lear I got from Daryaganj Sunday Book Bazaar which I threw away after its worms ‘infected’ my 1948 circa Jewish cookbook… oh, a chilly gust of air whooshing in through the red-and-green door… but it’s not air but an old, wrinkled, bearded man. He’s sitting down next to me… his eyes sunk in deep wells, he as cold as a dead body… icicles hanging from his long bushy beard, his long hair waving as if someone’s fanning them… he’s crying… beating his head against the stone tomb… his melancholy terrifying, soul sucking… I’ll kill myself… but what’s this: the old man turning to a woman… Kasim’s mom!

Instead of meeting Kasim’s mother, I go to sleep at Sarmad’s, with Alex Ross as pillow

Something's saying not to ring the bell. Not to meet her. Never. Something’s saying she’d be the end. First him, now me. Nah, am turning back, back to Golcha… instead of right, am walking straight into the galli… to Matia Mahal, to Sarmad’s, then to Jama where will sit down with Proust in the balcony looking to Lal Qila, and it’s almost noon… soon will feel sleepy, so will lay down in the shade, and yes, there’ll be boys to watch too, but Proust too delicate for distractions and anyway this morn I shoved in Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise in the shoulder bag so… maybe finally read Ross, finish it rather than dumping it once again, or him and Proust together? One at a time, shifting to the other in half-hour intervals, and so being with Proust and classical music at the same time… but that’s too rich… like what they give at Barista… chocolate brownie with vanilla ice-cream… but why… why as if… as if am not outside a novel but inside it… am I of blood, bones or just made of words… am I really occupying this 3-D space, walking in this lane, in this walled city, with these books… is this some fiction? But am real-ly walking to Jama… there will have a siesta, with Proust lying half-open on my face, over my closed eyes, while inside the eyelids floating a hazy J - now here, now not, now here again… Sarmad’s, taking off shoes, entering… the walls red… O Sarmad, bless my J but damnit am so tired... so sleepy... lying down… Alex Ross a pillow... Jama must wait…

While I’m leaving Bahrisons, Wickham is struggling with Arundhati Roy in his Huaz Khas pad

October is approaching. Soon these domes will float in the mist. The cold will get to the bones. The fingers will grow stiff. I will not be able to write. I’m not able to write even now. Maybe I should not. I do not have to. It is not making me happy. I can just carry her, go down, enter the park, sit inside the ruins, face towards the lake, and just read her. Then it will be fine. I will be content. Later, when I’m filled up with her, I will walk back. And perhaps Velutha will be there waiting on the terrace. We will climb to the roof and there lie together. In the evening, we will go to Jor Bagh. Velutha will go inside and I will stay outside the taxi stand. This will be better than writing the novel. Maybe.

Penniless in Khan Market's Bahrisons, and then I spot Alice Munro

Thank God, no interesting book here. I may continue undistracted with Proust. Oh, my phone. Kasim’s mother. Am not taking. Don’t want to talk to no one. No new book here, am coming after so many weeks, but good... have no money… don’t think they'll give me on credit. Mr M Singh, hi, anything on music? Anything like Alex Ross? No… umm, am going to the classics section… hey, Ian Jack! Brand new. The Country that Used to Be Britain. Umm, well, must wait for the paperback. Mr M Singh, do you have Anna Akhmatova? She was a Russian poet. Yeah, she comes in Penguin Classics. No? Oh. Oh, Bruce Chatwin’s What Am I Doing Here… nice cover. Never read him but wasn’t he gay? Methinks this was his last book… came out when he was dying in Southern France… They all go there. I’ll also go. Like Baldwin, I’ll write away my life in Parisian cafes. My heart would weep for J even as my fingers tap on a Mac in some Left Bank library. I’ll live a perfect DQ life. But right now no money… Should get Chatwin but no guts to ask them to add the money to my acc… Alice Munro! Too Much Happiness. A lady on a hilltop… hardbound, UK edition, Chatto & Windus, so handsome… mustgetitmustgetit… but God, what if they ask to clear the account first… but this Munro. No Matter What. Will read Proust and Munro backtoback… So, if they refuse? Big deal. Am a sufi, must have no ego. If they say no, so no. OK. Mr M Singh? If they ask, I’ll tell the truth that I’ve no money, that I don’t know when I’ll clear the account. Yes, umm, will you please add the bill onto my account? Yes? Thank you (too much happiness!)… Yippe, Munro now, J can go and fuck his own arse. Oh, sms! Kasim’s mom:
Come immediately. Urgent.

Just when Marcel Proust starts soaking that morsel of madeleine in his tea, I get this bank notice!

To,
MAYANK AUSTEN SOOFI,
NOOR MANZIL,
NIZAMUDDIN BASTI
DELHI – 110013

Dear Cardholder,
Your HDFC BANK a/c no. 007110447110922
Your Credit Card a/c no. 31245522773259884

Was always scared of Proust. Sentences too long, demanding too much attention, and too many temptations. But now... last night I was reading Alex Ross’s The Music of Fictional Composers in New Yorker and he was talking of of a violinist called Vinteuil in Swann’s Way and... damn, I threw away the magazine and picked my Proust...

Please take notice that,
Further to the ‘Suspended’ status of your captioned Credit card a/c owing to irregular payment of amounts due despite repeated reminders by way of telephone calls and letters to the numbers and addresses you had provided vide your Credit card application form., the Bank has placed a ‘Hold on Funds’ in your captioned HDFC Bank a/c by exercising the ‘Bankers lien and Right of Setoff’ option to the extent of the balance available in your captioned HDFC Bank a/c as on 24/08/09

Credit card balance as on date: Rs. 77,837.74
Extent of ‘Hold on Funds’: Rs. 2,875.87
‘Hold on Funds’ placed on: 24/08/09

And I’ve all six volumes. And it’s good am reading him when I’ve no job, hardly any money, and no way could I go to Bahrisons to buy books... so better stick to Proust... he'll surely take half-a-year...

You are therefore called upon to remit the sum outstanding into your Credit card a/c within 7 days from the date you receive this notice failing which the balance outstanding on 29/09/09 on your captioned card account or the balance available in your captioned HDFC Bank a/c, (whichever lower) shall be debited to your captioned HDFC Bank a/c vide the ‘cross default’ clause of the ‘card member agreement’ towards part-payment of the said outstanding.

... And Proust’s so delicate... like pieces of the most expensive Rum-flaovured dark chocolate... but ho, am stuck...

The said setoff towards part-payment of the Credit card outstanding shall not prejudice the Bank’s right to recover the balance outstanding on the captioned card account.

... Proust just bout to pick his petites madeleines... oh God, am actually here! am stuck! First read bout this moment in Wavery Root’s Food of France... now am actually in this passage but no, won't go ahead, not read it so soon... am not an animal... will read it slowly... but not now, but now!

Regards,
Legal manager,
Debt Management and Legal Support – Credit Cards

CC: Branch Manager, HDFC Bank, B-54a, Nizamuddin West, Delhi - 110013

While I’m discovering Proust-ey pleasures, Wickham once again tries laying siege to Arundhati Roy’s shadow

Velutha spat into Wickham’s face. Thick spit. It spattered across his skin. His mouth and eyes. Wickham furiously rubbed the saliva, taking it to places where it had not reached. The forehead, the ears, the neck. He then lifted his lips close to Velutha’s and drew a deep breath. He tried taking in Velutha’s Low Caste smell but his senses could not find it.

How to make out that Particular Paravan smell?

On the bookrack behind his bed stood 37 editions of her novel, 9 in English and the rest in different translations. But none described the smell. In words.

Wickham then took to another course, another trick. He patted Velutha’s back. Rubbed his white hands onto his black skin, crushed his fingers onto Velutha’s tough Paravan flesh, tried getting his black essence out. But no osmosis happened. Velutha just had his black, greasy hips jerking between Wickham’s legs.

And then it ended.

And once again, Wickham, the white man who teaches creative writing in English to brown people in Delhi’s British Council, failed to capture the essence of Ayemenemness. Though for a precious few moments, his whiteness was entwined with her blackness, no child was conceived.

He would never be able to write something as beautiful as That Woman.

When I lived a perfect evening, with no help from Marcel Proust… nor from J

Dear J,
Today I started reading Marcel Proust. Unlike the last time, I think I will be able to finish not just Swann’s Way but also the rest of the six volumes. However, I’m not writing this mail to inform you of my reading projects. Neither is this about the present crisis in my professional life. J, I want to tell you about today’s evening. I was walking down from CP to Khan Market. I did not take an auto because I want to do some saving. Anyway, I was not looking up at the sky. I was that engrossed in Proust! And I was reading this passage which reminded me of you:

… the anguish that comes from knowing that the creature one adores is in some place of enjoyment where oneself is not and cannot follow – to him that anguish comes through love…

…and I was totally into the novel when I suddenly looked up and discovered I had reached India Gate maidan. There were ice cream carts towards the traffic light but on the left… the trees, their tops actually, were streaked with the golden light of the setting sun. I then turned my eyes towards the right, and the Rastrapati Bhawan, up the Raisina Hall, was missing from view. I mean the red of its red sandstones had melted away and vapourised into the thin air above it which was blazing pitch red; below the dome was the sun. Red, round. I thought of running up the Rajpath to get close to the building, and the sun, but it would have taken me around fifteen minutes and by then the sky would had turned dark. So I stayed there and watched the scenery. Even the pond, next to the road, had lost its water. Instead there was fire raging in it.

J, it was a moment so absorbing that I forget every happiness, every grief, even Proust. Even you. But before the sun could have disappeared, I decided to walk on, towards Khan. I wanted to remember the scene, as it was that moment, and had no desire to watch it dissipate with the progression of the evening.

I’m aware this evening happened because of several coincidences. The morning was hot and humid, then it rained in the afternoon, and when I was walking down the maidan, the clouds had partially scattered to give just a little space to the sun, and, I swear, the light the sun gave couldn’t have been this light if even a little puff of one of the several clouds had been in a different position. It was like I would have loved anyone the way I love you. (I had to love somebody!) But damn, I can’t imagine loving anyone the way I love you.
Regards,
mayank

Walking in Daryaganj, with Kasim’s Dalrymple in my right hand

Have been here; walked in these alleys. That evening when Kasim was newly dead and I was looking for his home to see his mother, to tell her he was a good man, I got lost but then it was his mistake; he had never told me his exact address and just used to say that he lived near Golcha, near Musharraf’s Neher Walli haveli, and that evening I couldn’t trace his home, but now I know where his house is; I’ve had his mother’s food, slept in his room… oh, this place… am in front of Golcha car parking gate and once when Kasim was alive and it was a sweaty Sunday noon and I had a bundle of books with me bought from the Sunday Book bazaar and I wanted to meet him at his home, and also rest there for a while and so I had then called him from exactly at this spot and he had said that he was not well and wouldn’t be able to meet me, and I was angry with him coz I thought he was embarrassed about me introducing me to his mom (do I look like a DQ?), but.. but now he’s dead… but I saw him, I saw him yesterday afternoon in the Dargah, no, in Jama Masjid(!) and he had gifted me this Dalrymple and then he disappeared, along with the inscription he had written on the first page, and now he’s not to be seen and am looking for him and I think I’ll cry, and actually my eyes are wet but J… J, I love you J, and if somehow, anyhow, if there’s some magic and you appear here then it would be so good, oh J, please J, I want you, or I’ll die of my fucking company for you know, I can’t live with momdad, can’t cope with Kasim, and Wickham is nothing, and books... no, am carrying Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy (Cairo Press edition) since morning and didn’t read even a single page... yesterday I had that pocketbook 1942 edition of Wuthering Heights and had scanned just its first passage… so you know J, please J, come, come, else they all will kill me. I swear I’ll be snuffed off. The books alone can’t do.

I'm out of the dream but William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal has accompanied me intact from the dream world to the real world

Eyes opening again. The shade’s not gone, still here. The sun’s not scorching the skin, this is not Jama Masjid, am not sitting on stairs, can’t see any minaar, no Matia Mahal ahead. The Bangladeshi beggars still sleeping near Muhammad Shah Rangeela’s tomb. Else no crowd, no Kasim. It was an afternoon dream. Am still hungry, thirsty. Marquez still on my lap, still not finis… hey, what’s this! William Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal! That’s what Kasim gave me some time ago but that was… how can this be possible… see, see, there’s no inscription inside but… but it’s an UK edition… who kept the book here? By my side? Whatisitwhatisit? Am I still in that dream?

While dozing off with García Márquez in Nizamuddin Dargah, I dream of Kasim gifting me a William Dalrymple

The first day of Ramzan. Afternoon shadows curving across the Dargah courtyard. Me hungry, listless, sleepy. Bangladeshi beggars, too, beginning to lie down for their siesta. Am thirsty but no, won’t even swallow a spit before the Iftar. Must try thinking something else, not khana, not paani; must try getting lost again in the swampy marshes of Love in the Time of Cholera. It’s on my lap, the cover’s nude nymph turned upside down lest anyone objects. But the novel’s too much filled with J. He’s everywhere, above all in the eyelids of Fermina Daza, but can’t read further; eyes heavy, closing on their own will, but must stay awake, finish this Márquez by Iftar time, but am so drunk with sleepiness and yet how can one sleep… the cool shade has receded and it’s getting really hot. The sun’s scorching the back of my neck, my bare arms are burning, my jeans soaking onto my legs, my drowsy eyes opening again and… God, I was dreaming! This is Jama Masjid, not the Dragah. Am here on the stairs; there’s the minaar, down there a young man… I can see him… coming from Matia Mahal, crossing the road, oh, he’s climbing the stairs, oh, he’s coming towards where am sitting. Is he… Kasim! But how can it be you? But Kasim not saying anything. He’s in a funny silver-coloured disco shirt and white trousers, he’s coming closer, that same slight smile playing on his lips, he’s giving me a blue denim shoulder bag, not speaking any word, he turning back, going down again, crossing the road, becoming a blip in Matia Mahal; can’t see him now… this bag… it's zip's open... I feel... yeah, a hardbound inside… Oh, The Last Mughal – The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857. William Dalrymple’s. Inscription inside.

Dear Mayank,
I remember how excited you were when the book was about to be released about three years ago and how disappointed you became when you saw the quality of the Penguin India edition. You wanted a more polished copy, preferably published in US or UK. But you could not find one. I remember you talking about it to me when we were walking one evening in the park above Palika Bazaar. I have found such a copy. It is printed in UK by Bloomsbury. Whether you like this edition or not, this remains my gift to you.
I remember you,
Kasim

In Jahanara’s tomb, Wickham gifts me a Pauline Kael, and makes a confession of his heart

“I knew. Even though it’s raining, I knew I would find you here.”

“But why?”

“I… I just wanted to see you. We haven’t met. Your phone… the voice said that the number no longer exists? What happen?”

“Airtel people disconnected it. I haven’t made the payments.”

“Why? Is everything all right, Mayank?”

“Wickham, Wickham…”

“What… why are you crying?”

“Wickham…”

“Is all well?”

“I’m fired. It's horrible. I don’t know what to do. It’s horrible. I want to die.”

“Oh, I’m sorry Mayank. I’m sorry. Come on, give me a hug.”

“I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“Let’s sit down. Stop, stop, no more. We're too old for crying. Stop. Look I’ve got something.”

“What, books!”

“For you.”

“5001 Nights at the Movies! Pauline Kael! God, she was the great film critic at the New Yorker. I was searching for her all this time…”

“I saw it at a second hand store in Green Park and knew it belonged to you.”

“Thanks Wick, and this one… Sandcastles… by Milton Viorst…”

“Look at the back-jacket. This man is also a New Yorker man.”

“Hmm… it’s about middle east… and look, Viorst… yes, you right… he was a New Yorker correspondent… and see… he goes to Baghdad, Istanbul Beirut, Cairo… oh God, he talks to Naguib Mahfouz in Cairo… Wick, this is my kind of book.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Wow. Thanks. Thanks so much. Great. And it’s so pretty. Hardbound. Cover intact. Wow. And you know I love Mahfouz. I think he’s the Jane Austen of Arabia.”

“I know. Just as you say Vikram Seth is the Jane Austen of India.”

“Yeah, but sorry, Seth's not even close, but I still like him.”

“I know.”

“Yeah, I recently saw his b&w bare chested picture in Outlook. He's total hairy!”

“Mayank, I’m sorry about what had happened at Kasim’s place.”

“Oh, yeah, am sorry.”

“And look at you... no pox marks on your face.”

”Yeah, but my chest's still spotty."

[Some minutes pass in silence. We both sitting down on the marble floor, by the tomb, holding hands.]

"You good, Wick?”

“I’m in love.”

“Good.”

“I want you to meet Velutha.”

“Yeah, but you know, I’ve no money. I’m in crisis.”

“I’ll lend you some. But I’ve no future with him.”

“Can you lend me five thousand? I dunno when I’ll be able to return…”

“He has his father and brother in Kerela and he says that one day he would have to marry a woman.”

“Have you finally been introduced to Arundhati Roy?"

“No. Look at the irony. She is right now in London! He says I’ll meet her once she returns.”

“You can wait till then.”

“I’m in no hurry. Now he is more urgent than her.”

“Wick, see, Jahanara’s tomb is so lonely.”

“Who was she?”

“Some Mughal princess… I think she’d no lover and died alone.”

“Hmmm…”

“But am not sure.”

“Mayank!”

“OhWickamsorrybutkissmebackkissmeback…”

Bookless in the Dargah, I yearn for J, see Kasim, and bump into Wickham

Crowd, circled by the crowd. Trying to see colours, only colours: white kurta, green saree, yellow topi, purple tee, hazel eyes, dark-brown burqa, if I write like Woolf, just impressions, senses, strokes, splashes telling the story, can I cope without money, bowing to Ameer Khusro, praying for Mummy Papa, for J, no calmness pressing the heart, this Khadim boy in kurta jeans, unshaven cheeks, qawwals in the courtyard, not singing, dholak lying still, oh Hazrat Nizamuddin, closing eyes, momdadJ should stay happy all their lives, let J come and see you soon, kissing the pillar, opening the eyes… God! this boy by the door… but he’s dead, should’ve kissed him back that day in Jama, but how can it be(!), but I ran away, now am nowhere, don’t know where to go, is it no job or no money scaring me, or… or, coz am not able to get steady with any book; tried MFK Fisher, switched to Jane within twelve hours, the courtyard’s wet, picked up Sam Morgenstern’s Composers on Music, it’s drizzling, threw it away, took out Vivienne Marquis’s Cheese Book, in my bag but not reading it, not reading anything, so rudderless, so alone, stepping into Jahanara’s tomb, J, cometome, wanna hug you hard, chesttochest, taste your chest hair, lip-touch your lips, guess need a Tolstoyan epic but no guts for Dostoevsky, how bout Nabokov’s short storie… Wickham! Whatyoudoinhere!

Now, with no job, no savings, how will I eat? How will I buy books?

Nizzie West. Walking to the Dargah. With MFK Fisher’s Serve it Forth and Vivienne Marquis’s The Cheese Book. Oh, ATM. Scared to step in. Don’t know how much balance in my account. Never saved. No job now. Can’t even risk going to the Bahri’s. Just in case they ask to settle the account, and then this evening so humid, am sweating… that turning again.

In that winter midnight when J was here, when we were walking down from the Dargah, with Rebecca West in my shoulder bag, when my hand was in his jacket pocket, and when we reached at this turning, this spot, I remember we were shivering and J was telling me about Sarajevo (he had been there!), and just then a stray dog started following us, growling. Poor J, such a big man but so scared of dogs. I also fear them but if the dog had played dirty, I would‘ve taken the bite and died of rabies, not J. But should I ask J for money? Will he give? He doesn’t even know I’ve been fired. Actually I don’t need much; just to get along – to buy books sometimes, to have something to eat, and when the novel’s done, published, become a bestseller, awarded the Bookers, then I would never need money.

I’d be rich with a top floor house in Jor Bagh. The studio would be lined with books. Publishers would send every novel they publish but I would throw away the junk. In my studio, I would‘ve only those which I like. I would’ve a mahogany desk, large windows, and while tapping a new novel on my Apple Mac, the sunlight would fall on the desk. There would be a wine bottle on the desk, on my left. I would survive only on cheeses and bread, no curries; would live alone but keep lovers - to be summoned only at selected hours.

No one, no one would interfere with my writing schedule. But J… J would be an exception. I would have nothing to do with Wickham. But can J lend me money? What if he refuses? Money is… well, nothing, and his refusal won’t change anything but… I would be heartbroken if he refuses. Who then? Asking from Papa is out of question. Even he doesn’t know of my firing. Then? What will I do when the money gets over? Hazrat Nizamuddin, please do something.

In this season of losses, Kasim’s mother is handling her son’s loss with a little help from Jane Austen's Sense & Sensibility

I do not know how can people read so fast. I began yesterday and have not finished even the first chapter. The last time when I had read it, when Kasim was not even born, it had taken me more than a year to finish the novel. I had just married and was new to Delhi. I had to do other things than just sit and read. In the morning I had to wake up, prepare nashta for Kasim’s father, and also prepare his lunch tiffin. When he had left for his office, I had to sweep the house, wash the clothes, and afterwards I had to go out to buy subzi, milk packets and meat for the night meal.

When I would be back from the bazaar, the empty rooms reminded me of my brothers and sisters. Sometimes I suffered in silence, and sometimes I cried for a few minutes. Sometimes I took out my Abbu's Sense and Sensibility and tried reading it. Abbu was a great reader of Jane Austen and when I opened Sense and Sensibility and rest it on my lap, I felt close to him. Feeling connected to Abbu made me feel close also to Ammi and to my brothers and sisters.

But reading is difficult and I was never good in remembering the relationships of characters to each other. I also needed time to connect with the plot line from the point where I had left the novel earlier. When I would finally be able to get into the book, it was time for Kasim’s father to return home from his office. Then I had to quickly hide the novel in the sandook, make chai for him and start preparing the food.

Now, after so many years have passed, I do not remember what was there in the novel except that it was about three sisters. I had liked it, though I cannot recall what I had liked about it. After I finished that book, I wanted to read more novels by Jane Austen. However, it was 1985 and Kasim was born that December, and I got busy with him.

I am not busy now. I do not cook more than one subzi. When Mayank was having chicken pox last month and I had brought him here, I cooked more dishes. When his angrez friend had come to visit him, I had prepared meat. He is well now and living in the house of his parents. As for me, I stay in the house throughout the day and go out only in evenings to meet Kasim. Once in a week, I also buy subzis. There is much empty time with me and that is why I am reading Sense and Sensibility again. Perhaps this time I will take less than a year to finish it, Inshaallah.

While I lost my day job, Wickham lost his pet The God of Small Things

How could I lose it? It was always in my shoulder bag. I didn’t take it out since a week or so, so who did? Must be here somewhere. No, these are other editions... the German translation, the Spanish and here’s the India Ink hardbound first editi… far more handsomer than my pet, but it was special. A small, Australian paperback. Just the right size. Had got it from Soho for half a pound. Had her newspaper pictures pasted on inside pages. There was one of hers in Jantar Mantar, on the Acknowledgment page. Another was very old, when she was very young, when the novel was not even published. She was crossing the road at South Ex. But where is it? Once Mayank scribbled an Urdu poem on it. In the English translation. Now, now, I must not panic. Which were the places I went to last week? British Council, the gym at the embassy. Tuesday night I was at Pegs n Pints but then I’d left the bag back home. On Thursday evening I was at Pot Pourri. But nowhere did I take it out from the bag? How could it disappear? Now this is another copy. This I got from Delhi, from Paharganj. Harper Perennial. Printed in the United States of America. Beautiful but it's not that. The pet had a character, had a depth… it’s like someone has died. But I must not think on such lines. A novel does not live in one copy. Here this shelf has more than 50 editions – different publishers, different sizes, different origins, different translations, but the story will never change. It will always be about Ammu and Velutha, about how things can change in a day. And why be so possessive about a copy of her novel when I’ve felt Velutha himself. Velutha who sees her everyday. Velutha who lay naked with me the other night. Through him, I’ve established a connection with her, so what’s the loss of a copy. But that copy was special. I lost it. If only I find it again.

I'm fired from my job; I'll read Jane

Because of my lack of productivity and thereby my performance failing to meet the expectations of the company, I have been fired from my dayjob den. This will have some direct consequences.

a) No longer will I be able to buy The New Yorker, The Economist, The New York Review of Books, and The International Herald Tribune from Khan Market
b) No longer will I be able to buy first hand books in Bahrisons, Fact & Fiction, and The Book Shop
c) No longer will I be able to dine at Café Turtle
d) No longer will I be able to commute in autos
e) I will have more time to write
f) I will have more time to read

I must now go to Lodhi Garden; must be very humid there. There have been no monsoon rains. The clouds come, hang upon the grounds, stay barren. But then I'll have Anna Kare... or should I take Jane? It's been a while that I last read her from beginning to end and I fear am coming out of her spell. That would be dreadful. Yes, I must take her out, and read... read what?... Sense and Sensibility? Yes. And yes, Kasim's mother is dying to read Sense with me. I must call her. Together we will spend the day in Lodhi Garden, under some tree, and read Jane. But no... I must read Anna again. This time I won't read for 'what will happen next' thrill; instead I'll be very slow... will seek for Tolstoy's tricks. Just how he made his stories so real. It'll help me. In my novel, there may be no suspense, no plot, no climax, but I'll want the readers to feel that this moment is really happening. That the sky outside is really overcast, that this ceiling fan is really making a whirring sound, that the window curtain is really tied up in a knot, that Elizabeth David is really lying on this desk, that the red-coloured Larousse Gastronomique is really covered with the August dust, that... that Kasim really died, that Arundhati Roy really wrote The God of Small Things, that J really exists, that I'll really kill myself.

How Jane Austen conquered my spirits but suddenly the rain spoiled it all

Mummy’s sobbing coming from the drawing room. Papa was looking worried when I saw him with The Times of India. Course, am the problem ("Why he not getting married?").

And me in the library, on the sofa, sitting still, back straight, holding onto Anna Karenina. But she’ll jump in front of the train and die. Me flinging her away. Taking out Jane, leaving the rest of the books, now in the drawing room, in front of Mummy Papa, trying not to look at them, opening the door, sneaking out of the house, walking, running, out into the open field, under a sunless cloudy sky, randomly opening the Complete Novels… Page 33. Sensensensibility. Chapter 9. Third para. The Dashwoods. Their father freshly dead; newly evacuated by their stepbro from their former home. Now they in the Barton Cottage. Life’s bad but it’s not all badness. The prospects are pleasant.

The whole country abounded in beautiful walks. The high downs, The high downs which invited them from almost every window of the cottage to seek the exquisite enjoyment of air on their summits, were a happy alternative when the dirt of the valleys beneath shut up their superior beauties…

Yes, Happy Alternatives. If not Home, then the Outside; if not Jane, then Arundhati; if not MummyPapa, then J…

… and towards one of these hills did Marianne and Margaret one memorable morning direct their steps, attracted by the partial sunshine of a showery sky, and unable longer to bear the confinement which the settled rain of the two preceding days had occasioned…

Mamma crying, Papa sad. Am seen as cruel, selfish. A liar. The source of all pain. But fuckit! So nice to be here, with Jane. To read her. To live with her words…

… They pursued their way against the wind, resisting it with laughing delight…

Me too laughing. Books, thank you. You folks have no expectations. You just want to be read. You’re fine even if you’re left unread. But I’ll read you all. Yeah.

… Suddenly the clouds united over their heads, and a driving rain set full in their face.

Oh.

In that rainy night, while my Shakespeare was falling into the puddle, I thought of my Shakespeare moments

Shakespeare falling, heading to the puddle.

Last Shakespeare lost in an auto.

I can still save this one...

First Shakespeare I read was Caesar. Years ago. Then Macbeth. Once went to the mountains with Mummy. She, me, summer, Caesar in a cottage. She slept, I read. The world was simpler. No books, no Nizamuddin, no Jane, no Arundhati, no Wickham, no Kasim, no J. Then came the Friend. That night, his arms, my arms, snuggling, we backing-forthing into nowhere, then the morning, the Friend devastated, the friendship ending, am starting Romeo Juliet. Short young love.

My arms too unpractised to catch falling things; Shakespeare going down, down.

That warm spring sky. Nanaji’s village. He (dead now) recited the Bard from memory. Papa lounging in his sun-drenched courtyard. Me walking in his sugarcane field, reading Lear (British Council copy). Suddenly, a beautiful passage, heart stopping, me stopping, looking around, breathing in, walking again. Back in Nanaji’s haveli. Reading Lear to Papa. He smiling, nodding. Mummy sitting next to him. Both happy, unable to see the future. I was theirs. Then.

... the hardbound's beyond me.

Years later, watching Shakespeare in Love at PVR, Saket. He lolling round the bed with Lady Viola. The climax: the ship drowning, Lady Viola saving herself. Not for her a watery end, but a new life beginning on a stranger shore. Show over. Me leaving the theater, taking the blueline straight to Nehru Park, searching for my Shakespeare, finding no one.

Noooo.

Few years later, J lying on the Karol Bagh hotel bed, saying, “You read Hamlet, you read all”; me clinging closer, saying yes, yes.

This Shakespeare, ruined.

That rainy night Kasim’s mother was wading through a Daryaganj street; a few evenings later, I suffered a pang of loneliness at Bahrisons

Putting on a burqa, locking the door, out with an umbrella.

At Bahrisons.

The wind is whistling, the rain slanting sideways, the umbrella bending to the left.

Reading Julia Child’s My Life in France, but want a new book, but nothing new.

Water flooding the galli. Wading my way, turning to the right. The water running the opposite direction.

Nothing interesting… hey, look at this gora… blue jeans, green sweat shirt.

Maybe will get the auto from Mother Dairy, near the main road.

Fucking sexy. Can see him jogging every morning for miles. Like Haruki Murakami.

Just want to see my boy for once. Once when he was small, when it was early evening, I was in the kitchen, he was making paper boats outside, suddenly there was a loud thunder and he came running to me and did not leave me for a long time.

Folks say you can’t get a dream lover but there he is. Boyish, bookish, also a man. Come on, look at me. Am handsome. Just look at me once and I’ll know if I should approach you or not.

That night he had slept on my bed, his little arms curved round my stomach.

You look like a not-so-young expat. You must be living in Jangpura or in some one-room flat in Def Col. You must be gymming every morning, you must be reading in the night, you mus… oh, he speaks!

This burqa is completely drenched but I will still go. I will go, touch him, come back but there are no autos here. How will I go?

He’s asking the attendant for coffee tables on mountains. He’s now explaining he teaches children who can’t speak English. He’s into NGO? Oh, I’ll join you. Together we’ll teach ABCD to the kids.

There is not even a single vehicle. What must I do? Should I walk?

But he’s not even looking at me.

Who is that shouting?

Fuck yourself, am leaving.

I must walk, walk to my Kasim. But this main road, I must cross this road to the thana side, but it is flowing like Jamna.

I can’t leave. He hasn’t seen me. What if he sees me? Maybe we’ll look at each other, connect and maybe, we’ll go and have falafel at Café Turtle. Maybe then… oh, he’s carrying a helmet. Must've come in a bike.

Hawaldar!

“Arre, don’t step into the road.”
“Kyun?”
“A manhole is lying open somewhere there. Stay there. Go back.”
“But I have to go to…”
“Haan, where are you going in this raining night?”
“I am… I have to go.”

Standing against this police post, he’ll be out of the bookstore anytime, and then… who knows what may happen…

“I have to go to the ITO…”
“Can’t you see the weather? Go home.”

He’s coming out. Oh, lookatmelookatmelookatmelookatmelookatme… but he turning left, straight down the front lane, stopping outside Anand Stationer’s, pausing, walking again, past the ATM, Chona’s, State Bank, turning left to Barista side, going straight, his back towards me…

“I have to go. It is important.”
“You will drown. Doob jaongi.”

There he’s going, there’s his green Tee-shirt. Should I follow him? Run to him? Tell me I like him? Ask for a lift? But now I can’t see him.

“Waapas jaayiye.”
“Allah, take care of my Kasim. He is in your custody. Alhamdul lil-lahi rab-bil 'alameen… Walad dal-leen. Ameen.”

While reading Julia Child, I grow despondent about my situation

Plans fail. Got up at 3am, (somehow) finished Antony & Cleopatra, then writing; had to get on with the stuff on that rainy night when Wick made love to Velutha, Kasim’s mom went to visit him in the kabristan, and I ruined my Shakespeare; instead I opened a shelf, got hooked by the hardbound of Julia Child’s My Life in France (Alfresh A. Knopf, New York, 2006), started reading it - simple, engaging, but complication began on turning to page 5, to a b&w picture of Julia with husband Paul; sitting in what seems to be a study; the morning light streaming in through the glass panes, Julia writing something, her gaze down on the desk, Paul reading some correspondence, kneeling back on his chair; he’s in shoes, black trousers, a watch on his left wrist, and no shirt; his chest muscular, his arms tight; both he and Julia looking content after a night of married-people's lovemaking; I’ll never have such a life, except hurried groping here and there; for me no togetherness after the mating. Kasim’s gone, Wick into Velutha and J… well, he’s as lucky as Julia and Paul.

Hours after being loved by Arundhati Roy’s Velutha, Wickham is unable to recall his face on the terrace of his Hauz Khas flat

The night is being too long and is suffused with his remembrance. A few hours ago I was with him. Now it is difficult to believe. Like the gradual fading of moonlight into the sea’s depth, his image is going further from the mind’s eye. No, I must go inside, take out The God of Small Things and look for him. But the candles? Where did I keep them? But I remember that light-brown birthmark on his back. It was like a dry leaf. Pointed. He said it was a lucky leaf. It made monsoons come on time though this year they have come too late. Even then the rains are sporadic, at best. But this evening I was with him when it was raining. Even in the dark his skin was glowing like black marble. But his face? Why am I forgetting how he looked like? Had he a moustache? Why can't I recall? Was I really with him? Did it really rain? Is he really real?

In the rainy night, Kasim’s mother worrying for Kasim, Wickham making love to Velutha, and me spoiling my Shakespeare

“It was unpractical. Should’ve never carried this hefty bard in my arm and now am stuck. No umbrella, am all wet, the arm hurting. Tut, no romance in dragging this thick Shakespeare. Am foolish. Should start being sensible. Can’t anyway read all the plays at once. Must’ve just one paperback play at a time. Right now am into Julius Caesar. So just carry him. Why add Lear, Macbeth, Henry, and the gang? But what if I urgently want Othello and he’s not there and then... things will get so panicky. Nah, this collected work is fine… oh, the Shakespeare’s falling. Oh, it’s in the puddle! No!”

“This is the first time it has rained so heavily since... he went away. He is alone in the krabistan. I must go there. But the galli is flooded with water. How must I go? There is no rickshaw, no auto. Ya Allah.”

“Slanting silver ropes slamming into loose earth, ploughing it up like gunfire. Wickham, naked, crouching over a naked Velutha, his mouth on his. He slides down, introducing himself to the rest of Velutha. His neck. His nipples. His chocolate stomach. Now Velutha pressing the heat of his erection against the white man’s eyelids. Wickham tasting him, salty, in his mouth. Velutha drawing Wickham’s back against him and guiding himself into him. Now he is inside him.”

With Shakespeare as my pillow, I go to sleep at Sarmad’s shrine and dream of J

One day me and J were here together. He prayed. I prayed. We sat down at this exact spot, against this red-colored wall, opposite Sarmad's tomb. I laid down on the carpet, my head on J’s lap. It must've been afternoon, must’ve been noisy outside in the lane but inside no one except us, and my eyes closing, a quiet J looking on to at the tomb but brushing my hair as if brushing his own.

We were not talking coz we were tired. Before coming here, we were in Jama Masjid where he taught me how to do the namaz. Before that we had lunch at Karim’s. Before that I took him to Red Fort. Afterwards, when we left Sarmad's, when the sky was darkening, when we were in the auto, somewhere near Purana Quila, we kissed.

Now my eyes closing again. But am not missing J. Am with someone. Some time before I got a great Shakespeare in a second-hand store in a Daryaganj bylane; close to Kasim’s house (didn’t tell his mother am around!). This Shakespeare is a hardbound, publishedin1936, large fonts, haunting illustrations and very heavy, but doesn’t matter. Well, am dumping Buddenbrooks to get on with the bard. Haven’t read the man totally. Not all the plays. Only a few sonnets. Maybe still skip Titus Andronicus… Will take him wherever I go. Carry only him and Jane in my shoulder bag… but oh, am so tired, am laying on this carpet... my head on the Shakespeare, my eyes closing. See, see J again, bowing to Sarmad, a sufi who once loved a man, who was beheaded. But look at J. His eyes closed, his palms cupped together, his lips murmuring prayers. Now, prayer over, J opening his eyes, coming back to the earth, turning around, looking at me with my head on Shakespeare’s lap. He’s smiling. Am looking back at J, am smiling.

With the pox gone, I finally go to Khan Market+Jor Bagh bookstores but find nothing

The pox gone, the life coming back to reclaim me, but now when am in front of this mirror, my tee up, I see too many spots on my chest, but they’ll go off, too, but till then I must not go cruising in parks for they may like my looks but then they’ll see the chest and will be turned off, and I bet even Wickham might get repulsed, but am not alarmed and yeah, am recovering; today I went into the town on my own, with the full-length shirt sleeves hiding the scars on my arms, the shirt itself buttoned up till the top to hide the chest, the poor chest which once was so sexy, but anyways, I was saying that it was hot, dusty, and the autowalla was slow but I didn’t mind, and first we went to Khan Market, to Bahrisons, which being 2.15pm was closed for lunch, but the foreign magazine stall was open and I got the last two weeks’ New Yorkers, too bad The New York Review of Books still hadn’t come, and then I entered the shop (they always let me in even during their lunch hour!), but there was nothing interesting even though I tried hard to look for something buyable when, tobehonest, I ought not for last night I’d made a commitment to Buddenbrooks, but anyways, then I walked over to the Lodhi Garden where I saw a koyal floating up not very high from my head when suddenly a feather dropped out of her tail and that feather took its own sweet time to land on the grass from where I picked it up and slipped it inside my Thomas Mann and you know, when I was walking through a part where there were many trees, I saw a chap who looked just like Kasim, but of course he had to be somebody else but that guy looked at me, smiled, turned away but anyways, I soon crossed the garden, crossed Lodhi Road, and reached Jor Bagh where I straight walked into KD Singh’s Book Shop but even there I couldn’t find anything interesting which was such a drag but anyways, I then took an auto to the Dargah and prayed for J, Momdad, and Kasim’s mother too, and then I came back home to confront Papa who said, “You’ve grown very weak, you must eat, you must first make up your health, books can come later,” and I said, “Ya ya, hmm hmm.”

Finally, at my parents’ home, where I’m ignoring them for EM Forster and Thomas Mann

Midnight. Beethoven’s eighth symphony in F major reminding me of J, but Mummy Papa sleeping in the bedroom, across the dining hall, and am in my library. This one has more books; I left them all (Time-Life collection, Saveurs, Hemingway's first editions, old Shakespeare editions, old Austen volumes, old cookbooks, more than 80 Grantas and other so-many, so-many, so-many, so-many books) when I left this house for that teenie-weenie Basti pad. But when I leave this house forever, how will all these fit into the Basti-hole? But how will I leave Mummy Papa? In the morning Papa looked at my face, forehead, arms, legs, examined each pox spot. Mamma squeezed mausambi juice. While I was living in the Basti, they fixed an AC in my library so (as Mamma said) that the monsoon humidity doesn’t ruin my books.

But they hated my books but it’s clear they love me but maybe they have started loving my books too so how will I leave them?

But I so easily left Kasim’s mother. What she must be doing right now? We used to talk late into the night. But here am not talking to Momdad. Not at all. Spent the entire day finishing E.M. Forster’s A Room With A View. Papa dropped in when I just opened Howard’s End but me merely replied in hmm and mmm. He left. Was scared he would ask why am not getting married. In the evening Mummy cooked gobhi, just the way I like it – al dente. Loved it but was embarrassed to tell her I loved it.

Now they’re sleeping and sometime ago I had a feeling as if they’ve died. So I crept into the bedroom; they both had white sheets on their bodies, the sheets were going up, coming down. They were alive, breathing. Such relief. Am now starting Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. J gifted it. There’s his rare-rare inscription:

My most favorite
German novel for
My most favorite reader!
New Year Eve, 2007
Jalal

But does J really exist? Methink it’s only the pox, the books, the parents and me which are real. Everything else is a fantasy. Here in this house - all suffocation, no escape. Like being Madame Bovary in Tostes: The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast.

Praise for the Booker Prize winning Ruined by Reading

“The story is not just about a catalogue of books bought but lying unread but also about love found, lost, found, and lost again."
- New York Review of Books

“The central character, other than rummaging forgotten books… is almost frantically hunting for a lover... in the city’s various ghettos, tombs, mosques, discos, cafés, parks, buses, markets and ruins… making this the most definitive modern-day Delhi novel."
- New York Times

“It’s hard to avoid using words like spellbinding and dazzling to describe this debut novel. Ruined by Reading is a powerful, original work… It’s the kind of novel you want to read again and again. Too bad the novelist killed himself.”
- Washington Post Book World

“This glorious novel is for all those who have ever fallen in love with a book, or a human being.”
- Newsweek

“A stunning first novel… Perhaps the best thing to come out of India after Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things.”
- Time Out New York

“Soofi has written this tale of a mad book lover in a language so simple yet so complex, that at times it blows the senses away.”
- Seattle Times

“This book is astonishing in its theme.”
- Austin American Statesman

“Ultimate tearjerker.”
- Philadelphia Inquirer

“Romantic, tragic, mysterious, beautiful.”
- People

“After every few years come a novel that stands out from the clutter and becomes a signpost for its decade. Ruined by Reading is that kind of accomplishment.”
- Earth Times

“True, it is paced like blogposts but in its entirety, it’s like a classic novel.”
- St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Ruined by Reading is a strange book. It doesn’t read like a book. A commendable achievement.”
- Sunday Oregonian

“A raw novel that punches right into the heart’s core… A must read.”
- San Jose Mercury News

“Forget the language, forget the plot; just read it to discover a world where people live and die for books.”
- Rocky Mountain News

“What a disturbing reading experience. This spectacular first novel succeeds in toppling almost every theory on how a novel ought to be written.”
- Tulsa World

With a sudden craving for Madame Bovary, I write an invalid’s e-mail to J

Dear J,
You must be sleeping. I’m also yawning but Madame Bovary is lying on the bed. It’s a 1949 Everyman’s Library edition that I had… please don’t be angry… flicked from T’s house. Well, actually I’ve read the novel, a few years ago, but this afternoon when I was in the middle of the war passages of AJ Liebling’s The Road Back to Paris, I suddenly felt greedy for Mrs Bovary. I know I know I should’ve first finished Liebling but… though everyone, including David Remnick, likes him, I find him… boring. This was the third time I was attempting Liebling. Yeah, he is good. I can make that out but he’s not clicking and then I felt this craving for Flaubert and no matter what I had to read him and thank God, I had packed him while coming to a friend’s place. You know Kasim? The guy who died. His mother called me in. She’s a very nice woman. And an ex-Austen fan. Well, she still likes Jane and is in fact pestering me to read Sense and Sensibility with her but I remember your words. Remember when you were in Delhi, when we were cooped up in that yucky Karol Bagh hotel… when we had made love… that night after we returned from the Dargah… after we asked the cab walla to drive past the Red Fort… that night when I’d cushioned my face onto your fuzzy chest, you’d said that if I want to be a author, I need to go beyond Jane, that I need to crack Tolstoy… Well, I’ve finished Anna Karenina and War & Peace; now I must get on with Dostoevsky but I’m just so scared of The Brothers Karamazov… to plough through it... and I’ve already tried him thrice and he couldn’t happen and yet I’ve to read him… and not just Karamazov but also the Idiot and that Raskolnikov, too, but one day soon I will. Yeah. Oh yes, Papa called today. He was sounding very upset. I hadn’t told him about the pox. He said Mummy was crying. I should’ve gone to their place. Now when I’m better, the blisters have given way to scabs which may fall off any day, I think I must go there. After all, they’re my parents and love me in their own selfish way. And they’re old. I can’t break their hearts. But J, I’m so glad you’re not here. I haven’t shaven since I was diagnosed. Am looking like one of those unwashed, filthy Talibani guys. Just need a Kalashnikov on my shoulders! But now am going to Madame Bovary. Yes J, please take good care of yourself.
Hugs and then some more hugs (oh no, am poxed!),
mayank

Today evening Kasim’s mother and me had Wickham, Jane Austen, Rebecca West and Mavis Gallant for biryani

“I caught it when I was in school. We would have chicken pox parties.”

“Mayank was telling me about your name, Wickham Sir. Your parents must have been great Jane Austen readers?”

“But Wick, why George Wickham? Why not Mr Darcy?”

“My mother liked Wickham. Who’s your favorite character in the novel, aunty?”

“Mine? I have forgotten the novel except that I had enjoyed it very much…”

“I like Lydia... she'ssonaughty... and Lady Catherine de Borough… O God!”

“You know, Mayank, the first novel I purchased in the Sunday Book bazaar was Pride and Prejudice…”

“But Wick, now I’ve grown tired of it… you know I really like Mansfield Park…”

“That’s her worst novel…”

“I’m asking Mayank to read Sense and Sensibility with me but he is very fickle minded.”

“Aunty, you don’t have to spill out everything.”

“As if I don’t know.”

“We packed a few of his books when I was bringing him here last week but look, he never stick to one book. Yesterday afternoon he was reading Jon Lee Anderson’s The Fall of Baghdad; in the evening he was with the Paris Review Interviews Vol. III; and just before I shut off the lights, he was reading Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon…”

“I know aunty… if only he reads as much as he buys… ”

“But today he was with West the whole day long…”

“You were not looking carefully, aunty. In the evening I was reading Mavis Gallant’s Paris Stories.”

“OK, enough jokes. Wickham Sir, Mayank was really looking forward to see you.”

“O, is it? Thank you.”

“I have mangoes in the fridge. I will get them... and you will not go without the dinner.”

“You don’t have to, aunty. I’m fine…”

“You said my novel’s no novel.”

“Let’s talk something else.”

“What sort of friend you are you’ve shattered my self-confidence do you know am not able to write till a month ago I thought I’ll manage to finish this novel it seemed the best thing in my life and you sent one mail and its gone kaput…”

“I consider you my friend and if I won’t tell you the right thing, who else then… besides I object that you wrote about me without my permission…”

“Here… these are desi aams… you know, Wickham Sir, we Indians eat this mango variety with hands but I have sliced them for you…”

“You are very kind, aunty.”

“You know Kasim?”

“Well… yes, I never met him but yes, Mayank has told me about him.”

“He was a great reader. He had read all novels by Jane Austen. Isn’t it so, Mayank?”

“Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. He’d read all the Jane Austens. Yeah.”

“Yes, he was as good as Mayank. He would not go to bed without Shakespeare. You see he was a great admirer of English literature… I will be just back from the kitchen.”

“I don’t know why she’d to say that…”

“It’s ok. Poor woman. Her son died. Let her lie.”

“Listen, don’t talk bout her like that.”

“Look, I was not being mean… and don’t give me that tone... and you are writing about her and her son without she knowing about it. Remember that!”

“I think it was a bad idea… my pox would’ve gone without you comin’ here.”

“I can leave if you want.”

“This ain’t my home. I don’t want a scene. Shit.”

“Did I tell you that I’ve become friends with Velutha?”

“Wow, congrats! Soon Arundhati Roy will be your buddy! Damnit!”

“He is just like that Velutha.”

“Umm, will you introduce to him? Bytheway, there’s no dining table here… she’ll spread a plastic sheet down here… on the floor…”

“I see.”

“The curry will be greasy. Make sure you don’t make a face.”

“I’m better behaved than you, Mayank.”

“So what you friends are talking?”

“Oh, we were… we were discussing Rebecca West.”

“First things first. Wickham Sir, the food is ready. Tell me when you are hungry. What about Rebecca West?”

“Aunty, I was reading a passage this afternoon and I was reminded of Kasim.”

“What was it?”

“Wick, please pass me the book. It’s there… on that low table. Yeah, there. That’s the one.”

“Yes Aunty. Wick, you also listen. But no, no… the fact is Aunty, I know you were his mother but I also miss him… very much. I feel his absence. I don’t know but he has become a closer friend now when he is no more… I think I knew him better now… and yes Wick, Kasim was a great reader. He had read all the Jane Austens. We would go to Jama Masjid and read one Austen after another. We would start with Pride and Prejudice, finish it and get on with Emma, then to Mansfield Park and once that’s done, we would go back to Sense and Sensibility… yes aunty, your favorite… and then Northanger Abbey which we both always enjoyed the most, more than Pride, you know, and then Persuasion and then back to Pride and the cycle would start again…”

“You never told me that son…”

“I was not really intending to talk about him but… Wick, ain’t you hungry? Aunty, khaana.”

How Isaac Bashevis Singer’s story about a Rabbi’s grief gave comfort to me and Kasim’s mother

“But aunty, this musambi juice is garam.”

“Yes, in your condition, you can not get it cold. Who knows there are blisters down your throat...”

“Am sick of this pox but aunty you know… can I be frank?”

“As long as it is nothing against our religion I guess...”

“You know aunty when I was going to the doctor’s...”

“Yes, son.”

“… I was prepared for the worst imaginable things… even cancer.”

“Do not think such things.”

“But chicken pox… I never thought I would’ve it.”

“But I had only… my Kasim… cancer took him away…”

“… I know, aun…”

“… Son, don’t talk so lightly… you, you are like him… I am, yes, I am trying to… but there is not even one moment which I live without missing him…”

“Aunty, last night I was reading a short story by Isaac… wait, let me check his full name.”

“Hmm, I say let us start Jane Austen.”

“Just wait, yes, Isaac Bashevis Singer… he was a Yahudi writer… so… Jane Austen? Yes, we read a bit of Sense and Sensibility in Jama Masjid. Remember?”

“Yes, but then we were also reading Aga Shahid Ali.”

“I can’t get his poems but anyways… so I was reading this story in which this village rabbi…”

“Rabbi?”

“O, he’s like a mullah of Yahudi people.”

“Even these Yahudis are the sons of God…”

“So this village rabbi’s three children have already died and the remaining three too are spitting blood…”

“I hope they lived.”

“And then the rabbi’s wife… she’s angry… she’s asking him what use is his knowledge, his prayers, the merits of his ancestors if the God can’t save their children and aunty, the rabbi doesn’t know what to say and aunty, one day his beloved daughter Rebecca too dies.”

“Inna lilla e rajaaun.”

“The rabbi’s grief was complete. He stopped reciting the texts out loud, he would stare at the pages of the holy books but not read the lines, he would not eat his breakfast, he started believing that atheists were right that there was no justice, no Judge… that nobody ruled the world…”

“It was his daughter’s loss…”

“… Once he was a great teacher but now his students started leaving him… he now had belief in only one thing. Poverty. He would say that poor men do exist and that’s one thing we could be certain…”

“But I did not lose faith in Allah. He gave me Kasim, he took him back…”

“But aunty, wait… one day he saw his Rebecca… as she would be if should would’ve lived… she was looking as if she’d just recovered from her illness..."

"Really!"

"... I swear it happened like that aunty and then the daughter implored her father to start his prayers, to start meeting his pupils and the rabbi's eyes were wet with tears... but soon her image started dissolving… first her face, then her body, then the dress and then there was nothing but a touch of heavenly joy where Rebecca was.”

“Allah be praised.”

“And then the rabbi returned to… he resumed his prayers, his students came back and in the story’s end he said that one should always be joyous.”

“… Which is not easy, son, but you can’t fight against the God’s will.”

“Aunty, it was strange but just as the rabbi saw Rebecca, last night I saw Kasim... yes, him... in my dreams.”

“What!”

“Yeah, we were climbing the Jama Masjid minar but he started becoming invisible when we reached the top stairs…”

“I’ll go to kabristan this evening.”

“Listen aunty, oh, I forgot to ask you... I was talking to a firangi friend of mine. He wants to visit me. Can he come?”

“Yes, tell him he can have dinner here.”

“Thanks, but am not sure about the food. These goras are very fussy but aunty you’ll be surprised to know his name.”

“Nothing surprises me now, son.”

“His name is Wickham, George Wickham!”

I've more than 10,000 books and still I cry - Why Me!

Still poxed, still itchy, still scarred, but this morning I woke up with an erection which means that the worst is over. So time to reconsider that existential question - Why Me. I'd angrily raised it to the higher power after the chicken pox diagnosis. But now I wonder why I failed to ask Why Me…

…when J mixed into my life

…when I sighted Arundhati Roy for the first time in person in Jantar Mantar

…when I was gifted this beautiful MacBook to tap on

…when a bud helped me buy my life’s first SLR camera

…when I got the first edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was just a day before the pox diagnosis

…when the Stranger from Bombay whom I’ve never met would send me surprise books

…when the fact is that the hollow core of the single bed on which I sleep is filled with more than ten years of The New Yorkers

…when the fact is that I have now more than ten thousand books in my library

…when I finally finished Tolstoy’s War & Peace in June, 2009, and became a civilized man

…when strangers stop me in the streets to say that they know me through my writing

… when I got my first book contract (Yahoo!) from a leading publishing house a few weeks ago

… when I got my second book contract (Yahoo! Yahoo!) from another leading publishing house a few weeks ago

…but today I saw Vikram Seth’s bare chested picture in the latest Outlook where his entire torso was covered with a wild luxuriant growth of what seemed to be the finest silk but damn, I don’t think I can ever be that close to Vikram to touch that silk of his garden… but why, why not, why not me?