The Centre(59)
“Ahh, okay.”
“Yes. I’m not as fuddy-duddy as you thought, am I?”
“No. I mean, I didn’t think you were … fuddy duddy.”
“Okay. Good. Well, as I was saying, the four of us were sitting there, sharing our research and ideas and experiences, and to this day, none of us is sure where the idea came from. It just formed itself, right there. We were sitting in a kind of square, and there, in the middle, the idea arose, like vapor. And as we kept talking, it started to take shape. I remember George sharing about ancient wartime practices, and then David talked about some mind-hacking techniques he’d learned in the IDF. We kept sharing, adding, refining, until, to our own surprise, we had created a whole new thing. Oh, it feels like yesterday, when I think of it.”
“It sounds like … an exciting time.”
“There is nothing so stimulating as the creation of a new idea. In that moment, it feels like anything is possible. Like you’ve plucked a cloud out of the sky, and it’s turned into a swan.”
“Or maybe like childbirth?” I offered.
He nodded to himself. “Yes, more like the swan I would say.”
Shiba returned with a wooden tray that held three teacups, a small jug of milk, and a matching sugar bowl. Her father reached for his cup without looking at her, as if the tray were levitating of its own accord. He poured himself some milk and a spoonful of sugar before lifting the cup up to his lips.
“It truly was a wonderful time,” he said, still caught up in his own nostalgia.
Watching them, I found myself wondering what role Shiba’s mother had played in all this. Shiba told me that she’d been only twelve years old when her mother passed, and from then on, her father had taken on the role of both parents. She’d also had a loyal maid who’d raised her as if she were her own.
“Did Auntie … um, Shiba’s mum … know about all this?”
“Oh no, of course not. The four of us agreed early on to maintain total secrecy. She left us to it.”
“I see.”
“You see this computer here?” he said, gesturing toward the bulky desktop. “This is from the nineties, believe it or not. But even this we didn’t have when we first started. To conceptualize something so novel with technology now considered so antiquated, well, I don’t think you girls could even imagine the challenge of that.”
Arjun continued sharing story after story from those times while we sipped our tea around the large wooden table. He told us these tales as if recounting great myths from the Mahabharat, resurrecting the ghosts of the young men who had conjured this magical thing. It felt as if he were taking the room itself back in time, and I was honored to be in a space of such significance. The green leather armchair, the table full of dusty papers, everything around us took on an air of practically sacred importance. It almost made me want to bow in reverence, and everything that I didn’t like about myself, all my inadequacies and insecurities, melted away at the thought that, surely, I must be quite special, too, if I’d earned an invitation here.
Shiba also listened in starry-eyed rapture, glancing at me every now and then, happy to see me basking in the glow that she had enjoyed since she was a small child. Eventually, though, the two of us succumbed to our jet lag. We all returned to the main house, and Shiba and I ascended the marble staircase to our rooms while Arjun poured himself a whiskey in his study.
The next day, we met again at the breakfast table, where the men were already tucking into masala omelets. They asked me slightly patronizing questions then about where I’d gone to uni and what my parents did. Sometimes, I enjoyed this treatment, like when Arjun had made the “bright young thing” comment or when they said how pleased they were that Shiba had found a like-minded friend. But it also felt somewhat dismissive. After we were done eating and Kumar had cleared the plates, the men nodded at one another as if to say, “Okay, time to get back to the real work now,” and retreated into the study. Arjun told Kumar on his way out that they would be taking their lunch in there, working through the afternoon. Before he shut the study door firmly behind himself, he turned to us with a wink and said he would see us at dinner.
·
The rest of our days in India followed in this vein, seeing the men at breakfast and not again until evening time. In between, we usually went sightseeing, which was an absolute blast. Shiba knew the city like the back of her hand. She took me to bookshops and outdoor cafés, dhabas and concert halls, hidden-away nihari joints and bustling marketplaces, mosques and mandirs, dargahs and gurdwaras, talks and plays. We traveled everywhere by auto (that’s what they call rickshas there), and I met her friends, who were super fun. We walked in Lodhi Gardens and ate shakarkandi ki chaat and gol guppay on the street. We went shopping in Delhi Haat and Sarojini Nagar. And you know … I kind of hate to say it, but I have to admit, I felt safer in Delhi than in Karachi. Much safer. Safer traveling by ricksha, safer browsing through markets, safer walking in parks. I know Delhi, too, is an unsafe place for women, but compared to Karachi, not as much.
“The narcissism of small differences.” That’s a term coined by Freud. “Der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen.” It means, I think, that when two things are very similar, you end up inflating the small differences between them far more than you would the larger differences between two less similar things. I think this is the game that India and Pakistan play, and so, I felt a strange conflict within when I would notice such things. But yeah, the truth is, I hate to say this, but Pakistan is not kind to women. And sometimes my secret, awful thought is that by moving to England, I escaped. Then, I start to feel like this thought comes from the white supremacist in me. The traitor. But being in Delhi, which was so different and yet so the same, well, it made me sad to see all that could be in my own city.