The Centre(66)

“You know, I actually feel closer to Anna and Peter since I found out,” I admitted.

“Yeah?”

“I think so.”

The opening credits of the film rolled on the screen in front of us.

“Do you want something to drink?” Shiba asked me once the popcorn arrived.

“Pepsi?” I suggested.

“Roshan, Pepsi bhi!” Shiba yelled.

“Kumar Bhai! Pepsi bhi,” Roshan passed along.

From that evening onward, when we sat around the dinner table, I felt included to a wholly different degree. The uncles began to share, with remarkable nonchalance, the intricacies of the Centre’s operations. They spoke so lightheartedly of donations and transformations, of plans for expansion and the great potential of it all. And the truth is, there was something intoxicating about being in the midst of their conversation. It started to feel as if I’d entered the place where the real things happened, as if I had pushed through a tear in the fabric of the world and could now see the invisible mechanisms setting everything in motion. Well, okay, maybe not everything. But I saw that there were levels of control, layers of power, between man and God. These men had been on a different layer from me, but now I was up there too, and once you’ve been up there, the mechanisms would never be invisible again. It sometimes seemed monstrous there and other times holy, but it didn’t really matter which; the important thing was just being there. I tried to commit every moment to memory, every word, every sight. I wasn’t sure why, but it felt imperative, somehow, to remember it all. And soon, I found that I’d stopped seeing anything wrong with the process at all. Somewhere along the way, I had decided that it was no greater a sin to ingest a human being than it was to ingest, say, a cow. Or, arguably, a melon, which is also a living thing. Who was it that decided my flesh was more sacred than, say, Billee’s, or Billee’s more sacred than a chicken’s, or a chicken’s more than a pea’s? No, that was pure speciesism. It was us humans, as always, adamant on our own superiority.

And so I asked Shiba, a few days later, “Do you think I could record my story too?”

She looked at me, surprised.

“Do you want to?”

“I do.”





ELEVEN


At first, I didn’t know where to begin.

“Just begin from the beginning,” Shiba said, handing me a yellow USB drive that she’d fished out of the filing cabinet in the cottage.

I tried following her directive, starting with howling Libran child pulled out via C-section at Al-Shifa Hospital, but the story came out all garbled, so I deleted it and began again. This time, I started not from the beginning but from the Centre. From when I first met Adam, more or less. And then I just spoke, for as long as I wanted and in whichever direction I pleased. I was aware that all the Centre bits might be deleted, but I didn’t mind. I mean, I hoped they wouldn’t be, but either way, that’s just what wanted to come to me in the moment, so I let it. Every morning, I would enter the recording room, USB in hand, and confide and confess, narrating my days into the machine as if it were an exceptionally good listener of a friend.

Then, before we knew it, our time in India was drawing to a close. George, Eric, and David left for their respective home countries two or three days before Shiba and I were set to return to the UK ourselves, leaving just three of us around the dinner table.

The night the men flew home, Shiba and I made plans to go to a bar in Hauz Khas with some of her friends. I put on a silk navy blue halter top of Shiba’s, a pair of my own black skinny jeans, and some dark-pink lipstick. Once we were dressed, Shiba went to the cottage to do her recording, and I went downstairs to the living room. I opened my book and read distractedly until Arjun walked in, on cue, about five minutes later.

“You look nice.”

“Thanks,” I said. “We’re going out later. How are you? Missing your friends?”

“It’s always hard when they leave. But we’ll be back together soon.”

“To summon up more swans from the center of the holy square?”

“Something like that.”

Arjun and I had developed a kind of playful teasing by then, a banter that flirted with the flirtatious. The conversation often seemed to revolve around his accomplishments, both with work and with women.

“Uff, when I was your age,” he would say, “I just assumed it would always be that way, women lining up around the corner. But how things change. Take advantage while you can, Anisa. I’m sure you have men lining up by the dozen, no?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, in that case, the world must have really changed. Nobody does courtship anymore, do they? We used to woo women back in the day. Really woo them. You know what I mean? Now, it’s all this Tinder shinder. Swipe, bang, and then next please, hena?”

Our conversations would often veer, in this way, into the sexual.

“I don’t know … I guess so.”

“Are you still reading the same book?” he asked, taking a sip of his drink. I was on the sofa, legs curled under me, the Henry James in my hands.

“Yep.”

“Enjoying it?”

“Think so. It’s a bit weird.”

“What’s it about?”

“Among other things, there’s a hint of desire in it for someone of an inappropriate age.”