“What did you do?” Prem is screaming and Karan is twitching below Ajay, the life draining out of him, the razor lodged in his throat.
“What did you do to me?” Prem collapses to the floor, holds Karan, kisses his face, tries to block the bleeding with his palms.
But Karan is gone.
“Why?”
Ajay doesn’t say anything anymore.
Prem is shivering, his face contorted.
Ajay opens his mouth to speak.
But Prem doesn’t give him a chance.
He does the only thing he can think to do.
The only thing he has left.
He pulls the razor from Karan’s throat and digs it into his left wrist. Gouges it open. Does the same to the right.
Lies down next to Karan.
Looks Ajay in the eyes.
Ajay looks down, turns his back.
Walks away.
FOUR
LUCKNOW, 2006
DINESH AND SUNNY
“So?” he says.
“So what?” Sunny replies.
“So you got what you wanted . . .”
They sit in the private room of the five-star hotel restaurant, Sunny and Dinesh Singh, hushed in the AC, looking out through one-way glass at the elite of Lucknow living their best lives.
“. . . but are you happy?”
Sunny winces like he swallowed something bad.
“What?”
“It’s a simple enough question,” Dinesh says. “Are you happy?”
“Right now?” Sunny puts his lips to his whisky. “The conversation is a little lacking.”
Dinesh smiles. “You know what I mean.”
“What are you?” Sunny says after a long pause. “My shrink?”
“Do you have one?” Dinesh replies. “Do you want one?”
“Jesus.”
“Either way, the question stands.”
Sunny stares straight ahead, crunches the ice, signals to the attendant for one more.
Dinesh echoes the wave as Sunny lights a cigarette.
Endorsing Sunny’s order.
Being a good host.
This is Lucknow after all. His turf.
Also, there have been problems. Sunny, intoxicated in the past, has caused a scene, sometimes merrily, sometimes angrily, before blacking out.
At some point Dinesh may have to make a call: no more drinks for Sunny Wadia.
But he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it.
As for the question: Is Sunny Wadia happy?
File that away under Who the Fuck Knows?
If Sunny’s not on the way up, he’s coming down. Lurching from one position to the next, avoiding the horror of an equilibrium that can only reveal his face in the mirror.
In his midtwenties, already starting to look old. Fat and old. Held together by shoestrings of misery, dark energy, expensive suits. It’s incredible, the extent to which he’s letting himself go.
Sunny turns his head.
He can still arrange his face just so.
Do I really have to sit through this? Listen to this from you?
And Dinesh’s face is saying:
Yeah, you do.
They have a little bit of telepathy by now.
Sunny gets up, and Dinesh gently pushes him back down.
“Chill,” he says. “I’m just fucking with you.”
Sunny had come to Lucknow to finalize the land acquisition. Today the deal was done. The land in Greater Noida was going to be all theirs. The farmers were to be bought off. This so-called Megacity would take root.
The details had already been thrashed out by their fathers. All Sunny had to do today was dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Dinesh had to be there to facilitate. Dinesh had nothing exceptional to do.
But Dinesh also has plans of his own. In the past couple of years he has grown in myriad ways. Developed into a striking young man. An ambitious, effective leader in waiting.
Before, he was simply playing the part.
He was, in many ways, aping Sunny Wadia. The truth is, Dinesh used to be a little gauche. A little bit “village.” Sunny had always been the more stylish, the more worldly. But then Sunny stood still, and Dinesh worked on himself. He traveled extensively. To seminars and museums, galleries, auctions, fashion shows, opera houses. He befriended writers and thinkers and grilled them extensively about matters unknown to him. His English became nuanced. He learned to express himself colloquially, modulating his delivery to include a sense of play, irony, delight. People once laughed behind his back, thought he was a striver. They don’t laugh anymore. To reflect all this, he has developed his style as well. He still wears kurtas, but he accentuates them with elegant scarves, jeweled brooches, with pocket pins and pocket squares. He wears designer spectacles modeled, it has been noted, to both approbation and approval, on Dr. Ambedkar.