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.”
“I see. You believe in all that, then? Rules for who you can and can’t desire?”
“Depends,” I said, feeling like I couldn’t be bothered to clarify that the desire I was detecting in the novel seemed to be for a small child. “Anyway, what are you up to? Still working away?”
“As always,” he replied. “You know, it still sometimes shocks me how groundbreaking this work is. Mark my words, Anisa. Game changing.”
When he said this, I saw in my mind’s eye people a hundred years from now coming across a black-and-white photograph of Arjun in their history books （although, I suppose a hundred years from now it would probably be more like a hologram or something）。 Anyway, they’d see this photo, and they’d say, “That’s him. The Inventor.” And, maybe, there in the background would be … me! Just chatting with Shiba or, I don’t know, doing my recordings or whatever. And there would be a footnote labeling who I was. I felt a sudden urge to take a selfie with Arjun, but restrained myself.
“I can translate your book for you, if you like,” I said. “When the time comes?”
“We’ll see,” he said. “I do find myself thinking, though, that if we could discover this process merely by exercising our minds, well, just imagine the vast undiscovered that still remains. This is just the tip of the iceberg, you know. The very tip.”
“Tell me more,” I said, “about this iceberg.”
“What we’re doing, Anisa, for humanity … one day, you’ll understand.”
“I don’t want to understand one day. I want to understand now.”
“Such a curious cat,” he said and gave me a wink. The words sounded very different coming from his mouth than they had from my mother’s. “Come. Have a farewell drink with me.”
I agreed and followed him into the study where he reached into his cabinet and pulled out a squat crystal bottle.
“Neat?” he asked, and I said yes, even though I didn’t know what that meant.
He handed me my drink, and I looked around the room as I took a sip, the liquid moving warmly down my throat. The large desk was covered in papers, and on the walls were photos—some old, faded auburn, others more recent.
“Tell me then,” I said. “What got you interested in doing this kind of work in the first place?”
“You know, I think it was luck. Us four meeting; being so highly ambitious. It was simply right place, right time.”
“Yes, but I guess I’m asking, what was it that made you so highly ambitious in the first place?”
“Oh … well, I don’t know. I just was. Always have been. My father,” he gestured with his glass toward a photo on the wall, “he was a great man. One of the most successful industrialists in India. Shiba must have told you.”
“Actually, no.”
“Well, he really was something. And I was his eldest son. It was important to him that I also succeed, that I innovate. He liked that word a lot. Innovate.”
I stood next to Arjun and examined the photo. It was a faded print of a man in a suit, standing in front of a Rolls-Royce, arms crossed, cigar in mouth. In the background, you could make out his house, another large colonial-style building. Three blurry women in saris were sitting on the white marble steps that led to the front door. Two of them carried babies in their laps.
“Is one of those you?” I asked, pointing to the babies.
“Oh.” He squinted at the photo. “It’s possible. I can’t tell.”
“You think he would be proud of you now? Your dad?”
“Oh yes, he most certainly would. In fact, if he had stuck around a little longer, maybe I could have kept him here.”
“Kept him?”
“Yes.”
“You mean, you would have ingested him?”
“No. I mean I would have kept him alive. Strong, healthy, trim. I would have wanted him to see where I am now, where I’m going.”
“You can’t really keep anyone here, right? Not forever.”
“Anything is possible, my dear. If you can conceive of it, it’s possible. It’s those of us who can imagine beyond the boundaries who make things happen.”
I looked at him and felt a similar reverence as when he’d first given me that tour of the cottage, a kind of rise in my own stature at being granted access to his mind.