Fairy Tales at Fifty by Upamanyu Chatterjee

Author:Upamanyu Chatterjee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2014-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

She was obsessed with herself, Magnum, and with those males of her family who were clearly not.

Even when she was dancing in Delhi or trying to cadge money off Nirip on the phone or being sold pellets of lizard shit in place of hashish in Colaba or recovering in hospital from a devil-may-care overdose or speeding down the Bombay-Pune highway in the new family Audi that she’d simply driven off in or spending a couple of weeks in Arthur Road Jail for having run over some poor sod sleeping on the pavement outside Siddhi Vinayak or pissing in the men’s room in some hotel—that is to say, all the time—she thought about Nirip and about Pashupati, about why they were not impressed with her.

Without actually doing anything useful, she wanted to be treated as Pashupati’s right hand man and heir, sit in the same car with him in the rear, he on the left and she on the right; they’d get out slowly, at the same time, the doors would be opened so respectfully, hers by the driver and his by the bodyguard, and how everyone would tremble at the menace in the synchrony itself.

She hadn’t even sat with him, ever, in the same car.

Nirip did, though, whenever—the occasions were rare—father and son were travelling together to the same place. The son’s brains, the father felt, from time to time needed to be picked.

What are you up to now?

Oh nothing much Papa-ji. A bit of this and a bit of that.

Still avoiding the real world, I see.

It bothered Pashupati that neither mother nor son liked the trade in organs that he had set up; their silent disapproval surprised him because the business was doing so well and was so respectable. The poshest people were recipients. Foreigners too. Landgrab, kidneygrab, same thing. When he learnt, though, that the purpose behind mother-and-son’s charitable trust was the eventual establishment of a crèche, tiny school and computer training centre for poor children, he was not enthused; even though Manasa adroitly pointed out the substantial tax benefits, he found the project financially to be boring. It has no jaan, were his words. Till Nirip hinted at the way.

They set up the crèche in the open space between the temple and the Trust. Dozens of beggar infants soon overran the garden and the cement paths. Their parents were always free to hobble around to the rear of the temple and check on their next generation for themselves. They found them laughing, eating, drinking, burping, crawling, puking and sleeping contentedly. The babies and children of all ages were cleaned up, bathed, fed milk and dahi rice, fruit and the khichadi of the langar. Paediatricians from the hospital ambled about amongst them every morning, examining them for worms and polio and rickets and whooping cough and all that kidstuff and giving them shots while they shrieked. Within weeks, in one of the ground floor verandahs of the Trust, Manasa set up a blackboard. Within two months, Pashupati thought the time ripe for the adoption centre.

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