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Anjana BasuThe Great White Hunt
He walked into the room like a chunk of fine quality steak: solid, the face well done to pink. It was that fleshiness you were aware of first, the thick swell of the neck over the sharp edges of the starched collar, about 250 pounds of it squeezed into a grey Brooks Brothers suit. Then the familiarity of him hit you : this was a face you had seen before, the clean cut jaw and the jut of the nose. Chappaquidick dived off a bridge screaming scandal, the green-white limbs of a drowned girl flailed. All-American hero, said the face, screeching clean, except for that hint of scandal. "Looks like one of the Kennedys, doesn't he ?" one of the girls whispered, a banked down whisper because it was rumoured that the CIA had bugs in the walls. There was a whole row of them supporting drinks, the white wine that was flown down from California, the twelve year old scotch. A splash of floral prints, little black dresses and plucked arms and legs. None of them were American - some were acquired in Argentina, a few in Haiti, one or two in Indo China - they stood there in a faint murmur, not contributing to the general aggressive conversation. Every so often, one of them would make a dart at their relevant man with a cracker or a drink, receive his thanks like a trophy and bear it proudly back to the troops. Despite the varied Continents they came from, they were hard to tell apart because there was a certain sameness about them. It was as if one man had patented the original model and passed the patent down to his subordinates, standard Embassy issue. You met them in the same row at discos, in five star restaurants, displaying their man on their arm with a clawing kind of possessiveness that warded off other hopefuls. It was amazing how many of them Calcutta could turn out, small, slim and dark. "The uglier the better," one journalist commented cynically. "Firangs go for the ethnic types. When I was in Saigon it wasn't any different." And he launched into his dream of the eternal Miss Saigon, which everyone had heard at least thrice. The red man had one of them in his wake, a shadow in a little black dress. The shadow slipped forward and rubbed cheeks with a rose printed skirt. They stood and compared handbags, raising gold chained wrists and dipping and cooing towards each other. "He must be new," someone murmured at my elbow. "The others haven't had time to warn him yet." The charcoal eyes were round and innocent as they cooed. Little ethnic simplicities about how cars should stop if a cat crossed a road. Naively studied and innocently proffered in the darkness of a car with an intimate leaning, a touch on the shoulder. The air breathed, 'Be sympathetic to my little superstitions - I understand you come from a more advanced civilization. We're very simple people.' And the artfully tinted mouth would bend a little closer until the invitation was accepted and some kind of commitment made, even if it was only a commitment a kiss in the front seat of a Contessa stopped on a dark road while a cat crossed over. If it were late enough, the drivers would be dismissed : no Nasir or Mushtaq to see what this memsahib was up to with the truly white sahib. Some of them looked unkindly on besharam Indian girls and that had been known to throw them into confusion while negotiating the traffic. There had been a whole season of warnings. Possibly that was why Rohini looked so like a shadow: she was wrapped in the grey miasma of their whispers: a wisp at the Taj, a cloud at Tolly, little by little it had gathered until it had covered her like the cloud of trouble in the Bible. All the diplomats balancing their shandies and vodka martinis in the afternoon sunlight by the Tolly pool had whispered about Rohini. Laughed over her after nights spent clinging close by starlight. "It's not you the man she's after, she's after your skin." She was a bounty hunter on the prowl with a knife that looked like a smile. She scalped her victim after some impossible Indian trick. That made them laugh all the more, "Get it, Injun after scalps." They would roar together over it in all the places expatriates met and exchanged home memories. Sometimes a few of the girls were there to roar with them, though the joke had gone on too long to be really amusing. The more ethical of the girls managed to tone down their reactions to a quiet titter, thinking, "There for the grace of God..." because most of them could foresee a time when the laughter would be about them instead of with them. Rohini was definitely not young any longer. That was the other problem. There was a younger batch of them, fresh from colleges and finishing schools with freshly minted complexions and impossibly thin waists, the MTV generation with a new line of prattle and Hong Kong American accents. They were thinner, brittler and, like the new year's toys, more fun to play with. Pretty little things tossing words like 'vela' around that all the Yanks found 'kinda cute, why don't you run it by me again, baby ?' She was losing the battle of the infinitely thin jeans and the streamlined legs, though whether she knew about her incubus image or not was debatable. All she could ascertain was that the white men were harder to pin down. She would lunge with both hands and they would slip through her fingers, while the others just stood still and waited for them to fall into place. "I am a feminist, " she began to declare, every so often, before slipping into her tourist guide patter, those little discourses on how the Hindus didn't believe in stitched clothes, which was why all the tailors were Muslims. "She'll save you the cost of a tourist guide," they said. "And she'll pick up the tab for tickets to all the plays !" The image of the smiling scalper taking them on cultural tours was even funnier. They rocked with it, when they didn't run. "Someone should tell her," whispered her friends, but no one could quite pick up the nerve. Instead, they clustered together, whispering about how bearers of bad news were seldom rewarded. "You can lose a friend that way." There were many girls they had warned and, not one of them had taken kindly to the warning. "They said we were meddling. In any case, she'll never admit that she's hunting firangs." Her friends were not part of the Consulate set. Most of them came from conservative homes with long pedigrees. Rohini could even lay claim to a longish pedigree - when she was selling herself, she talked about Tagore, who was her great great granduncle, and occasionally aspired to a few huskily breathed bars of rabindrasangeet. It was part of the act she had put together, a combination of ethnicity, good taste and information. However, there were times which even the Tagore pedigree couldn't dignify. She had been caught in a giggling flight up a staircase one Holi, with a pink and green Frenchman in hot pursuit. An Italian had pinched her while standing in line at the British High Commissioner's Friday pub and it was rumoured that she had flung red wine playfully over his Armani jacket. The Italian had dropped out of her life faster than a setting sun on the equator, a fact which gave the ruined jacket story some credibility. She had hung around the parties with a long face for a while after that, complaining of stomach flu or whatever ailment was currently fashionable and then flown the country for a year. Her space had been filled by another animated little brown automaton, but before she was really missed, she was back again. She was no longer wraithlike. Eight extra pounds rounded out her person and she was wearing what she said was a Riviera tan. The Italian had been replaced by a French count : there was a handful of photographs that screeched blinding white villas and teeth as proof. She was animated, ready to unburden her soul at a sympathetic smile. Francois was coming to fetch her at the end of the year. Francois had promised her a job and an émigré visa. Francois, Francois, and three times more Francois. The name dropped very jarringly into conversations that had passed her by. The current gossip was about the last Consul's boyfriend. He had drifted with him into town from some small suburb in the mid West, no one was exactly sure where he came from except that it was obvious that the Consul didn't prefer the usual chorus line. In a while the mid Westerner had credit with every sardarji in New Market. Visitors to the Consulate were invited to admire his collection of jade, or his latest leopard pelt or his black leather jacket. Francois was small potatoes next to the mid Westerner. And then the boy toy had crowned it by falling madly in lust with one of the Indian security guards - neat twist that - and the Consul had got wind of it. Of course, being diplomatic, he couldn't do anything more drastic than repeal his boyfriend's visa - he gave him 24 hours to get out of the country. Toy boy's usually slow mid Western temper sparked to a towering inferno and he chased the Consul around the compound of the Consulate. We imagined a chase down the wooden stairs, the Consul yelling for help, the Marines not daring to stop it, the Indian guards thinking this was exotic American love play - murder might have been done, a crime of passion committed on that square of America in the heart of Calcutta. Unfortunately for our imaginations, but fortunately for the Consul, the toy boy's security guard stepped him. He collared his furious lover and asked him to picture a life spent in a West Bengal jail. That got to the mid Western temper. The cowboy packed his bags and departed, leaving a trail of unpaid sardarjis behind him. Shortly afterwards, the Consul applied for a transfer to Kazakhistan. No, no, we were not entertained by Francois. Of course, boy toy didn't belong in the ranks of the scalpers - he was all American, no mistake about it. The sixteen year old soprano was a better example. She was one of the shiny MTV generation. She made her appearance in the disco line one evening, her age smudged under layers of bright red lipstick and foundation. She was so young that she hadn't practiced enough on her high heels and teetered precariously at every step. The whole room was eyes when she tripped across to the ladies, waiting for her to fall on her foundationed nose into deep piled carpet. The second time, the Belgian Consul caught her. That was when she had changed her little black skirt for the gold lame one. The others found her in a froth of frills and powder frantically scrabbling her skirts down her legs. It was the white wine she mumbled, it stained black very badly, very very badly. The others were so amazed that anyone would want to change clothes in the Ladies' that they had not very much to say when they freshened their lipstick. Instead, they commented on it to their escorts with little snapping bites of laughter when she finally emerged from the Ladies' again. And obviously, the gallant Belgian was waiting in case she fell a third time. "Quelle despo," murmured the ones who plumed themselves on their grasp of firangese. He was old, the Belgian. Most of them had him marked down as the last resort. Additionally, he played the cello and most of them found that difficult to cultivate. Mozart was as far as they were willing to go. They hovered around him at a few do's and devoted a hummingbird moment of attention to him before flitting away again. "Old and divorced, " was the word they had passed around or perhaps he was just not that easy to take in. A few of them were gathering themselves together for a last determined assault that evening when sweet sixteen teetered into his heart. Well, she probably wasn't sixteen, but she looked anorexic enough to be well below the age of consent. She changed her clothes three times that memorable evening. The last time she emerged in a metallic bodysuit that looked as if it had been sprayed on her. No one remembered how she had managed to climb into that in the toilet - "Of course, she's skinny enough to wriggle into it in one of the cubicles". And now, everyone resented the fact that the Belgian Consul had been snatched. Francois - well, now, Francois was just a picture someone had seen. Did you know that scheming little babe sang and that the two of them were hosting Chamber Music gatherings for an elect gathering of Indian Classical musicians, very ethnic fusion? He and Sweet Sixteen settled down like a wink and a smile, which was gall to them. They hummed and murmured and spread the story of her changes in the disco until it was very veux jeu. He wasn't Francois, was he? Sometimes they were so alike that it was difficult to remember. It was even more difficult because the promised Francois did not materialize at the end of the season, or the year, or whichever currently fashionable period he was supposed to materialize in. So they nipped around the edges of that story for a bit until they set off after the young visa officer in the British High Com. Timothy had a girlfriend. He was firmly anchored to Marina's pretty, slim and well tailored form, the Head Librarian's secretary. Mostakim turned her out for five hundred a shot which, given the fact that she was an Elliot Road girl, was considered pretentious. However, she had the endless legs that went with the pencil slim skirts and her lipstick was indelible and discreet. Timothy announced that he was going home to make the marriage plans. Before he went he handed Marina an incredibly large sum of money 'for the wedding expenses.' Marina was over the moon. She bought herself a glittering crescent of diamonds, he chose the design and approved the order before he left, and set about designing her wedding dress. Conversation in the Librarian's office was dominated by Chantilly, she was determined to get hold of a piece of genuine Chantilly, after all, the dress was going to be an heirloom, or perhaps she could crochet the veil and edge it. She'd got her scalp, so they nodded sympathetically about it and one of the French even provided the relevant lace. "My wedding present." It was going to be a December wedding, Timothy's parents would probably come down, her parents had been talking to the priest at St. Thomas'...except, by the end of November, there was no sign of Timothy. Exactly like Francois, murmured Francois' once girlfriend and enveloped Marina with her sympathy. The two were suddenly inseparable. Rohini loudly advised Marina to, "Forget that bastard, he's not worth it," and her head would shake whenever she heard that and the rest of her body would follow, until you thought she would shiver herself to pieces. Through the Council, Marina heard that Timothy had stage managed a transfer to Switzerland. Quite obviously he had never had any intentions of returning. Rumour mourned for Marina and imagined her running up and down the consulate in her wedding gown fretting it to shreds in her frenzied anguish, which was fine as metaphors went. But then Marina sold her diamond ring and caught a flight to Geneva. "Silly girl," went the susurrations. "Silly girl," like a patter of rain or a fall of autumn leaves. She was going to go into the books of failed in action attemptees - except that she retrieved her Timothy and married him. "I wouldn't," they all swore indignantly. "How can you take back a man who's proved that he doesn't love you?" They were rows of indignation at the cocktails, they seethed and bubbled and vowed no more whites for a while, though the while was only as long as the mouth service. Only as long as it took for their ambitions to resurface. But Francois did not come and Rohini did not buy herself a ticket to the Riviera. She was beached at the edges of the parties, high and dry on the fringes of the stories. The tan was wearing badly and leaving her browny-grey. And then, just when it was apparent that she had to do something desperate, like join a feminist movement, she appeared with the Kennedy clone on her arm. There were subtle nuances to Rohini whenever she acquired a new man. Her skirts grew shorter and her blouses not tighter, but better cut, more 'fitting' so that by superb tailoring she stood out in the ranks of the aspirants. Most women are chameleons, taking on a new shade of emphasis, whenever they take on a new man, but Rohini took the art to its extreme lengths. Her accent crossed the Atlantic: from pseudo Brit it became pseudo Yank, with the attendant graffiti and momentarily. The girls gathered in a corner and bubbled like kettles on a hob. Hiss, spit. "She'll do anything to catch a man!" Slim hands quickly sprouted claws, the briefest of flicks, in and out before the other men saw. There was relief in her voice as Rohini introduced him. Miles was standing in a corner balancing a crooked smile - he had taken her out through a hot lightning flickering summer before realizing the hidden knife. New, was he new ? The connections he mouthed were Third World, obscure African corners touched with voodoo. He had seen the oiled brown bodies writhing at midnight for the pleasure of Baron Samedi and dined with Papa Doc. Compared to these exoticisms, Calcutta was relative sophistication - he could sit back, sip his Riviera and discuss theatre. He had a rabindrasangeet tape under the three cornered isosceles of the handkerchief in his breast pocket. Rohini had pressed it there like a love charm before allowing him out for the evening. "Darned if she isn't the only girl I know who can fold a handkerchief over a cassette." Intimacy, shuddered the ranks in envy. Each one of them tried to float him off to a corner out of earshot for at least a second or two. The more brazen ones swayed over with wide eyed hellos that demanded introduction and hung around for longer than cheek rubbing time. They were always good mannered at these dos. No matter how they wanted to cut a rival or keep a man to themselves, acknowledgements had to be made. And Rohini honoured the tradition. "This is John John the Third or Robert the Second," bounced in a murmur to and fro. "John John," they shivered, because those were the syllables they knew. "Again," sighed the ones who remotely wished Rohini well. He pulled out his white shark's fin handkerchief and dabbed his lobster forehead. "Steamy, but not a patch on Haiti. Had anyone seen a black cock follow a white chalk line to the blade of a knife ?" Then the conversation would be cut off as abruptly as the cock's neck because it was almost one o clock and the Kennedy clone wanted to get to the sanctuary of his cool air-conditioned sheets to prepare himself for the heat and dust of another Calcutta day. Marina had handed her eye shadow on to another girl from Elliot Road who was showing off her legs with her longhand behind the Consul's desk. The replacement used enough to sink a battleship. Green lids, buttery blue lids blinked once or twice and hovered in suspense. Suddenly everyone wanted to be Rohini's friend. Everyone wanted to be part of a quite dinner under the tin roof of a momo joint when Robert was rubbing shoulders with real Calcutta. Or sitting under the moon at Tolly, listening to the rites of the gri gri women. They brought Indian escorts with them so as not to seem to obvious - Rohini did not welcome detached women into the charmed circle. In any case, she didn't welcome anyone she knew too well. There were still too many whispers that might escape to Robert's ears. She would sit and twist on the barstool in positive unease till the evening was done, even though the man sat by her placidly and proudly, sheaving obligingly through his memories. She tried to fight them off. One could watch her doing it with ethnic jabs of wit. Taking over by dint of her tourist guide patter. She had more of it then the rest. And she was desperate, more desperate than the Marina's and Sabrina's because the dark skin was beginning to stretch in little crappy folds in the inside of her elbow. That was something only she could see - or perhaps Robert could if he ever raised the crook of her elbow to his diplomatic lips. She began a positive Olympics of campaigning, flying higher, stronger and faster. On weekends she did a quick whip around with the phone - she was going with Robert to the races, would someone tell her a little about what to do at the Calcutta race course ? He was dead keen on gambling and she wanted to get him the best bet. She seemed to be in perpetual fast forward, trying to catch up with herself before someone caught up with her. Disaster predicted the Rohini watchers, disaster, disaster. There'll be a newer girl, one of those hangers ons with the fake escorts. You wait and watch, we know. They were together every day, every night. Week days she had the pretense of a supervisorial job that she struggled at, but she lived for the evening. She came to work at nine in the morning in black and gold salwar kameezes with long dangling earrings, apologizing for the clash she was causing with the sunlight, I have to go out this evening, straight after work. "I saw her driving past me with the sahib," whispered the youngest of the trainees. "I was waiting for a bus at the Hazra Crossing." "There's an air of protectiveness about him now," the watchers decided. "He makes pointed eyes if other men talk to her for more than 10 minutes." The vision of a woman in fast forward streaked to a blur of red. Incredibly, a wedding was announced. Everyone told the story in different ways - Rohini had walked in to the office of Marina's replacement while the latter was painting her nails. Her hand had moved in a streak of white from her handbag and laid the evidence in front of the girl. Marina's replacement, blowing daintily on her nails had opened the envelope with her wet fingertips, as if it were burning hot, read the contents, squeaked and sent a thick gummy stream of red polish over the Cultural Secretary's papers. "Ooh, men," she had fluttered, "ooh, men, ah, men!" and picked up the telephone as if that too were red hot. "Ooh, men, you won't believe the news, men." She had totally forgotten the cosmetic addition to her boss' daily mail. Rohini had walked out while she was announcing it, a small smile on her face. "We don't believe it !" exclaimed the Rohini watchers and sat and numbered the reasons why not on their fingertips. There were a thousand and one ways of explaining why it was impossible. The Italian, the Armani suit, the giggle up the stairs, the dread Holi...oh, enough to start another Mahabharat if required. "He'll bolt before the wedding !" They were laying bets on it in the corners of club swimming pools, lying there casually in their fluorescent trunks and bikinis and paddling the blue chlorine water with the flats of their hands to make a point. Too dark to flush, she purpled with pride. She practically lived at the tailor's. A suit for the Ambassador's dinner, a suit for her going away, a twinset for visits to New England. She harried them with pattern books and swatches of material. Lime green tulle, silk chiffon, heavy South Indian cottons. The large red man smiled benignly at this dark feminine flutter around his chest - appropriately, she was no higher than his heart, he drawled on Valentine's Day. The others turned to their escorts and chided them for a lack of gallantry. The Belgian Consul turned pale and spluttered to his teenage wife - though he had the sense to splutter in Belgian French. It was the height of matrimonial triumphs - to come fighting back after all those disasters with a man who had them hanging on his lips. Where was Marina's pathetic wedding gown struggle in the light of Rohini's triumphant sapphire and diamond engagement ring ? They went through the seven circles of their wedding, the tall man in his white hat like a melting candle. He was cooled in white, even his face had the sacred white marks on it. She on the other hand was a parcel of red brocade. It was the first time in history that anyone had seen her in a sari. The red man and his red woman trailed behind each other, firmly knotted together. The Consulate demi monde trickled through the wedding like a dream. It could not possibly be happening. They swallowed it whole, rituals" the wedding, the reception, the string of Consulate cocktails in Robert's honour and the final flight out of Calcutta to Robert's new posting. And they contrived to erase it all from their memories. As far as they were concerned, Rohini did not leave Calcutta, but hung around in their stories, the scalper with the knife. "You must know Rohini," they would begin, on an evening when the piano was a background tinkle and all the stories had been heard. "Oh, you know, the count, the Italian." "Yes, her, what happened to her ?" "Well, she finally landed her man but his next posting was in Peru. And you know, he was at that famous Christmas Eve party at the Japanese Embassy. Bad luck as always, Rohini - he had a dickey ticker. They say he dropped dead as the Fujimori troops broke in." Ended with a shrug and a significant flare of the eyeballs to indicate sorrow for Rohini. That was the favourite. It had variations in which Rohini bravely lunged for an AK47 - "She always had a vicious streak. This time she just used it correctly." Toting the AK47, she gunned down two Shining Path members before her husband crumpled gasping at her feet. Then she stood there with the blood dripping red from her fingertips, the blood of the scalps she had collected, poised for one precarious second before swooning on her husband's corpse. The skinny dark ones made a contest of it, as if the prize were a Caliph out of a Thousand and One Nights. They would jump into the pool of stories and contradict each other with screeches and twitters and the red and white men would smile at each other indulgently, like they were lending out newly acquired bestsellers. There was the version where Robert made it to Ambassador in three easy jumps up the consulate ladder. American Ambassador to Brazzaville in a white wedding cake of a house, dominating the snarling green jungle that crept and nibbled at its lawns. She would have receptions on that poison green expanse in a blue twinset under a blue and white marquee with faux pearls a la Jackie and a blue pillbox hat precarious on her smooth black head. Her white gloved hands would direct the proceedings, waving a symphony of waiters into place, or marshalling an opus of dishcovers. She would do it with a mincing accent that became, ever so imperceptibly, Bostonian, until Calcutta was a forgotten time and place, remembered only to be deprecated. The Ambassador would stand by shaking hands, recounting all his Third World stories and flashing benign white teeth at his wife's white gloves, always courteous, always unruffled. They were the perfect couple, he and his polished third World trophy who had adapted so admirably to diplomatic demands. The two of them would then retire into the sunset beyond Capitol Hill. Version Three. The destination was Cuba. Robert's eyes were always escaping out of his head and rolling over the sandhills after the slim cubanas, or whatever they were called, and Rohini could do nothing to bring them back. He spent his mornings in a white coat, Havana clenched between his thick lips doing imitations of Clark Gable that the Cuban girls cooed over. It was Roberto, Roberto, Roberto in both his ears as he wrestled marlin, the lithe dripping fish landing puttylike in his lap. She spent her nights dishing graveyard dirt, killing black cocks and wringing the necks of wax cubana dolls. Her feet trod thick black blood, her fingers were sticky with it. The chalk crumbled as the cocks followed it to their doom. After his white days, she rose red handed at night like Draupadi's revenge. In the morning, the consulate courtyard had sticky patches that the gardener's sprinkled lime over with sliding eyes. Rohini's voodoo was the best kept secret of those Cuban nights and everyone said he had taught it to her in Calcutta. Version Four : her past caught up with her. Francois, or another oise, the one whose baby she had pretended to be carrying, turned up out of the evening candlelight at the end of the Ambassador's table. He had his wife with him and though he might have been inclined to be gallant, his wife was not. She turned to her neighbour hissing in indignation and the hiss passed down the table faster and more distorted than a game of Chinese Whispers until it reached Robert's ears. The scales, said the skinny ones, dropped from his eyes along with the protectiveness. Madam packed her bags and crawled out of the embassy gates in disgrace. And very right, too, agreed the Consulate chorus line. How can a marriage survive with so many lies told and so many secrets kept ? The true version, the one that no one wanted to listen to because it was so boring, was the one in which he traded her in for a newer model. That happened three years after the seven circles, when he had been posted to Mauritius. There under a heavy yellow moon on a beach as white as icing sugar, he met a honey brown Creole who dripped soft French molasses. No, we never met the Creole, but the word was enough to conjure up dark syrupy enchantments.Josephine trailing mink and Napoleon down a blue velvet carpet with a whispering palm not far away. How could he resist ? It was inevitable, it was just one of those things that Maurice Chevalier would have sung about. His heartstrings went zing and Rohini returned to the expatriate line up pretending that Robert was an episode that had never happened. She was a little heavier and a lot older. There were no children to complicate the affair so she could shrug it off and count her alimony. But who wanted to listen to that story ? It was BORING. --CALCUTTA
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