Mukesh watched her sympathetically, his head slightly askance, as if looking at something around a curtain. His brows were distended with worry; he drummed the table in a way that suggested he was watching but that she was free to continue; that what she was going through was natural; he wasn’t going to draw attention to it, not until she wanted him to.
Deepa had always disliked Mukesh but she saw now that he had a certain natural comfort with women, surprising for such a bearish, hairy fellow, one who always barked at servants and saluted everyone as he passed them on the street. “It’s been very difficult,” she said.
He remained quiet; she saw that the whites of his eyes were filigreed at the sides with red capillaries.
“We’ll make sure you meet the terrorists,” he said, standing up and coming around to her. He was behind her now, with his hands on her shoulders. “You don’t even worry for one second.”
Why did she want to meet the terrorists? She suspected it was because she was on the verge of parting from life, and she wanted all the loose ends tied up before she went, joining her boys wherever they were. So there was a galloping excitement within her: the thrill of meeting the men who had killed her sons; also, the thrill of her own death.
“Naidu won’t be able to help you,” Jagdish Chacha, the former cabinet secretary, said when she went to see him at his flat in the complex. “Mukesh likes talking. The person who can help you is Jagmohan or Kiran Bedi. I’ll phone them. But tell me: How is Vikas?”
“He’s OK, uncle. Busy with work.”
“Good. He has another film project these days?”
“Yes, uncle. A documentary.”
“It’s good that he’s outside,” Jagdish said. “Being outside I’ve found is crucial. Inside, one’s soul starts to get poisoned. When Indira-ji died,” he said, referring to Indira Gandhi, “I went and exercised every day. Now, tell me, what kind of meeting do you want?”
“Whatever is possible, uncle,” Deepa replied.
“You can meet them as people do in prisons—through a window in the meeting room. You go, queue up all day, and then you get to meet the person for five, ten minutes. If you go, you’ll see everyone has come there with tiffin boxes. Of course you won’t have to stand in the queue.
“But you can also meet them, or one of them, face-to-face in a room. Technically this is not allowed, but a jail is like a school—if you know the principal you can do anything. It might be that we’ll have to say you’re a journalist—can Vikas bring his press ID?—otherwise they, the terrorists, won’t want to meet you. Just to warn you, I’m not sure how much you’ll gain. When the militancy was happening in Punjab, I remember, many politicians wanted to meet the militants in jail, to shout at them. But the meetings were never satisfactory. They always found that the militants were reasonable men, which was even more difficult than finding out the opposite.” He was lost now in the halls of his past power, traversing them for impressive tidbits—Deepa had seen this before with Jagdish Chacha. She wasn’t friendly with him but knew his wife well and so had an idea of his idiosyncrasies.
When he was done, he said, “Now, you go rest. The family is behind you. All his life Papa-ji fought against this kind of fundamentalism from the Muslims. We’ll make sure you get everything you want.”
Funny, Deepa thought—how this kind of tragedy unites and energizes a family. I’ve not just asked these old men for favors; I’ve reinvigorated their lives with purpose.
A few days before the blast, Tushar had come into the kitchen in the morning to watch her at work. An earnest boy, he loved the hectic action of the kitchen. “And how much frosting do you have to make for the order, Mama?” he asked.
“Two or three kilos since it’s a bulk order,” she said. “And we’ll let it cool in the afternoon. Hopefully we’ll have electricity so it won’t turn green from mold. You want to mix it?”
He did. With the whisk tight in his hand, he churned the butter and the sugar. He was not as effeminate as his father made him out to be. It was a matter of context. In the context of the kitchen he was an expert. As he mixed the frosting, Deepa hugged his small frame from behind.