Sample Chapter

Even as he parked his car outside Sheba's friend's beach house, he felt the first stirrings of discomfort. 'Beach house' was a rather extravagant description of the one storey, long, tin-roofed structure surrounded by cars and motorcycles. It looked more like somebody's unused godown. In fact it was somebody's unused godown, built originally to store rice, but used every now and again for avant-garde parties and theatre workshops. And since it was on the beach, it had earned itself the sobriquet of 'beach house'.

He walked into the building, a half-bottle of Harry's whisky cradled in his palm. He entered a huge, darkened, smoke-filled room, with about forty or so silhouettes standing around in small groups. One of the silhouettes detached itself from its moorings as he stood uncertainly at the entrance.

Rajiv did not recognise the apparition that advanced on him. A freshly tonsured head, reflecting the few dim lights in the room, unfettered pendulous breasts that rolled along gently in front of her, prevented from escaping into orbit by a thin cotton shi rt tucked into a voluminous, psychedelic, quilted skirt. It looked like no one he knew. Or would want to know.

It was Sheba. Rajiv was flabbergasted at the transformation that had come over her in the fortnight or so, since he had met her. She dragged him back to the group she had been with. "Everybody, I'd like you to meet Rajiv", Sheba announced over the strains of Bismillah Khan playing something funereal on an unhappy shehnai.

His poise recovered, Rajiv nodded pleasantly at everybody, as Sheba introduced them, even though he barely caught their names, except when she came to the short, slight, tonsured, bearded man, whose puny arms she was clutching on to, as she introduced him, much to Rajiv's barely hidden consternation, as 'Akku, my boyfriend'. She had to have a boyfriend. And that too a scruffy looking kurta-jeans clad fellow who looked like he smelled.

If he was surprised at being on the receiving end of an almost painfully exuberant handshake from Rajiv, Akku, whose name could have been Akbar, Akshay or even Achilles, showed no indication of this and continued examining the little circle of light under his feet with silent intensity, prompting everybody else in the group to do the same. Except Rajiv.

"So, what do you do, Akku", Rajiv asked, unnecessarily loudly.

"Fine thank you. And how do you do?" was the bemusing reply.

"He's a professional philosopher", interjected Sheba, preventing the conversation from degenerating into a vaudeville cross-talk act, as it might well have.

"Really!", said Rajiv, "I've never met a professional philosopher before. You mean you can make a living out of it?", he went on, his journalist's instincts aroused.

"What's a living?", mused the professional philosopher still looking at the circle of light at his feet.

"Well, what I -", Rajiv did not recognise that the pause had been merely for effect.

".. If not an execrable feast", the philosopher went on undaunted, "by bloody-handed survivors on the entrails of the wretched millions they manage to destroy, in their avaricious pursuit of self-enhancement? The vultures and the carcasses. The illusion of reality. The reality in illusion."

"Wow, Akku. That was beautiful. Let me write it down", one of the sycophants in the circle pulled out a small jotting pad from the recesses of his sling bag to write down the gibberish that the professional philosopher, now glaring truculently at Rajiv, had uttered.

"Why don't you fix yourself a drink? The bar's over there", Sheba, fearing a scene, pointed a stupefied Rajiv away from the group.

Rajiv walked as in a trance in the direction Sheba had pointed, half disappointed to find himself alone, his astonishing hostess preferring to listen to her professional philosopher's inspired musings. The bar was a rather fanciful term to describe the long, unadorned, rickety wooden table on which stood a huge stainless steel drum with water dripping out of a leaky tap attached to it. A few paper plates with the dregs of what may have once been potato wafers were scattered on the table, along with a few empty beer bottles. There was no sign of any glasses. Rajiv looked around wondering how he was supposed to have a drink, when he was cheerily greeted by a happy looking man wearing a lungi and a silk shirt, that drenched in sweat, had evenly turned a darker shade.

"Having a drink?", the man asked, looking at Rajiv's unopened half bottle on the table.

"If I can find a glass."

"No glasses", he replied cheerfully, "but no problem. See, I'll show you". He opened Rajiv's bottle, poured out half of its contents into his own empty bottle, topped both up with water from the stainless steel drum, gave Rajiv one, and beamed at him.

"See I told you. No problem. Cheers", he took a long swig from his bottle refreshed with Harry's whisky and tottered away to brighten up somebody else's evening. Rajiv could only admire the man's insouciance. He took a sip from his own bottle and moved around trying to find a group he could insinuate himself into.

Evidently there were several groups at the party, none of them having considered the possibility of mixing with the rest. There was the dancer's corner, that Rajiv had recognised by the sinuous movements of one of its members captivating the others in the group. The yuppie corner was distinguishable by the men in ties, drinking Dutch beer out of cans, in animated discussion about American politics, foreign exchange rates and Harvard. There was an ethnic chic corner and a brown sahib corner. Rajiv looked around wondering whether he would ever be able to find himself a group he could fit into, until he heard a pencil thin lady saying in a silvery voice something about 'Divine Comedy'. He quickly joined the group.

"Yeah, I agree with you about the divine comedy", a clean shaven man was saying.

"So, you're fans of Dante, then?", said Rajiv.

"Oh yes", said the pencil thin lady after a brief pause, more than satisfied with her examination of the interloper. "Don't you just love Mercedes?"

Rajiv was at a loss.

"No, no, my dear", interrupted an older lady with short hair and a nose shaped like a parrot's beak, who obviously understood the ways of her friend's mind. "You're talking about the Count of Monte Cristo. I think this handsome young man is talking about the doctor", she simpered.

Rajiv blushed. "No. Actually I was talking about Dante Allighieri."

"Allighieri. Is he Italian?", said a tall gentleman, whose shiny new Rolex looked more like it had come from the pasar malams or night markets of Kuala Lumpur than from Geneva.

"He was Italian", said Rajiv.

"What's he now? Don't tell me he's become a son-in-law of India." said a rotund man, who looked like he could have owned a shop or two in one of the city's more fashionable shopping malls, as he proceeded to double up with asthmatic laughter, at his own witty reference to Sonia Gandhi's claims to be a daughter-in-law of India.

"No, he's dead."

"Oh, I'm so sorry", the parrot beaked lady said, shooting daggers at the shop owner, finding it necessary to condole with Rajiv on the unfortunate passing on of this Dante Allighieri.

"Must be too much of pasta. It's as bad as rice, you know", said the Rolex.

The hitherto silent member of the group, a short, stooped, bearded young man, who spoke very little since his distinctive dentition caused him a problem with sibilants, suddenly decided to make his presence felt. His beady eyes bored suspiciously into those of everybody in the group. "I hate Picassso", he said. "Let'ss talk about ssomething elsse"

Rajiv fled the party.

Had he waited just a little longer, he might have realised that the pencil thin lady's reference to the 'divine comedy', was really her opinion of Jim Carey's film, The Mask, in which she would have found enthusiastic support from the mandarins of Star Movies, the satellite television channel that repeatedly telecast the movie at least twice a month.

Had he waited till the stroke of midnight, he would have had the unforgettable experience of listening to a lecture by Akku, the professional philosopher, on Nihilism and Communism: Not strange bedfellows, delivered with burning intensity to an assemblage that understood little of what had been said, but thoroughly enjoyed it nevertheless.