Narcopolis

Dimple, sitting in the movie theatre with Rashid, looked up at Zeenie’s moon-like face, her round milk-white face that had absorbed every injustice in the world, and Dimple wished for a sister, an older sister she could talk to. The theatre was very cold: cold air was blowing in from the sides, and she wished she’d brought a shawl. It was the AC, Rashid said. What is AC? she asked. He said something in reply, something she forgot instantly, because she was watching the screen so carefully. Zeenie was playing a woman who runs away from a broken home and renames herself Janice. When she and her brother meet as adults she cannot remember him.

janice’s brother (trying to jog her memory): Look at this flower. You used to like flowers.

(Janice accepts the flower and smiles a smile of such sweetness you know, if you’re at all knowledgeable about such things, that she will die very soon.)

janice: Beauty is in the mind, in the eyes.

(They are among a crowd of flower children. Someone passes Janice a chillum and she takes an impossible, elegant puff and hands it to her brother, though she doesn’t know him yet.)

janice’s brother: No, I have a cough.

janice (scolding): If you want to sit with us, be like us. Joy, intoxication, peace, these are the things we believe in. Do you believe in joy?

janice’s brother: Is it only by smoking that you can believe in joy?

(Rashid knew the line and didn’t think much of it. He shouted it out anyway, only slightly out of sync with Dev Anand, laughing thickly as he mimicked the actor. A man sitting ahead of them turned to say something, took a look at Rashid and changed his mind.)

janice’s brother: Are you happy? Janice, are you happy?

(Janice is quiet for a time, a light in her eyes, an ancient light like the light from a long dead moon, and when she speaks it is in a whisper, and everybody in the theatre leans forward to hear.)

janice: Yes, I’ve never been so happy. It’s good to run away from home when nobody needs you and you have so much love to share with the world.

*

Dimple imagined Janice was talking only to her, ignoring the others in the theatre and tilting her moon face so her beautiful dying eyes were looking into Dimple’s. She wished Rashid had named her Janice instead of Zeenat, Janice, who didn’t remember her mother or father, who was strumming a guitar, saying: Oh I know this song, it’s on the tip of my tongue, make me another chillum and I’ll remember. What is this song? So high she was like an alien from a glorious superior species. And later, lying on the grass, lost, mountains around her, this lovely girl looks at the audience and says: Parents, why do they have us? A moment of pleasure and they’re saddled for life. They don’t really want us.

Dimple understood the exact nature of Janice’s suffering. To know you were unloved by your parents, it was a wound that would never heal. Nothing Dimple did to forget her early life could change this fundamental fact. She was always under the sway of it. It never went away. She’d think she was okay, but she wasn’t. If she wasn’t sleeping enough or if she was anxious, it would catch up with her, as fresh and wet and red as it had ever been. In the scene when brother and sister are finally reunited in a village in Kathmandu, Dimple made no effort to hide her tears. Others were crying too, men and women, entire families weeping together as they munched their popcorn and sucked noisily at bottles of Thums Up and Fanta.

*

The movie had a tremendous effect on Rashid, though he’d seen it many times. He didn’t speak until they were in a cab heading back to Shuklaji Street. Number eight, he told her, holding up seven fingers. And I’ll see it again. This is the movie that got me into drugs. This is why I opened my first adda and became a hippie. The only thing I can’t stand is that Dev Anand. He wouldn’t last three minutes on Shuklaji Street. Then he sang the song so forcefully that the melody lost its haunting quality and became an anthem. He lingered on the chorus, on its famous first couplet,

Dum maro dum,

Mit jaaye hum.

Bolo subah sham.

But there he stopped. He would not sing the final line, ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Ram’. It was too Hindu for him. Instead, thinking about dinner, he sang the verse again, changing the words.

Dum aloo dum,

Mit jaaye hum.

Bolo subah sham,

Dum aloo dum.

Chapter Six Stinking Asafoetida