Deepti Kapoor - A Bad Character: A Novel

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2014 by Deepti Kapoor

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A.
Knopf, a division of Random House, LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies. Originally published in slightly different form in India by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books India, New Delhi, and subsequently in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of the Random House Group Limited, London, in 2014.

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Knopf, Borzoi Books and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kapoor, Deepti.
A bad character : a novel / Deepti Kapoor. First United States edition.
pages cm
Originally published in India by Hamish Hamilton / Penguin Books India in 2014 and in Great Britain by Jonathan
Cape in 2014Title page verso.
ISBN 978-0-385-35274-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-385-35275-8 (Ebook)
1. Teenage girlsFiction. 2. Delhi (India)Fiction. I. Title.
PR9499.4.K3763B33 2015
823.92dc23

2014020809

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Front-of-jacket photograph Marco Giardini/Millennium Images, UK
Jacket design by Janet Hansen

v3.1

My boyfriend died when I was twenty-one. His body was left lying broken on the highway out of Delhi while the sun rose in the desert to the east. I wasnt there, I never saw it. But plenty of others saw, in the trucks that passed by without stopping and from the roadside dhaba where hed been drinking all night.

Then they wrote about him in the paper. Twelve lines buried in the middle pages, one line standing out, the last one, in which a cop hed never met said to the reporter, He was known to us, he was a bad character.

Its a phrase they use sometimes, what some people still say. Its what theyll say about me too, when they know what Ive done.

Him and me

(long dead).

Sitting in the caf in Khan Market the day we met, in April, when the indestructible heat was rising in the year, sinking in the day, the sun setting very red, sacrificing itself to the squat teeth of buildings stretching back round the stinking Yamuna into Uttar Pradesh.

The city is a furnace on days like these, the aching heart of a cremation ground.

But inside the caf you wouldnt know it; inside its cool, the AC is on, the windows are politely shuttered, it could be any time of day in here; in here you could forget the city, its ceaseless noise, its endless quarry of people. You could feel safe.

Only hes staring at me.

Twenty and untouched. Its a sin. For twenty years Ive been waiting for this one thing.

Idha.

In the mirror.

I give myself a name, I wear it out. Lunar, serpentine, desirous. A charm that protects me.

By the time I met him he was already gone. I didnt know it then, but he was gone. Because he never once paced himself, because he was racing forward from the moment of birth and every bridge he crossed he turned round to destroy. Chaos mixed with joy, the joy of Shiva, biting his mothers breast, madness in the blood.

And I couldnt have saved him; he wasnt there to be saved. Instead he picked me up in the caf and tried to make me in his image. He said, Youre my lump of wet clay. And its true in a way, I was.

So now were sitting in this caf in Khan Market the day we met, in April, in the year 2000. In Khan where its civilized, where there are bookstores and florists, and the music shop still selling cassettes, all joined together in a horseshoe and no big chain stores yet. Where the grocery shops for the embassy crowd are long and thin, with shelves packed high, full of imported goods, of Nutella and Laughing Cow cheese, Belgian chocolate and Spanish olives. Where the great and the good of Delhi walk upon the cracked pavements, or send their servants at least.

And in this caf on the first floor, the waitresses are from the north-east, from Manipur and Assam. The tables and chairs are wooden, painted dark green, distressed like Parisian antiques. There are nooks and crannies in here to hide from the day, old posters on the walls, terracotta floors for the feet. They play Brubeck and Dylan on the stereo, brew filter coffee, bake carrot cake and serve toasted brown-bread sandwiches on large white plates.

People are returning to India these days. Money is pouring in from every hole. Its also rising up out of the ground, conjured from nowhere, a miracle of farmland and ruins, an economic sleight of hand. Theres construction everywhere, in Defence Colony and GK they are building, and out in the satellite wastelands of Gurgaon and Noida they are building cities too.

Laxmi is doing her job, for those who know how to pray.

Its every man for himself.

India is Shining.

But me, Ive gone nowhere, done nothing.

Im in the second year of college, in the care of Aunty. Not in dorms, not in hostels, not with other girls, no, theres no paying-guest house for me. No mother either any more, and my father, hes off living in Singapore, abandoned me a long time ago for a new life there, though no one will say it out loud, though everyone still pretends its not the case.

No, Im alone, in college, living in east Delhi over the filthy Yamuna, in the care of Aunty. My mother grew up with this woman, who I can never call by name. She went to school with her too, and then was left behind. Aunty is a proper woman, she will be until the day she dies.

So I go to college and I come back home, I sit with Aunty in front of the soaps or else study and daydream in my room. But sooner or later Im always called outside to be presented to whichever visitor has dropped by, or else Im dragged with Aunty on one of her endless visits, to sit in other apartments and living rooms with the other aunties of this world, their daughters too sometimes, listening to the incessant talk about other lives, their weddings, sons and daughters gone astray, the ones who have failed, the servants who will not do what theyre told, the property disputes, scandals, jewellery, the price of gold. I keep my head down here and my thoughts to myself.

I have my classmates in college of course. Not quite friends but theyre still nice girls. With them I go to the movies sometimes, and sometimes we sneak out to TGIF to get a Long Island iced tea or a beer and sit around the table talking about the films weve seen, the clothes weve bought, the boys at college were supposed to like, the ones we dream of marrying, besides the film stars.

Once or twice Ive even had dates with these boys, been to coffee shops nearby and listened to them talk. Theyre such good bright boys that I should be in awe, but on these dates Im always left cold. I sit as they talk and feel nothing for them, and the world keeps turning, but no one knows what turns in me.

Then, driving home to Aunty in my car, round the monumental grandeur of India Gate, across the black water of the creeping Yamuna, a pain grips my heart. My father bought me this car at the start of colleges second year, out of guilt perhaps, or as a consequence of his new wealth. But driving home a pain grips my heart and I put my foot down to speed in the sulphurous dark.