The Pleasure Seekers by Tishani Doshi Read Free Book Online Page B

give you something,’ he said, looking embarrassed because he’d never bought anyone a present before.
    The prodigal son had exactly the same luggage he’d started with (minus a few letters, plus a pair of Wrangler jeans). On the journey back, though, hanging awkwardly around his neck, was his great-grandfather’s antique locket, which Babo held as if it were an amulet, capable of bestowing wonders. On the flight home Babo was tense. He paced about at the back of the plane smoking cigarettes, thinking about his mother lying in some hospital bed in some awful pea-green operation gown, her eyes cleared of kajal, the bindi from the centre of her forehead rubbed away. He thought of her dying of some horrible, unnameable disease, and out of pure desperation, he held the locket close to his chest and began chanting the prayer he’d given up on a long time ago: ‘Namo Arihantanam, Namo Siddhanam . . .’
    By the time he arrived in Madras he’d been travelling for over twenty-four hours. He didn’t know what time or day it was. His nails were gnawed down to the nub and his eyes looked like a watercolour version of their usual metallic grey. When he saw his father at the arrival gates, grim-faced, and in the same beige safari suit he’d worn to drop him off nine months ago, Babo wondered how he could look exactly the same when so much in their lives had changed.
    ‘Papa,’ he said, bending to touch Prem Kumar’s feet, tears sliding down his face.
    ‘So, you’ve come home, son,’ said Prem Kumar, touching Babo’s head and then taking his luggage purposefully over to the taxi.
    Babo asked, after what he deemed a reasonable time of waiting, ‘How’s Ma?’
    ‘She’s much better. We didn’t know how she was going to be for a while, but she’s much better now. News of you coming home has helped. She hasn’t talked of anything else for days.’
    ‘You mean she can talk?’
    ‘Of course, what did you think? That she was lying in a coma somewhere?’
    ‘Well, no. Well, yes. I thought she was very ill.’
    ‘It’s nothing that a doctor can’t cure.’
    ‘Oh, thank God,’ said Babo, as he began to look outside with eagerness for the first time.
    Madras looked overgrown, like an adult man insisting on wearing small-boy shorts. After his months in London, it seemed dirtier, shabbier. There were new billboards and glossy storefront windows, but the flowers on the roundabout were dying and the trees were gasping for air. The traffic was moving of its own accord without paying heed to the coloured signals or the khaki-clad policemen waving their arms frantically at the intersections. And the people! There were people everywhere, slipping in and out of their lives for everyone to see. Babo, watching them as if for the first time, saw how far he’d travelled, how it was no longer possible to be one of them .
    Finally, they were driving down Sterling Road, past Taylor’s Lane, where Babo used to play cricket and kabadi after school, and the Railway Employees Compound, where he first started smoking cigarettes with his college friends. Sylvan Lodge sat at the corner of the street, surrounded by droopy ashoka trees, perched like a wedding cake jhimak-jhimaking in a bright new coat of pista-green paint.
    Trishala was standing at the gate with Meenal, Dolly and Chotu. They had been told nothing of their brother’s affair. As far as they knew, Babo was coming home for the summer holidays. Selvam was looking on from his usual post, leaning on his cane stick, a red towel wrapped around his bald head to keep the heat away. Trishala was tugging him away from the gate because he was blocking her view. Babo thought how well she looked, not at all as if she’d suffered or was suffering from any illness. If anything, she looked a little haler and heartier than when he’d left.
    When Babo got out of the car, Trishala, who had been smiling unrestrainedly until then, let out a towering scream. ‘Look how thin you’ve become!