Narcopolis

From Orpheus or Icarus or Stephen Dedalus he turned to Bengali cultural heroes, Tagore and Satyajit Ray and the Dutts, Guru, Toru and Michael Madhusudhan. He shared the regional affliction that Bengalis were prone to, the conviction that they were the most artistic and talented people in the world. But Bengali was a maverick Bengali and some of his views were a kind of blasphemy. What if Tagore had not won the Nobel when he did? Bengali asked. How would it have affected his work? I suspect it would have made him more open to experimentation and more interesting in every way, especially in his poetry, which, I have to say, is not very good. And why shouldn’t I say so? The point about Tagore is that the whole was far greater than the sum of the parts. It is the composite figure that matters. But Tagore the mystic and poet? Tagore the painter? Tagore the composer? Not one of those Tagores is worth very much.

*

The old man was sitting by the cookpot, imbibing fumes by a system of osmosis. When he saw Rashid he got up to prepare his boss’s pyali. Outside, the day was bright with noonday sun and Rashid could see the balcony of Khalid’s place next door, the ancient iron railing and the flaking green paint on the walls. They were meeting today, Khalid and he, after lunch, which could mean anytime before the evening prayer. Rashid picked up the newspaper and put his glasses on, but he couldn’t focus on the words. He was still rattled by the anger that had swept him up. He put the paper aside and prepared a hit of coke. The room got busy all of a sudden, two lamps lit, the pot bubbling in the tiled washing area near the entrance, and Dimple fixing his pipe while Bengali placed his pyalis on a tray.

Rashid said, Chal, chal, hurry up, don’t be doing your randi baazi when my pipe’s waiting to be made. Dimple didn’t seem to hear him; she dipped a knitting needle into a pyali and cooked the opium into a soft black bubble. Then she tapped the stem and Rashid ducked to the pipe. He smoked cross-legged, never mind the popular version, on your back with your knees bent and your legs triangulated. He was a businessman, a father. He wasn’t going to lie there with his legs open to the world. He took a long pull of the pipe and a stream of smoke ascended from his nostrils and veiled his face. He took another pull and this time there was no smoke: he ate it down. It was just short of noon and already the khana was dark, in a kind of permanent half-shade. The room made people talk in whispers, as if they were in a place of worship, which, the way he saw it, they were. Already now there were times he could feel it slipping away, a way of life vanishing as he watched, the pipes, the oil lamps layered with years of black residue, the conversations that a man would begin and lose interest in, all the rituals that he revered and obeyed, all of it disappearing.

Chapter Three Business Practices among the Criminal Class: An Offer