The Mountain Shadow

I remembered the Sapna killings. And I knew the truth of the story better than Rosanna did, and better than most in the Island City of Bombay. I walked slowly from panel to panel, examining the long tableaux depicting figures from the public story of Sapna.

I felt light-headed and off balance. They were stories of men I’d known: men who’d killed, and died, and had finally become tiny figures fixed in an artist’s frieze.

Lisa pulled on my sleeve.

‘What is it, Lisa?’

‘Let’s go to the green room!’ she shouted.

‘Okay. Okay.’

We followed Rosanna through a leafy hedge of kisses and outstretched arms as she hooted and screeched her way to the back of the gallery. She tapped on the door with a little rhythmic signal.

When the door opened she pushed us through into a dark room illuminated by red motorcycle lights strung on heavy cables.

The room held about twenty people, sitting on chairs, couches and the floor. It was much quieter there. The girl who approached me, offering a joint, spoke in a throaty whisper that ran a hand through my short hair.

‘You wanna get fucked up?’ she asked rhetorically, offering the joint in her supernaturally long fingers.

‘You’re too late,’ Lisa cut in quickly, taking the joint. ‘Fate beat you to it, Anush.’

She puffed the joint and passed it back to the girl.

‘This is Anushka,’ Lisa said.

As we shook hands, Anushka’s long fingers closed all the way around my palm.

‘Anushka’s a performance artist,’ Lisa said.

‘You don’t say,’ I did say.

Anushka leaned in close to kiss me softly on the neck, the fingers of one hand cupping the back of my head.

‘Tell me when to stop,’ she whispered.

As she kissed my neck, I slowly turned my head until my eyes met Lisa’s.

‘You know, Lisa, you were right. I do like your friends. And I am having fun at the gallery, even though I thought I wouldn’t.’

‘Okay,’ Lisa said, pulling Anushka away. ‘Show’s over.’

‘Encore!’ I tried.

‘No encores,’ Lisa said, bringing me to sit on the floor beside a man in his thirties.

His head was shaved to a bright polish, and he wore a burnt-orange kurta pyjama set.

‘This is Rish. He mounted the exhibition, and he’s exhibiting work as well. Rish, this is Lin.’

‘Hey, man,’ Rish said, shaking hands. ‘How do you like the show?’

‘The performance art is outstanding,’ I replied, looking around to see Anushka leaning in to bite an unresisting victim.

Lisa slapped me hard on the arm.

‘I’m kidding. It’s all good. And you got a big crowd. Congratulations.’

‘Hope they’re in a buying mood,’ Lisa said, thinking out loud.

‘If they’re not, Anushka could convince them.’

Lisa slapped me on the arm again.

‘Or you could always get Lisa to slap them.’

‘We were lucky,’ Rish smiled, offering me the joint.

‘No thanks. Never when I’ve got a passenger. Lucky how?’

‘It almost didn’t happen. Did you see the big Ram painting? The orange one?’

The large, mainly orange-coloured painting was hanging next to the stone sculpture of Enkidu. I hadn’t immediately realised that the striking central figure was a representation of the Hindu God.

‘The moral police from the lunatic religious right,’ Rish said, ‘the Spear of Karma, they call themselves, they heard about the painting and tried to shut us down. We got in touch with Taj’s dad. He’s a top lawyer, and connected to the Chief Minister. He got a court order, allowing us to put the show on.’

‘Who painted it?’

‘I did,’ Rish said. ‘Why?’

‘What made you want to paint it in the first place?’

‘Are you saying that there are things I shouldn’t paint?’

‘I’m asking you why you chose to do it.’

‘For the freedom of art,’ Rish said.

‘Viva la revolution,’ Anushka purred, sitting down beside Rish and leaning into his lap.

‘Whose freedom?’ I asked. ‘Yours, or theirs?’

‘Spear of Karma?’ Rosanna sneered. ‘Crazy fascist fuckers, all of them. They’re nothing. Just a fringe group. Nobody listens to them.’

‘The fringe usually works its way to the centre that ignores or insults it.’

‘What?’ Rosanna spluttered.

‘That’s true, Lin,’ Rish agreed, ‘and they’ve done some violent stuff. No doubt. But they’re mainly in the regional centres and the villages. Beating up priests, and burning down a church here and there, that’s their thing. They’ll never get a big following in Bombay.’

‘Vicious fucking fanatics!’ a bearded young man wearing a pink shirt spat out viciously. ‘They’re the stupidest people in the world!’

‘I don’t think you can say that,’ I said softly.

‘I just did!’ the young man shot back. ‘So fuck you. I just said it. So I can say it.’

‘Okay. I meant that you can’t say it with any validity. Sure, you can say it. You can say that the moon is a Diwali decoration, but it wouldn’t have any validity. It’s simply not valid to say that all the people who oppose you are stupid.’

‘Then what are they?’ Rish asked.

‘I think you probably know them and their way of thinking better than I do.’

‘No, really, make your point, please.’