The Red Carpet Page 17

  Swamy was delighted with the idea; but just as they were about to leave the party with a couple of close friends, someone else got wind of where they were going, and next thing you know, it had turned into a circus. Three cars, full of people, roaring down the highway, and here they all were.

  “You big-mouthed bastard,” Swamy accused Murthy, a little unfairly. Murthy is still one of the quietest individuals he knows.

  This particular dhaba is a lucky find; relatively clean, relatively free of the truckers who are the main clientele of such places. The dhaba owner seems used to feeding wandering tribes of urbanites who happen by with their fancy cars and unreal economics; without comment, he has lighted the coal sigri that holds the fire, pulled up charpoys, and offered them bottles of cold Kingfisher beer to drink. And this is enough, for the moment, to keep Swamy content; to allow him to stretch out, empty his mind of all the decisions that have dogged him for months, and ponder the residual surprise that still rises within him when he looks at Murthy.

  At least, so it would be, if it weren’t for the conversation people keep forcing on him—he is under cheerful verbal attack from two individuals he met at the party earlier in the evening, and who do not seem to recognize that they are not wanted. They both appear to want to convince him that he is doing the right thing.

  “I think it’s damn good, yaar, damn good,” says Rahul.

  “Oh, yeah,” says Karl. “I wish I were in your shoes.”

  “The last time,” says Rahul, “in Las Vegas, I tell you, I couldn’t decide whether to keep my eyes on the tables or on those chicks. Leaning over to serve drinks, their tits almost falling out. Great country!”

  “Tell me about it!”

  Swamy grunts and leans back.

  “And then New York. What nightclubs, just too cool. And the shopping is something else. Everything so cheap. Half the price of London.” Rahul, Swamy is learning, suffers from a surfeit of inherited money and a depressing lack of imagination. He asks Swamy, “Where do you do your shopping?”

  “I don’t shop.”

  “Ah, good joke!” says Rahul, but he is looking discouraged. Swamy is one of the new fairy tales, someone who has founded and sold a software company that everyone talks about and venture capitalists see in their favorite visions. Swamy should be shopping.

  “Ask Murthy,” says Swamy, relenting. “When we first shared an apartment, in America, he kept shopping. It was an obsession with him.”

  Across the fire, he can see Murthy laughing in response.

  The first of two apartments that Murthy and Swamy shared was a tiny place; just off-campus and furnished very simply, with a mattress on the floor of each bedroom in lieu of a bed, and another mattress in the tiny living room in lieu of a sofa. That was when they were graduate students, newly arrived from India, at the University of Pennsylvania. In the kitchen, they diligently acquired a pot for the rice, a pot for the dal lentils, a pan for the vegetables, a fridge that didn’t work, and a book full of handwritten recipes contributed to by their worried mothers in every letter from home. When Swamy announced casually that he had bought a television, he spent a moment savoring the distress on Murthy’s face at such unwarranted profligacy, before adding, “Black-and-white for twenty-eight dollars.” They had celebrated this acquisition with cheap beer and an evening spent injudiciously coaxing the antenna to capture a new show called Seinfeld.

  It had come as a shock, at first, to discover exactly how poor they were.

  Their college scholarships covered their tuition, and little else. Like their American colleagues, they worked at other jobs for their living expenses. Unlike the Americans, however, their student visas prevented them from working at reasonable rates off-campus, so they provided cheap intellectual grunt labor for anyone who asked. They taught undergraduates, did research for professors, worked in computer labs. And, again unlike the Americans, they could not rely on student loans, credit cards, or easy access to their parents’ homes and the acquisitions of a lifetime for material comfort. No cold-weather clothes, no car, no microwave, no popcorn maker. No Christmas presents of a golf set, or a tennis racquet, or a nice winter coat that happened to be on sale at Neiman Marcus.

  They didn’t think of asking their parents in India for financial support; neither of them was so irresponsible. Murthy’s father was an accountant; Swamy’s a lawyer. Their respective incomes allowed them to maintain their families in decent homes, provide a good education for their children, a maid to help their wives with the housework, and annual holidays in the hill stations of Ooty or Kodaikanal. In India, the money stretched that far. Converted into dollars, it simply vanished, reduced to a sum insufficient to buy a decent car even. The economy-class plane ticket to America had cost their parents two months’ income, and that was all anyone could expect. In return for that gift, their sons were expected to take no risks, work twice as hard as the Americans, and eventually land good jobs, get married, and produce, lickety-split, so many grandchildren and raise them with good old-fashioned Indian values.

  Luckily, Swamy and Murthy were not alone. Most of the Indians who came to study in America acted as they did, teetering between poverty on the one hand and grand future prospects on the other. There was a comfort in this, in meeting in each other’s rooms to eat dal and rice and feel a little less homesick, to figure out what jobs were being offered by what companies and how best to tackle the interviews.

  Occasionally they would run into that other breed of Indian abroad. “Usually,” said Murthy, paraphrasing another favorite author, “the kind of thing one sees in bad dreams, or when one is out without one’s gun.” A breed that, like Rahul, was the product of inherited money; that meticulously failed all the exams and bought a Mercedes-Benz as a reward; and that subsequently vanished back to the homeland to don suit, glasses, and foreign credentials, before giving interviews that nobody believed on the need to introduce professional managers into family-run businesses.

  It was Murthy, even then, who kept a strict control over their finances. He would plan and budget, wandering around the supermarkets with coupons in one hand and a calculator in the other, saying no to the handmade pasta, and yes to the big cheap tub of rice. “There’s a sale on,” he’d say, meaning not Bloomingdale’s or even Kmart, but the secondhand sale by some other graduate student who’d gotten a job somewhere and was selling everything before moving uptown, upscale. A sale, and Murthy and Swamy would rush across to buy (on a predetermined budget) perhaps a cooking pot, or a winter jacket that with a little effort could have the stains removed.

  All of which is presumably not the kind of shopping Rahul has in mind.

  “Is there anything to smoke?” asks Ashwini. Swamy hunts for his cigarettes, while Rahul pulls out his cigars.

  “Ah, the dog turds,” says Swamy.

  “Cohiba Esplendidos,” says Rahul. “Try them. They’re very good.”

  Ashwini eagerly reaches for one. She is technically Murthy’s girlfriend, and patently hopes to be something more. She has read about fashionable women who smoke cigars, and she is keen to emulate them. Rahul courteously trims the end of a cigar for her, and then shows her how to light it by holding it not in, but over, the flame, and the importance of puffing without inhaling. Ashwini is pleased, and punctuates everything she says with waves of the thick stub between her fingers.

  Murthy, on the other hand, looks disappointed. “Shit,” he says. “Nothing apart from tobacco?”

  “I may have something,” says Swamy. “In the car.” He and Murthy exchange glances, each willing the other to shake the laziness from his feet, get up, and go to the car.

  “I’ll go,” says Ashwini.

  She returns with a small tin box, which Murthy appropriates and reverently opens. “Kerala Gold,” he says, sniffing deeply. “The best fucking grass south of Manali.”

  He proceeds to roll two joints with the concentration that he brings to all important tasks, before lighting one, inhaling, and passing it on.

&nb
sp; As young schoolboys, they had gone through a phase of reading Billy Bunter, enjoying the antics of the English school boys, and puzzled by the little Indian prince’s inability to speak a word of comprehensible English. Or as the English author would have His Royal Highness, Hurree Jamset Ram Singh, Nabob of Bhanipur (called “Inky” by his associates), say: the incomprehensible-fulness of the spoken English in its very mystification is terrific.

  The other thing Murthy likes to do when he is high is to paraphrase the little nabob; to say, every now and then:

  The Thingfulness of the Thing

  In its very Thingness

  Is so Thing.

  This is a lispy mouthful even when sober; when Murthy is high he seems rather proud of being able to say it at all.

  Now Swamy waits patiently, but before Murthy can speak, Rahul is already turning his head inquisitively towards him.

  “You were based in Palo Alto, right?” Rahul’s persistence shows that a party invitation will soon be in the offing. Couple of those, and then Rahul will be able to tell everyone that yes, Swamy is a good, damn good, friend of his.

  “After graduate school, yes,” says Swamy.

  Their second apartment was very different from the first, and not just because it entailed a shift to California from their previous East Coast university existence. By the time they graduated, both Murthy and Swamy were sought after by different software corporations, and they had finally signed on, with enormous bonuses, with the same one.

  “What are your housing plans?” Murthy had asked, not lifting his eyes from his bank statement, which, post-bonus, exercised a strong fascination over him.

  Swamy’s reply had been prompt. “A house in Palo Alto,” he’d said. With a lemon tree on the side and a new (no, not secondhand, never) car parked in the drive.

  “That’s expensive,” Murthy said, mindful of the fact that Swamy, like himself, was a dutiful son, and would be sending money home to his parents.

  “Yeah,” said Swamy. He hesitated; now that they had a choice, he was suddenly reluctant to put Murthy on the spot. “I was actually planning on a roommate. Maybe advertise for one, or something. You?”

  Oh, something similar, Murthy said. Or, bastard, maybe I’ll just answer your advertisement.

  They bought furniture from Ikea, with king-size beds in each room, which would prove useful when they brought girls home. They argued over the merits of Ford Escorts and Honda Accords, but finally settled on buying Toyota Corollas, one each but in different colors, taking turns parking them in the one-car garage. They shopped at good stores and ate in nice restaurants. They worked out and ate health food from different countries and made interesting friends who spoke intelligently and well and played jazz on the weekends. They were finally living the American Dream.

  Or half of it, at any rate. The other half proved far more elusive.

  “And the chicks,” says Rahul, “in California. Really pretty. You must have seen some serious action, yaar.”

  “Serious,” says Swamy, deadpan. “But Murthy was the real swinger.” And Murthy avoids Rahul’s respectful glance to raise his middle finger discreetly at Swamy.

  The moonlight slowly seeps into their collective consciousness. Conversation slows down before it really begins, flaring up here and there in a languid, desultory way. Ashwini has shifted over to sit on the floor, next to Murthy, still puffing tentatively on her cigar, rounding her lips and swirling the smoke with her tongue in an effort to produce smoke rings. Across the fire, Swamy can see Murthy’s hand resting gently upon her shoulder.

  Their undergraduate dreams of America had focused on the great universities there, but frequently segued to something far more tantalizing; for their engineering class in India had been subdivided by subject matter (electronics, mechanical, civil, chemical)—and also by sexual experience. A very small, elite percentage actually had girlfriends, and sex with those girlfriends. Another small chunk had sex and paid for it, usually from the prostitute who lived up the road. They would queue outside her hut, and after each client she would step outside and wash her bottom out with cold water from the bucket near the door before taking in the next customer. Then there was the festering majority (to which Murthy and Swamy belonged), who were a little more fastidious and had remained appallingly virginal. America, Land of the Blonde and Home of the Brazen, pioneer of UnMarital Sex, would surely change all that. America, whose streets were lined, it was said, with vending-machine girls who lay naked, with welcoming signs painted over slots between their spread-eagled legs that said, For a Treat, Insert Here.

  But that, like so many Hollywood-inspired dreams, was pure marketing hype.

  Not government endorsed.

  Swamy’s first American girlfriend turned out to be significantly non-blonde, a Punjabi woman he met in graduate school. Indian, yes, but she’d grown up in America, and might therefore be more willing to put out. She was; and for that reason alone, Swamy unashamedly stayed with her. He didn’t like her very much, but he was deeply grateful.

  Not so Murthy.

  A hundred attempts and near misses, and Murthy got so desperate that he had taken to driving repeatedly past the ladies who offered their professional services on a certain corner of El Camino, and who would ask him softly, “Want some poontang, honey?” He did, decidedly so, but a remnant of his earlier fastidiousness kept him from formalizing any business relationship with them.

  In fact, Murthy may well be a virgin even today, though that cannot be held against him. Swamy does not know this for a fact. Up to a certain age, one advertises the momentous loss of one’s virginity; beyond that, one keeps quiet and loses it as best as one can. Ashwini certainly does not appear to be concerned.

  Dinner arrives halfway through their second drink, the welcome clatter of plates galvanizing them. Swamy’s mouth suddenly waters, as if anticipating a future when it will be denied such flavors, in such surroundings. The dhaba owner carries out trays full of dishes, accompanied and aided by two dusty rag-encased urchins who stare at the visitors with bright, curious eyes. The food is straight from the tava, sizzling with heat and spices that set eyes watering and tongues screaming for more: chicken sixtyfive, pepper mutton, kebabs. Hot rotis are placed on old steel plates weighed down further by dal and vegetables and chicken gravy. Nobody waits upon ceremony: teeth tear hungrily at the fragrant meat, while fingers scoop chopped onion and lime into eager open mouths.

  “Leave something for me, bugger,” says Murthy, laughing at Swamy’s eagerness.

  “Order another plate, you stingy bastard,” Swamy says. “This one’s mine.”

  “Fine, I’ll order one more,” says Murthy, “but you’re paying for it.”

  We’ll split it, says Swamy. One-by-two.

  It had all started in idle conversation, late one night.

  Swamy and Murthy sat at conjoined desks that competed in clutter with the other desks around, problem solving for the big software company that employed them in Palo Alto. The office lights were dimmed, except at odd locations where clots of people worked under fluorescent lighting that did not disguise the bags of fatigue under their eyes, or the late-night sour smell of too little sleep and take-out food that surrounded them. Swamy had finally produced what looked like a solution for a particular problem that had harassed him and the rest of his team for days. He was still tinkering with it, bleary-eyed, when Murthy tapped him on the shoulder.

  “That solution of yours,” said Murthy. “Brilliant.”

  Thanks, said Swamy. I thought so myself.

  “You realize, don’t you,” Murthy said, “that it is something that could potentially work for other businesses as well.”

  Swamy didn’t quite get it, until Murthy spelled it out for him: “I mean, fucker, that this is something worth setting up your own company for.”

  The conversation stayed with Swamy, burning through his mind, and characteristically, he moved quickly. It was his idea, but it was Murthy, displaying again the financial acumen that h
e had previously exhibited in ordering their personal finances, who organized the money. The company they worked for gave them its blessings and some money in exchange for some equity, and venture capitalists provided the rest of the funding. Swamy took charge of product development and marketing, and Murthy kept a tight control on finances, saying yes to things that would improve productivity, and no to almost everything else.

  When the time came to draw up the shareholding of the new company, Swamy had no hesitation.

  Murthy suggested that the promoters’ equity be divided 70–30, with Swamy taking the majority.

  Your product idea, said Murthy.

  “Your business idea,” said Swamy. “We’re splitting it straight down the middle.”

  Equity, it was, one-by-two.

  Such careful planning, and, of course, it was the unplanned that happened. They found themselves back in India.

  For several years in America, they had controlled their overwhelming homesickness; battening it down, beating it down, tying it into knots and leaving it unexpressed, except occasionally, when eating Indian food, or meeting with fellow Indian expats and talking about Indian politics and movies, or attending a sitar concert, or, best of all, on that rare greedy holiday home. There was simply no other choice but to live and work in America— until, suddenly, it appeared, there was.

  The Indian economy had been changing while they were away, and Bangalore, of all places, home, had suddenly emerged as a significant location for software development, with software engineers to be had on the cheap. India, where, it was rumored, the streets were newly lined with venture capitalists and luscious golden-skinned damsels, trained in the coital arts of the Kama Sutra. Swamy and Murthy made several wary, disbelieving trips, assessing the viability of shifting their production center ten thousand miles to the east.