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  “It will cut costs,” Murthy said finally.

  “Fuck,” Swamy said, for once rendered speechless by the notion of such a prodigal return.

  They came home. Their parents greeted them with tears of happiness and countless marriage proposals. They met up with old friends like Ramu, and made new ones. Swamy continued traveling to America, but this time on his own terms, first class all the way, under the banner of the company he had founded, to meet with customers, to secure orders, before returning home to India to process them, and to socialize with people like Rahul, who, a few years earlier, wouldn’t have given him the time of day.

  Karl, Rahul’s friend, now repeats, Shit, I wish I were in your place.

  Swamy says nothing. Instead he sips his beer and waits for this Karl to move away, shouting at him in his mind like the commander of a Hollywood action-movie SWAT team: go! go! go! go! go!

  They had met earlier that evening at the party. “Hi, I’m Karl,” he’d said, and Swamy had taken him in instant aversion. He knew him. Knew him and his type. He was part of that mystical Indian tribe that, immediately upon landing on American shores, goes completely native, emerging later with Hihowyadoin accents and names like Kamalesh shortened to names like Karl.

  It was one of those parties where half the people present had worked or studied in America, and were never able to let that part of their lives go, even while they returned to India to reclaim their past and plot their future. Already, the two other individuals talking to Swamy welcomed Karl in, creating a space for him, and unconsciously increasing the American intonations in their speech. Swamy found himself changing too, but in the other direction; he rapidly indianized his own accent, discarding the drawl and inserting melody, hardening his consonants so that words like “thing” sounded sharply at both beginning and end.

  Karl had been in India for a few months, and was not happy. “Man,” he said. “I’m surprised anyone can stick it out here.”

  “Oh, it works out,” someone said vaguely, but with a smile that was understanding, complicit.

  “Except when the power fails.”

  “Yeah, really. And you go shopping and you can’t find shit.”

  “Or the phones cross-connect.”

  “Or when someone tells you they’re gonna do something immediately, and three months later, you’re still phoning. . . .”

  A part of Swamy could identify deeply with everything they said; it hadn’t been easy, this homecoming; India, providing opportunity and hassle in equal measure. Yet he was also keenly aware of the Great Absurdity inherent in conversations like this: the land of dreams always reconfiguring itself into the one left behind, tinged with regret and wistful desire.

  Now Karl wants to know: So, are you going to be based in California again?

  Yes, says Swamy, disappointment washing through his mouth at those words.

  When you get settled, says Rahul, I’ll come visit. We can go to Las Vegas together, I tell you, man, what chicks.

  Great, says Swamy. I look forward to it.

  Yeah, it is a good thing you’re going, yaar. I tell you, this country is going to the dogs.

  The future was not supposed to lie so.

  A few months before their scheduled IPO, when all their hard work and happy clients and good publicity were set to translate into actual gain, in New York, in Bombay, where their share certificates would ascend to a value far greater than the paper they were writ upon, transmogrifying (like magic) into money in the firm and money in the bank—that was when it happened. A worldwide recession appeared, like magic, dreamed up by a drunken genie out of a bottle, cross-eyed with a hangover. It is amazing how quickly venture capital can dry up. How quickly the behemoth companies they were supplying can slide into financial constraint, how quickly they can change their orders, So sorry, yes, it’s tough for us too, recession and all, seven thousand people laid off, good-bye. Kings today, interred tomorrow. As Hurree Jamset Ram Singh, Nabob of Bhanipur, might say: the interredfulness of the king in its very completeness is terrific.

  Or as Murthy might say: fuck, da.

  Night after disappointing night, Swamy and Murthy stayed at their desks, speaking to potential customers and financiers in countries ten thousand miles away, holding the company aloft through desire and desperation alone. Finally, after months of worry and despair—the first flush of relief. Swamy bounced into the office after spending a week in America followed by an entire weekend on the telephone. It wasn’t what they’d dreamed of, it wasn’t even close, but it was some sort of vindication.

  “I’ve found a buyer,” he told Murthy. A multinational firm that was willing to buy their company from them for a decent price and a job in senior management in their own company. Murthy and he could move back to America, to California, in a matter of weeks. They would still have some control over their software product, but as part of the larger organization.

  It’s time to go back, he said to Murthy. Things will improve, and then maybe we can try again. Just bad timing, this. It was a good idea. But now it’s time to go back.

  Murthy listened, as he always did, thoughtfully, quietly.

  Great, he said. I think selling the company is a wise choice; we may not get another chance like this. Not so soon, anyway.

  And then he said: But I don’t think I will be going back to California. Bound to be something else I can do around here.

  “Right,” Swamy had said eventually.

  “What,” he’d asked, a couple of days later.

  “There are good opportunities in BPO,” said Murthy. “Worth looking at, at least until the climate improves for software development.”

  And Swamy had stared at him, caught unawares by his own surprise.

  It wasn’t that Murthy was wrong in his assessment: indeed, companies all over the world were busily shifting their backoffice operations and customer-care call centers to India, for BPO, or “business process outsourcing,” to take advantage of the relatively cheap intellectual labor available here.

  It wasn’t even that Murthy was choosing to think, as Swamy twitted him, like a buck-making businessman and not an idealistic software engineer captured by the dream of creating a product that would change the world.

  No. Murthy might well be making the right choice. All the faith that Swamy has reposed in Murthy’s judgment over the years tells him that. Swamy’s surprise is directed at himself—and the sudden realization that, unlike Murthy, he does not seem to have it in himself, in this crucial moment of decision, to make that final commitment to India.

  He had felt the first inklings of this a little earlier, fueled by the fear that first erupted during those long nights when things looked like they might fail, utterly and completely; when none of the arguments that he used to convince himself to return home—the opportunities, his aging parents, the wonder of being home—gave him comfort. A fear that, by staying behind now, when the going has gone so badly wrong, the fruits of all his years of hard work and sacrifice in America would never again be his for the plucking—that he would, in some atavistic fashion, revert to the state of his boyhood, stuck in India, full of longing, with America hung full and ripe and out of his reach.

  In high school, Swamy and Murthy’s whole world had revolved around gaining admission to the engineering college of their choice in India. The entrance exam had taken four years of preparation; they had competed with a hundred thousand others; their chances of being two of the two thousand finally selected were slim. They had studied together, but as they waited for their results, an odd constraint had developed between them. What if they were not admitted? What if only one of them was? But such possibilities remained outside their realm. Admitted they both were, and survived together on an odd combination of brilliant peers, awful food, and meager academic facilities; repeating that feat, again and again, in different environments in a different country; a strange, undefined, never-discussed partnership of twenty years.

  Murthy is laughing at something Ashwini
is saying. He looks wonderfully peaceful, and for one quick minute, Swamy is again seized with doubts as to the wisdom of his own decision, doubts he is quick to dismiss as they arise.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Rahul wandering back in his direction. In desperation, Swamy interrupts Murthy.

  “Did you bring your guitar?” he asks. “Where is it, in the car?”

  Ashwini says: “I’ll get it.”

  Murthy takes the guitar and settles it comfortably on his leg and against his body, one arm draped over it. His fingers pluck and dance their way over the strings, the other hand forming chords in leprous imitation of a dancer’s mudras. A random run of notes and chords emerges, segueing from one barely recognized progression to another. Someone lights the second joint and it circulates, eventually reaching Swamy, who accepts it with pleasure, not removing his gaze from Murthy and the magic he is creating. And as he has a thousand times through their years together, he calls out his request.

  “California Dreamin’,” he says.

  All the leaves are brown / And the sky is gray . . .

  Soon, in perfect pitch and right on time, Ramu’s voice joins in, an Art Garfunkel to Murthy’s Paul Simon. Ramu has a mild tenor voice, trained by years on the school choir and, subsequently, by singing harmonies on college bands.

  The others listening join in as well, usually at the chorus, as the music takes them back a decade or more, to a thousand such song sessions around a thousand guitars on college campuses scattered around India. The music was always the same, seven-ties rock and roll, unchanging through the decades.

  You who are on the road

  Must have a code that you can live by

  And so become yourself

  Because the past is just a good-bye

  Murthy wanders through CSNY, the Eagles, Jethro Tull, Jesus Christ Superstar, smiling as Swamy peremptorily tugs him from one song to another. A long, long time ago, I can still remember, how that music used to make me smile . . .

  It has been years since Swamy has heard Ramu and Murthy sing together, and now they harmonize tentatively, slowly gaining confidence as they go, singing bye-bye miss american pie, smiling ruefully as they make an occasional mistake, mouthing the songs that have countless memories stamped into each. Memories of copying words down painstakingly from LP records and cassettes, and rehearsing, rehearsing for all those intercollege cultural festivals, trying as best they could to reproduce the ragged, magical, astonishing sounds of Neil (Young), Don (McLean), Ian (Anderson), and Roger (Waters). Old legends still abounded: how one lead singer of some college band had actually written to Ian Gillian of Deep Purple, to ask him how a voice trained in the liquid melody of ghazals could achieve the power it needed to do justice to a song like smoke-on-the-water, and by return mail, they said, the advice arrived—go to a field at night, it said, and scream. Scream your desire up to the sky and the power will come.

  The harmonies, the smoke, wash through him, relaxing his body, opening his mind to random thoughts and impressions. He watches the moonlight strengthen, heightening the contrasts of the night, sending the sand waves scattering helplessly across the clearing towards the sanctuary of the dark shadows beyond. The music drifts to Simon and Garfunkel. And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson. Jesus loves you more than you will know.

  Swamy feels his breath warm his lungs and heat the tips of his fingers, which press against his cheek.

  “ ‘Gerry Niewood,’ ” he says, “ ‘on saxophone.’ ”

  The 1981 Concert in Central Park is one of his favorite recordings, and Swamy is familiar with every nuance. The spoken interludes addressed to the crowd of thousands by Simon and Garfunkel between songs trickle through the cracks in the music to resonate in his mind, over and over, sometimes escaping in a carefully intoned murmur through his mouth. “ ‘Whata night . . . I thought it might be . . . uh, somewhat crowded, but we seemed to have filledtheplace.’ ”

  There are periods in his life when he becomes obsessed with a particular piece of music, playing the same tape or CD obsessively over and over until his blood moves in rhythm and the words stamp themselves deep into his consciousness, to emerge suddenly, to sprout life at the least propitious moments. What, da? What did you say?

  Swamy, people say, has a magic touch. The not-insignificant money he has made from the sale of his company. The job that now awaits him. In these recessionary times, this is a sign of success, but to Swamy it feels strangely like indelible compromise.

  He leaves tonight.

  Like the nabob in the storybook, another foolish Indian abroad.

  The fire is still burning strongly, kept alive by one of the little ragamuffin boys, who adds firewood to it every now and then. Murthy’s glasses glint in the light; he had attempted replacing them with contact lenses at one stage, but they gave his face a raw, nude look, and finally it had all been too much to bother with the daily rinsing and cleaning routine. Now that he thinks of it, Swamy sees that there are differences in Murthy’s appearance. When they had first left India for America, college life and awful canteen food had elongated Murthy, stretching him out to an incredible length but keeping him painfully thin, a constant target for his mother’s concern. Stylish he had never been, with hair that flopped over his forehead onto his glasses despite applications of Brylcreem to keep it in place, and a valiant growth of fuzz over his lips and on his chin. He had dressed, whatever the occasion, in faded T-shirt, jeans, and rubber bathroom chappals. That was Murthy then. Now he has filled out, his clothes, though casual, are expensive and branded. Working in corporate America has taught him to style his hair without the use of pomade. Swamy recognizes these changes in himself as well. They are turning into their fathers, though a little less homespun, and with confidently deeper pockets.

  Murthy places his guitar to one side, lights another joint, and inhales. The music swells from the innards of the car parked next to them, and Swamy recognizes the familiar comfort of Dave Brubeck. He glances at his watch.

  He has just enough time to drive home, to collect his bags and his parents, who insist on coming with him to the airport, where he is scheduled to catch the middle-of-the-night Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. From there another plane will fly him over the cold wastes of the Arctic, straight to San Francisco. Two flights, two days of travel. Swamy stands up and stretches. He can see people turning towards him, smiles of good-bye pinned tentatively to their faces. He does not look at them.

  See you later, he says.

  Murthy nods and says, Okay, then.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Nikhil Kumar, for convincing me that I should; for supporting me while I did; and for enduring cheerfully the dread consequences of such rashness: having just-printed manuscripts shoved anxiously into his face in the middle of the night for that important first opinion.

  Lane Zachary, agent extraordinaire, for taking this book to places never imagined, and for bolstering the journey with editorial wisdom, and, towards the end, occasional glasses of whiskey.

  Susan Kamil, for her inspiring energy, intelligence, humor, and tireless commitment to bringing out the best in the book. Laughter in the longest transcontinental phone calls.

  Laxam Sankaran, for providing a patient, erudite reference point on matters of Sanskrit and Tamil and cultural heritage.

  Early readers Andrew, Chandran, Dermot, Kamal, Pam, Shivram, Sylvia, Vivek, and Wendy, for invaluable feedback and insights. Esmond Harmsworth at ZSH. The wonderful Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, for the space to learn and explore.

  C. Michael Curtis, for his encouragement and the gift of stern editorial rectitude.

  For bringing the cover to life: Tania, Anandi, and Ruchika. Venky at the lovely Tamarind Tree. And, of course, Asha and Shreya.

  Dinesh and Jayashree Kumar, for vital structural and family support in Bangalore.

  For lifesaving skills deployed daily: Abdul Mujahid, Asha Rani, Teresa Peter, and T. G. Ranganath.

  Aarya, little one, source of unending jo
y.

  The city of Bangalore; errant muse, you.

  Thank you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lavanya Sankaran is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College. She resides in Bangalore, the city of her birth, along with her husband and her daughter. Her previous employments have included investment banking in New York and consulting in India. Her writing has been published in the Atlantic Monthly and the Wall Street Journal. The Red Carpet is her first book.

  THE RED CARPET

  BANGALORE STORIES

  A Dial Press Trade Paperback Book

  Published by The Dial Press

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

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

  The story “The Red Carpet” appeared in the December 2003 issue of the Atlantic Monthly.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2005 by Lavanya Sankaran

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004060918

  The Dial Press and Dial Press Trade Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  www.dialpress.com

  www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-42336-8

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