Chapter 33 Raghav
Raghav
The meeting is a special kind of hell, but then all meetings are.
I’m sitting in a glass-walled conference room at my new start-up, a ten-minute delivery company that I joined a couple of months ago, and like every start-up, this one too thinks it can disrupt the disruptors who in the first place weren’t disruptors at all.
The other people in my team are arguing about data points and customer acquisition cost. They’re using words like ‘synergy’ and ‘hyper-local optimization’ at eight in the night when everyone should be home doing something actually meaningful.
It’s a game, really. If you can zoom out enough, you can really laugh at it.
And I’m quite zoomed out. Though I’m not laughing at these chimps thinking they are doing important work.
Which is okay; for everyone, their work is important, but these start-up bros who jerk off to posters of Elon Musk and Sam Altman, they really believe they are changing the world.
My smile is broken by the buzz of my phone. It’s a text from Aditi. I see the notification and ignore it. And there it is: another one. I ignore it again. And then, my phone starts to ring.
Shilpi calling.
‘Bhaiya,’ she sobs. ‘He’s here . . . he’s . . . Papa’s here.’
‘What . . . where—’
The world goes cold. When I look up, everyone is staring at me.
‘My father . . .’ I say, standing up abruptly. ‘He’s in an accident.’
Before anyone can give me permission, I’m already outside the meeting room, striding towards the elevator.
‘What? Where are you?’ I ask into the phone.
‘The event . . . at the restaurant . . . he’s screaming . . .’
‘What . . . event . . . where?’
‘Saket. I came with—’
‘Shit,’ I say. ‘I’m coming . . . hold them off . . . Where’s Aditi?’
‘She’s out . . . she’s outside . . . talking to him.’
‘I’m coming,’ I repeat.
I don’t remember the elevator ride, or jumping into the nearest cab.
But I remember the cold dread uncoiling in my stomach as I shouted at the cab guy for twenty minutes straight to drive as fast as he can.
This is what my father does. This is what .
. . he does. I can hear the shouting before I even see him.
The restaurant. The standee that says ‘Connect’ with a bunch of hearts on it.
A crowd has formed a semi-circle that is slowly swelling.
And in the centre of it all I spot my father.
He reminds me of the uncles who are in road rage videos, videos where they are spitting on the road and when someone points them out, they act out, the kind of asshole that you never associate with being a father, or being the kind of person who should be allowed to hold a little baby, care for it, and yet they are, and yet he is.
He’s pacing around, his face red, a vein throbbing in his temple.
He has Shilpi cornered near the entrance, his finger jabbing at her, shouting at her. Aditi is standing between them.
‘Hey! Hey!’ I start shouting as I run towards them.
In the background, I see Kunal, tall, hulking, useless. He’s trying to say something, trying to move my father towards the exit, his hand on my father’s arm. My father shoves him away with a guttural roar.
‘Listen, sir—’ he tells him.
‘OYE,’ Papa warns him.
‘HEY!’ I shout again.
My voice finally reaches him. And he turns around to see me. He stands facing me, hands on his waist. I can smell the alcohol on him.
‘Papa, go back to where you came from,’ I say, my voice low and tight.
‘You will tell me what to do?’ he grumbles.
‘Stop creating a scene.’
Shilpi runs and comes behind me, her face smeared with snot and tears.
‘So this is what you’re doing, huh?’ he roars, his eyes blazing. ‘THIS!’
‘What do you think we are doing?’ I snap back.
‘First you, and then you bring your sister to places like this!’
Kunal tries to intervene. He walks up and says, ‘Sir, can we please move towards—’
‘Madarchod!’ he bellows at Kunal. ‘You will tell me where to move! Hain? You will tell me?’
He starts to charge at Kunal, but I come up and stand between the two of them. ‘Papa,’ I say, pushing him back slightly. ‘This is between us. Just go home. I’m warning you.’
‘Between us? This is between all you people and me!’ he says, gesturing wildly at the crowd.
‘No one’s interested in what you have to say,’ I tell him even as I fight all the memories flooding back to me. All those times when we had those screaming matches where he would remind me of all the fucking sacrifices he made for me. How I used to acknowledge his dumb arguments.
‘Papa, please—’ Shilpi whimpers.
He ignores everyone and starts wildly pointing at the girls. ‘All your parents know that you are here?! Looking for sex!’
‘PAPA. ENOUGH,’ I shout.
He turns to look at me and locks my gaze. Then he digs his finger into my chest. ‘And you! Pimping out your sixteen-year-old sister!’
‘Papa, please stop,’ Shilpi cries, trying to shrink away.
‘You heard her,’ I say, anger bursting through my veins. Only he, only he can use this language for Shilpi. And he dares to project righteousness. This asshole. What a uniquely sad thing. To so easily think of abuses for your father.
‘Stop? I haven’t even started!’
He tries to move towards Shilpi, but I push him back harder this time.
‘You will touch me?’ he asks, his voice incredulous.
I stride towards him, barely anything separating us. ‘If you say anything else, I will lay you flat out. Don’t push my boundaries.’
He stares me down. He knows I will do it. I wish he pushes me, pushes me enough so I can do it and put the final fucking nail in this farce of a father–son relationship. ‘Of course, you will hit me, behenchod. Because you have gone crazy,’ he grumbles.
‘Has there ever been a more shameless man than you?’ I spit on the ground. ‘That’s what you are. You, your wife . . . your entire fucking family is worthless. A blot.’
It ticks him off. I love it. I enjoy every fucking bit of it.
‘You have gone crazy! Behind all these women!’ Then he points at Aditi.
‘Especially this one. This is the kind of life she teaches you! Look at these people!’ He turns to point at a girl in a skirt that ends just above her knee and roars, ‘Half-naked, drinking, looking for someone to take home for the night! No values, no shame, just . . . lust!’
‘Sir, please, let’s take this outside,’ Kunal says, trying again, his voice firm but calm.
There are people with their phones out now, recording.
It’s even better. I imagine him watching these videos on his WhatsApp group and then hanging himself from a ceiling.
But I hope he convinces my mother to do the same because who wants to deal with that?
She’s an equal opportunities villainess in this.
I remember her upturned nose every time I talked about Megha—the jokes she and Maasi cracked, the memes she sent despite being technologically illiterate. Fuck them.
‘And who are you?’ my father spits, jabbing a finger at Kunal. ‘Dalle saale? Is that what you are? A pimp for all these sluts? Is that what your mom taught you to do?’
Sluts.
Ah!
Again the same word he used for Megha. The same word he used to try and break us. A white-hot rage washes over me. The noise of the crowd, the flashing phones, the music from the bar—it all fades away.
‘You talk about values?’ I say, my voice dangerously quiet. ‘You? Saale, if I start telling people what you do, how you and your brother talk about women . . . fuck off, Harish.’
‘Saale, you will take my name?’ he yells.
‘No, I will not take your name. I will call you what you are.’
‘WHO AM I?’ he shouts.
‘Chutiya hai saale tu. That’s what you fucking are. Chutiya. Sun raha hai, Harish? Write it down, get it tattooed on your face because that’s what you are.’
I watch him shake his head. He turns to look at everyone.
‘Look at all of you! Modern people? Thoo!’ he spits on the ground. ‘No respect for anything. All you guys need is your parents’ money and sex.’
A few people in the crowd giggle. This ticks him off even more.
He continues angrily, eyes popping from his sockets, wagging his finger like a mad man, ‘That’s what you are.
That’s what this is . . . coming out to these places .
. . drinking . . . finding people to go home with .
. . what’s this? This is the lowest point .
. . ALL OF YOU!’ He starts pointing at everyone.
‘All of you are broken . . . you . . . you and you . . .’
He points at Shilpi and Aditi.
‘She’s not broken,’ I roar back. gesturing to Aditi. ‘And Shilpi’s not broken. You’re the one who’s broken. You’re so twisted up in your own pathetic pride. And pride for fucking what? What the fuck have you done?’
‘I do it because I love you!’ he screams, his voice cracking with a sudden, pathetic self-pity.
‘Oh, fuck you.’
‘I sacrificed my whole life for you kids, and this is the respect I get?’
I start to laugh. ‘Fuck your sacrifice. Without you, WE WOULD BE HAPPY! That’s what we would be. Now fucking get out of here.’
He takes a step closer, his face inches from mine. ‘I am your father.’
‘And I am your son,’ I spit back. ‘And I am telling you to get the hell away from us.’
He looks from me to Aditi, then to Shilpi, his eyes filled with impotent rage. He’s lost control. He knows it. And then I look past him. At the crowd. At the ones with their phones. A strange calm settles over me.
‘Please,’ I say to the ones with the phones in their hands. ‘Fucking upload this. Upload this. This chutiya who calls himself my father—’
‘OYE!’ he roars. ‘Bandh kar ise!’
‘He thinks he’s right,’ I say to the crowd with a shrug. ‘So upload this. Let’s see how many think he’s right. That he’s right to disown his son because his girlfriend was not of the community. To force his daughter to do what he wants her to do . . . just upload this . . .’
‘Haan haan!’ says my father at a girl taking a video. ‘I don’t care! Yeh lo, get a good angle!’
I laugh at my pathetic father. The excuse for a man and say, ‘Show everyone what a real family looks like.’
I turn to Aditi and Shilpi. ‘Let’s go,’ I say quietly.
‘YOU ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!’ he shouts.
‘Sir,’ says Kunal, stepping forward again.
I step right up to my father and wind up for a punch. ‘Saale, I will put you down right here.’
He must have seen the rage in my eyes and that I would do it, because he steps back and mumbles angrily. ‘The girls have made you crazy!’
I don’t deign to answer that. I put one arm around Shilpi, who is still shaking, and with the other, I take Aditi’s hand. Her hand is ice-cold in mine. We walk through the crowd of silent, staring faces. We don’t look back. I can hear Kunal’s voice trying to talk my father down.
I hear the man still shouting behind us, and for the first time, I know what I always believed deep down: he’s nothing but a stranger.