Tags:
Fiction,
Literary,
General,
Humorous,
Social Science,
Media Tie-In,
British,
Older People,
Bangalore (India),
Gerontology,
Old Age Homes,
British - India
kind of luxuriant dread. Surely there would be nothing to fear … just a sweet surrender.
“You wish to talk it over with your wife?” asked Sonny.
“She is at the beauty parlor.” The thought of Razia jolted Minoo to his senses. “I must be frank with you, my friend. My wife’s nursing experience is somewhat limited. She worked at a foot clinic.”
“A small matter.”
“She was an assistant chiropodist.”
Sonny shrugged and added vaguely: “Once a nurse, always a nurse.”
Suddenly, Minoo flushed with rebellion. For once, he would make a decision. He pictured Razia arriving home, her nails blood-red and her mouth dropping open. He pictured his mother staring at him, the teacup halfway to her lips.
“Let’s talk figures,” he said, surprising himself. He had never used the phrase in his life. From the kitchen came the crash of crockery. Fernandez, the cook, had been at the bottle again.
Sonny opened his case and pulled out a sheaf of papers. And so the deal was struck. It was June. Just a month had passed since Sonny’s moment of revelation in the Royal Thistle Hotel, Bayswater.
O nce he had secured the premises, marketing was the next step. Sonny planned to set up a website. Also to produce a full-color brochure and promo video, to be distributed to the appropriate agencies in England. With this in mind, he arranged a meeting with his cousin’s brother-in-law Vinod.
In his youth, Vinod had dreamed of being a film director. He had pictured himself surrounded by Bollywood starlets like Sonny was, whose playboy antics he read about in Calling Bangalore magazine. Fate, however, had written him a different script and after various financial disasters, Vinod had found himself, in his middle age, running a photographic studio on the Airport Road. Weddings were his specialty, and it was while he was shooting a video of Sonny’s nephew’s nuptials that Sonny pulled him behind a clump of bougainvillea and told him his plan.
The following week, Sonny clattered up the stairs to Vinod’s studio and thrust a folder into his hand. He had already storyboarded the video.
“We open with the timeless beauty of our country.” Sonny pointed to a poster on the wall. “A shot of the Taj Mahal at sunset.”
“Maybe sunset is not a good idea,” said Vinod.
“What? So we have to die?” Sonny shrugged. “Okey-dokey, sunrise. Some raga playing on the sound track—”
“Too foreign,” said Vinod.
“—and then a tour of the tourist sights of Bangalore.”
“What tourist sights?”
“Tipu’s Palace, my friend! Cubbon Park and our splendid Botanical Gardens! There is plenty to see here, for the discerning visitor. If you please, focus on the Raj aspect—the clock tower, the statue of Queen Victoria. My theme will be: there’s a little corner that will forever remain England.”
Outside, traffic thundered past on the way to the airport. Due to a power cut the air conditioner wasn’t working, so Vinod had unwisely opened the window. The studio stank of exhaust fumes and they had to shout above the noise.
Vinod had to admit it: his life was a failure. The realization had been creeping up on him but only now, in his fiftieth year, had he put it into words. His creativity had been destroyed by a thousand weddings and their numbing demands. Any attempt at artistic license—cutaways to a stray cat, a montage sequence of dancing feet—was met with bewilderment and, on one occasion, a refusal to pay the fee. Vinod was also saddled with an irritable wife and heedless, disappointing sons. It was chastening to be a recorder of other people’s triumphs when he himself had so little to celebrate. So his pulse quickened at the prospect of this job, despite Sonny’s bossiness and his insistence that the section devoted to the bustle of downtown Bangalore should include shots of emporiums owned by his business associates.
“Kiddy Korner?” said Vinod. “These people, surely they are past their childbearing