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The Great Depression of the 40s Rupa Gulab is a Mumbai-based freelance writer and columnist, and the author of Girl Alone and Chip of the Old Blockhead. She scribbled her first stories, Hamlet the Cutlet and Nostracious Nominovich—The Commie Spy, while in her early teens to keep her two little sisters amused. Shockingly, the stories won her two little diehard fans. She continues to write for them.

The

Great Depression of the 40s A Novel Rupa Gulab

PENGUIN BOOKS USA Canada UK Ireland Australia New Zealand India South Africa China Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

First published by Penguin Books India 2010 Copyright © Rupa gulab 2010 All rights reserved 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. ISBN 9780143067801 Typeset in Joanna MT Std by InoSoft Systems, Noida

Printed at Repro India Limited

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. www.penguin.co.in

To my parents, Jyoti and Vashu Gulab: The two most special people in my life; The two most charming unpublished writers I’ve ever read; The two reasons why I was inspired to become a writer. Love always.

Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?) —T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

1 The newspaper’s food critic was really to blame. If he hadn’t got Delhi Belly, the rest of Mantra’s life may well have taken a different course. She’d have been too busy earning a salary to lose her mind, for starters. But the fact remains that the ailing food critic had been condemned to a month-long diet of boiled vegetables and chewable antacids. Mantra had been asked to fill in for him and review a new, dreadfully pretentious restobar. Four short, snappy lines of her review went down in history as the epitaph of her career: ‘While the spaghetti was a bit of okay, The meatballs stubbornly bounced. They’re only fit to be served at squash courts, And deserve to be severely trounced.’ Now, how was she to know that Ye Ed’s best buddy’s brother-in-law’s Armenian boyfriend owned the restobar? And why should that have stopped her anyway? Hell broke loose the day the review was published. She was summoned to her editor Partho’s plush cabin and he thrust the offending article at her in a fierce, stabbing gesture. ‘Explain this,’ he stuttered in a wild-eyed way, dramatically rubbing the left side of his chest with his free hand. Mantra cleared her throat nervously and replied, hoping she wouldn’t be held responsible for his imminent cardiac arrest on grounds of culpable homicide. ‘It’s self-explanatory really. 1

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The food sucked big time, and I was being honest like an ethical reviewer should be.’ She pursed her lips primly when she said that, an invisible halo not just hovering virtuously over her head but recklessly kicking out its legs and dancing like a shameless exhibitionist. In shocking pink stockings at that. ‘Ethics be damned,’ he bellowed. ‘That man has screamed my ear off on the phone all morning. My bloody blood pressure has shot up and it’s all your fault!’ An irate lecture followed on how diplomacy was more important than ‘crappy ethics’. ‘Excuse me,’ Mantra cut in sarcastically, ‘but haven’t you forgotten our newspaper’s motto—the inspiring line below our masthead that reads: Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas?’ ‘Yes, yes, Plato is my friend, but a greater friend is truth. Who gives a fuck about that?’ Partho roared. ‘Like hell anyone knows what it means!’ ‘I do,’ Mantra muttered staunchly, prompting Partho to look a tad defensive. ‘It’s just some rubbish about the truth, Mantra. It sounds pompous, that’s the only reason why it’s there! I’ll bet you the great unwashed have no clue. For all they care, it could well mean “Plato is a dickhead!”’ Silly ass, Mantra raved internally in the midst of his rant. He’s just upset because he hates being ticked off by page 3 regulars. The lecture was rounded off with the demand that Mantra fall in line with the newspaper’s corporate culture. ‘You’ve been here three years and you still haven’t tuned into it. Worse still, your frequent oddball remarks are vitiating the atmosphere—the bloody juniors have started emulating you, and you’re no bloody role model heroine, not by a long shot!’ Years of experience had taught Mantra that ‘Conform to our corporate culture’ also meant ‘Kiss my ass and look like you’re loving it, slave!’ Her blood pressure shot up too, whizzing way past Partho’s current high mark. She dug her nails sharply into her denim-clad thighs to stop herself from telling him exactly what she was thinking: that there was no way in hell

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she’d conform to the culture of an organization so steeped in hypocrisy and mediocrity that it didn’t have the balls to take a stand on anything, not even undeniably lousy meatballs. Partho read her momentary silence as a welcome sign of capitulation, and he encouragingly barked, ‘Shape up!’ for good measure. Oh please say you’d much rather ship out, a tantalizing voice in Mantra’s head pleaded with her. Who knows, maybe bungee jumping is your true calling? Hey, take a sabbatical at the very least, dammit! You’re forty-three, you prefer yolks to whites, you smoke, you give veggies a wide berth, osteoporosis and quite possibly a hip-bone replacement are on their way, and you may never find out what it feels like to be truly free. Go on, tell him to go fly a kite! Mantra did just that, and a surge of relief coursed through her body as the words tumbled out, tripping over each other in their urgent rush to be heard. She felt like she’d been instantly exorcized. It was not as though this particular organization was bad news—it was about the same as all the others. Besides, Partho wasn’t really a nasty evil boss —in fact Mantra rather enjoyed his eccentricity and egotism. They gave her lots to giggle about. She was just bored of doing the same job year after year after year after year. She wanted a break. A clean break. Heaven knows, she needed a break! She suppressed an overpowering urge to leap up and envelope Partho in a warm bear hug for helping her take the liberating decision—the egotist may have thought she was making a pass at him. Partho’s jaw dropped and he began to stutter again. Not because he loved Mantra dearly, but because a lot of people were quitting the paper to join a new rag that was offering obscene salaries. He assumed that Mantra had been made an offer too. Corporate ego was at stake and he was its designated champion. ‘Think about it, don’t be hasty. No need for immature knee-jerk reactions,’ he barked in as reasonable a manner as he could manage.

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‘My resignation letter will be on your desk in five minutes,’ Mantra replied woodenly. ‘I’d keyed it in months ago in a fit of frustration. I merely have to change the date and get a printout. Oh and, by the way, I don’t have even a day’s notice to serve; I’ve got loads of leave. I depart with my personal motto: Veritas vos liberabit.’ Partho scoffed. ‘Utter tosh! The truth may set you free, Mantra, but, mark my words, your bills will tie you down!’ Mantra kicked his door open like she’d seen John Wayne do it in classic Westerns and strode out, ignoring Partho’s anguished, ‘Mantra, wait!’ Her grand exit was mildly marred by the fact that she accidentally stubbed her toe in the process, but she bravely quelled the primeval urge to scream in acute pain. She knew better than to completely ruin her otherwise dignified exit. When you say something lofty in Latin, it’s best to ensure that you don’t screw it up. Mantra sailed out of the office at 6.30 p.m., hoping to leave without a backward glance—the way it should always be done. Typically, however, her driver foiled her plans. Makarand gave her a filthy look for interrupting his chat with his tea-shop buddies, and held up his cup of tea triumphantly. Mantra nodded resignedly and was left to cool her heels outside the office building, while Makarand made a huge pretence of blowing on the dregs of his tea to cool it. Lording it over Mantra was a big part of his dignity. Yelling ‘chutiya’ and/or ‘bhonsri ke’ to other motorists while Mantra was in the car was another part. Oddly enough, he never swore when Vir was in the car, even if the provocation was extreme. While waiting, Mantra debated whether she should call Vir and tell him her big news but prudently decided against it. She’d do it at home after his restorative glass of fresh lime, when he was safely sitting down. A mischievous gust of sea breeze lifted her hair and playfully whipped her face with it. Mantra’s frown lines vanished instantly—the sea always improved her mood. This was the only perk of working at

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Nariman Point. Watching the orange sun dunk itself into the sea like a giant biscuit from her cabin window had always helped to restore her equanimity. About twenty minutes later, Makarand insolently swaggered towards the car in a deliberately unhurried manner, and Mantra was finally on the road to freedom. Once again, she exhaled with relief at having escaped the corporate world. The cherry on the cake was she would never have to suffer the indignity of faking laughter at puerile jokes made by egomaniacs who had the final word on her salary. Never again, she swore to herself—there were things she’d never do again for money! And just why is it, she idly wondered, that once people become head honchos, they start believing it’s part of their job responsibility to act like stand-up comics? And can’t they get better material to work with if that’s the case? ‘Please stop at the bakery first, Makarand,’ were her terse instructions. An unpleasant altercation ensued outside the bakery when Makarand aggressively stole the parking space that a pretty, young female driver was attempting to reverse into. Mantra should have guessed that the rabid male chauvinist would do that; he always got ridiculously competitive with female drivers to literally drive home the point that it was a man’s world. He was made to eat crow this time—the young woman was not as delicate as she looked and viciously attempted to ram her gigantic SUV into Mantra’s dinky car in a revenge quest. A motley crowd gathered and sympathies were clearly with the attractive young driver since she was in the right and, besides, she was a deliciously pretty, young thing. Mantra debated whether to let Makarand be lynched by the mob—the testosterone-enhanced ass deserved it—but sanity prevailed and she made him return the parking space forthwith. Even more humiliating (as far as Makarand was concerned) Mantra wrung a public apology out of him. She knew she’d have to pay for it—he was quite capable of getting her bumped off by his political connections. Really, she must make Vir speak

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to him about his brash behaviour, she promised herself. More importantly, they had to find out for sure if he was a member of the dreaded SNM party. I wonder if they’re aware that their initials have another meaning that suits them far better, Mantra thought with a giggle and then became sober again when she realized that proof of Makarand’s party membership would be of no help. Sacking him was out of the question—his fellow hooligans would probably rough them up and ransack the house as punishment. Back in the car with a celebratory chocolate pastry for herself and a loaf of high-fibre multi-grain bread for Vir, Mantra ignored Makarand’s filthy looks and muttered imprecations. Instead, she eyed the high-fibre multi-grain loaf with revulsion and recalled the astonishment Kaushalya (Cook the First) had displayed the very first time Vir had brought this variety of bread home. ‘How peculiar, didi. This is the rubbish granaries throw out when they make flour. We feed it to cattle in our village.’ Mantra smiled fondly at the memory and thought affectionately of fat and jolly Kaushalya and greedily of her divine food. Life had been dreadful since she’d left for a more lucrative post in Dubai. A distressed Mantra had eagerly offered to match the salary, but Kaushalya had had other considerations too. ‘Tankoo, didi, but I’ve always wanted to fly in an aeroplane and live in foreign and this is my only opportunity. And such good marriage prospects I’ll get now, wait and see—boys will line up, begging to marry ugly, fat old me,’ she had chuckled merrily. So Mantra reluctantly sent her off with a hug and wished her the best. Kaushalya deserved it—she was lovely! Vir’s cholesterol was solely to blame for Kaushalya’s pathetic successor. If Mantra had known about twenty-odd years ago that Vir would become a control-freakish hypochondriac when he hit middle age, she’d never have agreed to attach the ball and chain to her then-slender and non-water-retentive

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ankle. He Who’d Scowl Ferociously When Dragged To Grocery Stores now insisted that they spend practically every waking moment of their weekends there, stocking up on extra virgin olive oil, whole wheat pasta, high-fibre multi-grain bread and distasteful greens they didn’t even know the names of. If that weren’t bad enough, Vir had insisted that wonderful, wonderful Kaushalya’s replacement would be dour Reshma, a ‘jewel’ their family doctor had prescribed along with his cholesterol medication. Reshma had worked at a cardiac hospital earlier and had a talent for creating meals with practically zero oil and absolutely zero imagination. After Mantra’s first bite of Reshma’s first meal, she had assertively clanged her fork on her plate for Vir’s attention. ‘Vir, her food’s awful!’ she’d bravely declared. ‘Yup, it’s the worst I’ve ever had,’ he’d nodded, chewing doggedly. ‘So let’s wish her goodbye and good luck and get someone with a little more talent,’ she had exhaled, hugely relieved. ‘No way!’ Vir had protested. ‘Her food sucks so bad, it’s got to be good for our health. I say she stays.’ ‘And I say she goes!’ Mantra had said firmly. ‘The only way I can ingest this is intravenously. My taste buds find it offensive.’ Unfortunately for Mantra, Reshma had been hovering around during this exchange and the look she’d directed at Mantra could have killed a virile adult elephant. ‘Excuse me for butting in,’ she had said haughtily in flawless English, ‘but I’m not going to stand around here being insulted. Since you think my cooking is not up to par, I’d much rather go elsewhere.’ Both Mantra and Vir had been equally stunned. While Mantra had opened and closed her mouth wordlessly like a goldfish, Vir had made a swift recovery and stepped in. ‘Reshma, I must congratulate you on your command over the English language. I’m curious though, why didn’t you

Cover design by Viraj Rohan Circar

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