Vikram and Lettie were in the last stages of preparation for their wedding, and they stopped for coffee, a snack, or a beer almost every day. Anwar and Dilip, two young journalists who worked with Kavita Singh, accepted her invitation to drop in and look the place over. On their first visit they found Lisa Carter, Kalpana, Kavita, and Lettie, with three German girls who'd worked for Lisa as extras on a film-seven beautiful, intelligent, vivacious young women. Anwar and Dilip were healthy, happy, unattached young men. They came to Leopold's every day and night after that.
The ambience created by the new group was different to that which had flowered around Karla Saaranen. The indelible cleverness and piercing wit that were Karla's gifts had inspired her own group of friends to a more profound discourse and a higher, thinner laughter. The new group took its more erratic tone from Didier, who combined the expressive mordancy of his sarcasm with a proclivity for the vulgar, the obscene, and the scatological. The laughter was louder, and probably more frequent, but there were no phrases that remained with me from the jokes or the jokers.
Then one night, a day after Vikram married Lettie, and a few weeks after Maurizio went into Hassaan Obikwa's pit, as I sat amongst the new group while the cawing, shrieking gulls of good humour settled on them, sending up squawks of laughter and fluttering hands, I saw Prabaker through the open arch. He waved to me, and I left the table to join him in his cab parked nearby.
"Hey, Prabu, what's up? We're celebrating Vikram's wedding! He and Lettie got married yesterday."
"Yes, Linbaba. Sorry for disturbing the newly-marriages."
"It's okay. They're not here. They've gone to London, to meet her parents. But what's up?"
"Up, Linbaba?" "Yeah, I mean what are you doing here? Tomorrow's your big day. I thought you'd be drinking it up with Johnny and the other guys at the zhopadpatti."
"After this talk only. Then I will go," he replied, fidgeting nervously with the steering wheel. Both front doors of the car were open for the breeze. It was a hot night. The streets were crowded with couples, families, and single young men trying to find a cool wind or a curiosity somewhere to distract them from the heat. The crowd who streamed along the road beside the parked cars began to eddy around Prabaker's open door, and he pulled it shut hard.
"Are you okay?"
"Oh, yes, Lin, I am very, very fine," he said. Then he looked at me. "No. Not really, baba. In fact of speaking, I am very, very bad."
"What is it?"
"Well, how to tell you this thing. Linbaba, you know I am getting a marriage to Parvati tomorrow. Do you know, baba, the first time I ever saw her my Parvati, was before six years, when she was sixteen years old only. That first time, when she first came to the zhopadpatti, before her daddy Kumar had his chai shop, she was living in a little hut with her mummy and daddy and sister, the Sita who is a marriage for Johnny Cigar. And that first day, she carried a matka of water back from the company well. She carried it on her head."
He paused, watching the aquarium of the swirling street through the windscreen of the cab. His fingernail picked at the rubber leopard's skin cover he'd laced onto his steering wheel. I gave him time.
"Anyway," he continued, "I was watching her, and she was trying to carry that heavy matka, and walk on the rough track. And that matka, it must have been a very old one, and the clay was weak, because suddenly it just broke up in pieces, and all the water spilled down on her. She cried and cried so much. I looked at her and I felt..."
He paused, looking up at the strolling street once more.
"Sorry for her?" I offered.
"No, baba. I felt..."
"Sad? You felt sad for her?"
"No, baba. I felt a erection, in my pants, you know, when the penis is getting all hard, like your thinking."
"For God's sake, Prabu! I know what an erection is!" I grumbled.
"Get on with it. What happened?"
"Nothing happened," he replied, puzzled by my irritation, and somewhat chastened. "But from that time only, I never forgot my big, big feeling for her. Now I am making a marriage, and that big, big feeling is getting bigger every day."
"I'm not sure that I like where this is going, Prabu," I muttered.
"I am asking you, Lin," he said, choking on the words. He faced me. Tears bulged and rolled from his eyes into his lap. His voice came in stuttering sobs. "She is too beautiful. I am a very short and small man. Do you think I can make a good and sexy husband?"
I told Prabaker, sitting in his cab and watching him cry, that love makes men big, and hate makes them small. I told him that my little friend was one of the biggest men I ever met because there wasn't any hate in him. I said that the better I knew him, the bigger he got, and I tried to tell him how rare that was. And I joked with him, and laughed with him until that great smile, as big as a child's biggest wish, returned to his gentle round face.
