The afternoons are the worst, he thinks. He has got the mornings mostly sorted out. He wakes up at 5 am, drives down to the Horticultural Gardens, and goes for a run. He clocks his usual six kilometres around this old island of vegetation hemmed in by upscale high-rises and the high-walled bungalows of Alipore’s fat cats and the newly rich. Unless it is raining heavily, he never misses his morning exercise. This is what has kept him lean and fit even at 48. So he’s not about to give up that routine. Many of the walkers and joggers know him. Shankar Das’s face is a familiar one that pops up regularly in the events pages of newspapers. Some nod at him and say hello. But most look through him or avert their eyes. A few weeks ago, he noticed a group of women looking at him and whispering. Ill-mannered gaggle of behenjis, he swore under his breath, as he jogged past them. Shankar knows that there has been a change in his status as far as other people are concerned. He has gone from an object of admiration, flattery and envy to one of contempt and ridicule. This irked him initially. But then he shrugged it off. It’s a nuisance, but it couldn’t be helped, he told himself. It came with the territory of being in purgatory. I’m doing my time, he thought, and it will be over soon.
After a quick shower and a frugal breakfast of toned milk, cereals and a seasonal fruit (plus a boiled egg on alternate days), Shankar spends the rest of the morning reading two newspapers and going through the online daily feeds of several other Indian and foreign newspapers and magazines. He has been subscribing to these publications for years, though he never had the time to read them. Well, time is not a problem now, he thinks sourly. He looks at The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, and a few others on his laptop and reads many of the articles with close attention. His mind is as curious and as voraciously interested in the world around him as ever. At some point, Devika leaves for school. “Bye, Pops”, she calls out, with less coldness, and almost like the old days. He thinks she has unbent a little after Urmi upped and left for Kinjalka.
But the afternoons drag on annoyingly. Shankar cannot remember a time in his life when he did not have anything to do on a weekday afternoon. Unless he was sick. And he has been sick but rarely. Even now, when he seems to have hit rock bottom, his health is excellent and his energy undiminished. He has taken to napping briefly after lunch for want of anything better to do. Not for him the endless brooding and agonising and silent outraging that Urmi is probably doing in that godforsaken pile, Kinjalka, he thinks, curling his lips. And god knows, he has every reason to outrage!
There he was, at the peak of his career, at the very top of his game, recognised as a maverick, an advertising whiz, and then, suddenly – wham! Grounded! Forced to step down as CEO, kicked out of the board, and asked not to attend work. Pending the enquiry, Suparna, the HR head, whom he had hired himself, had stammered, the words coming out from her long, earnest face in half-swallowed bursts. The injustice of it! He had rebuilt Maxxar with his blood and sweat, and now he was being told to take a hike!
He is to sit and cool his heels and face this ridiculous ignominy until the enquiry committee set up to probe the charges against him pronounces him not guilty of “inappropriate conduct”! All because a bunch of women decided to have their few minutes of fame by declaring that he had sexually harassed them! The agency had even issued a press statement, saying that it had “zero tolerance” for such behaviour, and that all the charges against Shankar Das would be duly probed.
It’s a black comedy, for fuck’s sake! And look at the way everybody has reacted – all virtuous and non-committal and mealy-mouthed! He knows a lot of influential people in the city. He would go so far as to say that some of them were his buddies. Yet not one has spoken out publicly in his support. Some had called him soon after his social media shaming, pretending to be indignant about the charges that had been thrown at him, pretending to be sympathetic that he had been put in this impossible situation. Who were they fooling? You didn’t need to be a genius to tell that they were, in fact, bursting with schadenfreude that he had been so maligned. Anyway, even the fake sympathy dried up soon enough, and they proceeded to avoid him altogether. They shut him out, as though to be seen with him would taint them in some way. Well, he can bet his bottom dollar that if he gets through this, these same hypocritical, fair-weather friends will once again come grinning and backslapping. And dammit, he will get through it, Shankar tells himself. The charges are ludicrous and, frankly, impossible to prove. But the damage has been done. He has been painted as a sexual harasser and molester, and that is how the whole world sees him now.
He feels particularly aggrieved about Anjali’s accusation. She said that he raped her. Rape? Oh, please. The girl is either delusional or utterly evil. It was an affair, for god’s sake – and a consensual one! And six years later, she has the gall to turn around and call it rape! He should like to hear what she has to say to the enquiry committee. Would she lie through her teeth and give them manufactured details about her alleged rape? Sorry, not one rape, but multiple rapes, if she is to be believed. And committed over a period of several months! Unfortunately, he is not going to be allowed to be present during her testimony because, apparently, the sight of him could “intimidate” her.
Intimidate her! Hah! She was giving me the come-on signal the whole time, he tells himself, looking at me with sidelong glances, playing with her hair, twirling it around her fingers and throwing me half smiles with that sexy, pouty mouth of hers. She was, what, barely 23, with perky tits and a tight, round ass. A hot piece, and brash as hell. Fizzy, like a live wire. She wasn’t in awe of me like some of the other kids who joined the agency as trainees. She knew what she wanted. It was her brashness, the brazen display of her sexuality, that was so exciting. She was half my age, for god’s sake – who wouldn’t be enticed? So all right, I took what she was offering. I arranged for her to be there at that client meeting in Bombay. Eyebrows were raised, of course. Why take this young chit along, someone had asked. But I had made up my mind. And that was that.
She could have refused when he asked her to come to his room for a drink after the dinner party. She could have said that she was tired. Or that she wanted to chat with her boyfriend. Whatever. But, no, she came like a shot. Knocked on his door and came in and, lifting one eyebrow, said carelessly, “So are we going to raid the mini-bar, or what?”
He ordered champagne for her. She had changed into a short red and green checked skirt, a frilly white shirt and knee-high black boots. She looked ridiculously young. Lolita in the flesh! Christ, he felt breathless just looking at her, looking at the way she was looking at him through her sooty eyelashes, the way she stood, with one slim leg slightly bent at the knee, smiling her knowing, carnal smile. They were in bed even before they had finished the first glass of champagne. He does not remember her resisting. She put up the usual last-minute coyness, of course. But she didn’t fool him with that act. Anyway, the relationship lasted nearly five months. She said she was in love with him. And now she claims that he raped her? He was raping her each time, was it? And she, the poor, helpless, voiceless little victim, could do nothing about it? Why didn’t she tell anyone? Why didn’t she go to the police? Seeing all these other women post their vindictive charges against him, she suddenly sees her chance now and says that he raped her?
He had wanted to call Anjali and talk to her. He used to be genuinely fond of the girl. He may even have whispered some foolish words of love to her in the heat of their moments together. Though she had eventually quit the agency in a huff because he would not promote her out of turn, he had not thought that there was any real bad blood between them. Maybe she was instigated by someone to slander him, Shankar told his school friend, Saikat Dugar, who was also his lawyer. “I think I should talk to her,” he said.
Saikat vetoed the idea. “It will be counterproductive,” he said. “She isn’t likely to retract her allegation if you talk to her. In fact, her resentment against you could even go up. Besides, she isn’t the only woman accusing you, is she? Her allegation may be the most damaging, but it is just one amongst several other charges of sexual harassment and assault. You are on the mat for those too, in case you’ve forgotten. The other charges make hers credible and vice versa.”
Saikat belonged to old money. His father and grandfather were land-owning traders who had amassed vast amounts of wealth. Though he did not pursue the family trade, he brought a businessman’s canniness to his legal profession and was known to be good at striking deals and getting out-of-court settlements that were significantly skewed in favour of his clients. Fair-skinned, short and bald, with a taste for gutka and John Coltrane, Saikat was a tidy, fastidious man who looked somewhat ghoulish when he smiled, owing chiefly to his devastated, gutka-stained teeth that had somehow been kept in place through the efforts of the best dentists in town. But he wasn’t smiling now. “Very unlikely that all these women are acting at the behest of someone,” he said. “Please don’t make contact with any of your accusers and try to persuade them to withdraw their charges. You’ll only land yourself in bigger trouble that way.”
Excerpted with permission from The Sea Has the Answers, Shuma Raha, Niyogi Books.
