Delhi Belly: Short Stories

By Andrew Daws

Delhi Belly is an entertaining and provocative collection of Indian short stories of love, betrayal, friendship, and estrangement, featuring loners, party-loving expats, men who gather in rituals of display, and travellers who must negotiate the threats of peril, real or imagined: Adrian is a know-it-all expat keen to set the scene to his silent guest; Ayudh is an attention-seeking artist searching for love; Jessica is a housewife who swaps her garden in Britain for a strange new one in Delhi; Kathy is a journalist joining a maritime team searching for a lost airliner; June, a traveller, is simply out for revenge. Everyone in Delhi Belly must somehow come to terms with India, difficult and strange, ancient and new.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9781304494894

Book preview

COWS

There is still to be found in India a little flourish from the days of the British Raj. The man opening the car door, for instance, under the canopy of the Gymkhana, New Delhi’s oldest and most prestigious club, wears a starched white uniform, a sash, and on his head an elaborate turban finished with a fan of stiffened cloth. The grounds are orderly and well-maintained; white painted, classically styled buildings are surrounded by immaculate lawns, each separated by white painted picket fences. The club sits in the heart of New Delhi, close to government and official buildings, so it’s a haven for a class of people, ex-military types mainly, retirees and their wives, who idle their hours away in the library, or play tennis, or do slow laps in the blue-tiled pool, still named after Lady Willingdon, wife of a former Viceroy. Many were gathered in the bar for a heavily subsidized drink when we arrived. The membership waiting list, I was later told, stretches to a considerable number of years, more years than my friend - Viren was in his twenties - had for sure, and whose family fortunately had decided to keep theirs going. Inside the club, it looked to me rather dowdy. The bar is spacious, although after several makeovers it has the appearance of a dreary golf club than a prestigious venue for those who have done service to the state. Unsmiling waiters offer a rather perfunctory service. An aging trio plays jazz standards.

Viren and I ordered our drinks and when they came, he said, ‘Don’t mind mother, she’ll buttonhole you about the state of the country. It’s her thing.’ 

‘She talks about politics?’ 

‘Of course. It matters to her. It matters to all of us.’ 

I sipped my iced Gin Fizz. ‘So, what’s her beef?’ 

Viren answered with a short laugh. ‘Well, it’s funny you should put it like that.’ 

I did not have the time to query the comment, for Viren’s mother, Naina, was already striding across the room. As tall as her son, and, in her own way, just as handsome, she wore a long silky tunic draped with a floaty stole. Behind her was a young woman, Viren’s sister, Kamila, who greeted me graciously and then took a call on her mobile phone. Stood together, I saw the resemblance between all of them.

Naina approached and asked, without even being introduced, ‘So, how was the interview?’ 

I laughed. ‘Viren told you?’ 

‘Of course, he did. We are all very excited.’ 

‘Oh, well, thank you. But I am not sure they’ll hire me.’ 

‘Why ever not?’ 

I hesitated because I wasn’t exactly sure. I suppose I thought that the company wouldn’t possibly be interested in hiring me even after having flown me a considerable distance just to meet them.  

Naina brushed this away. ‘Trust me, you are a catch. They’ll be eating out of your hand. Do you want to work in India?’ 

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘Well then…’

But, did I? It was a long way from home, and, just that evening, the journey from the company’s offices all the way to the club had been painfully slow after heavy rain, heavy traffic, and cows blocking the highway. Cars had inched forward and every driver seemed to be honking their horn. There’s nothing relaxing about India, I concluded, not even in the newer, wealthier India I was beginning to see more of and still trying to understand.

Naina waved her hand towards the bar.  ‘This should make you feel more at home. The club is an oasis, even for us. Here is an older, wiser India, not one that that our prime minister thinks we should have. Funny to think that his residence is so close to us now. I hope we keep him up at night.’ 

‘Mummy!’ 

Naina looked at Viren disdainfully but continued. ‘Across the road is where Indira Gandhi was gunned down by her own bodyguards. Imagine that. No one can be trusted, you see.’ 

Viren began to shake his head.  

‘But our prime minister, well, he will eventually be killed,’ she continued. ‘I know it is a horrible thought, but what goes around comes around, isn’t that how the saying goes?’ 

Viren assisted. ‘Something like that.’ 

‘Karma for short,’ I said. 

Naina laughed and her eyes bore into mine. ‘You see! You will like India. What did I tell you Viren?’ 

‘Yes, you did say, Mummy.’ 

‘There. Now, Viren, why haven’t you offered your mother a drink? My goodness, how hard is it? My own son!’ 

In need of immediate fortification, I took a long sip of my own Gin Fizz.  

My accountant in London occupies a basement office in Pimlico. He sits there, red faced, with cigarettes burning. ‘I say, do you mind?’ he’d ask, as he pushes open a window, but the room fills with soft blue smoke, nonetheless. It does not obscure his view of me as a failing client. I pay him for my tax returns, and he gives me sour but no doubt sound advice about keeping out of financial trouble.

‘Seems that your funds are running rather low,’ he said, blowing more smoke into the air. I wondered if my situation, just then, seemed just as thin and toxic to him. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ 

I flapped my hands. ‘I don’t know. Something will come up. It always does.’ 

‘Really? Not in my experience. How about actually looking for a job?’ 

Nigel looked nothing like my father, but he was beginning to sound him. I wondered whether he talked to his other clients in the same way.

‘I have been looking,’ I said. ‘There have been a few interviews.’ 

‘But no luck?’ 

‘Well, as it happens, I do have a lead.’ 

‘A good one I hope.’ 

‘I think so. It’s in India.’ 

Nigel laughed as if I’d just told him a joke. 

‘I hear it pays well,’ I added. 

His laughter subsided. ‘Well, if you can stand it. What is the job?’ 

I told him. 

‘Really?’ He laughed louder this time. ‘Do you know anything about agriculture?’ 

‘Some. I did some work for the Milk Board, once.’ 

He shook his head and blew smoke again. ‘I didn’t know. And now you’re being asked to advise on what exactly?’ 

‘Cows.’ 

He began to laugh only this time his laughter turned into an unpleasant sounding fit of coughing.

While Viren’s mother and sister were in the washroom, Viren was urging me on. ‘If you are offered the job you should take it. We need people like you. There’s money here. There are business opportunities.’ 

‘And cows.’ 

‘Yes. Millions.’ 

‘But why they want me to advise them I have no idea. I’m not sure I have what it takes.’ 

‘Nor me, but who cares? Come. You can live like a Maharajah.’ 

‘Hardly.’ 

‘On your salary, you will.’ 

Viren was an unlikely Indian contact, made one evening while I was sitting at the bar of a fancy restaurant waiting for a date that never showed up. I was quickly absorbed into his small group of friends, an evening that ended in a standing invitation to meet him in Delhi if ever there was a chance. Well, it had come. Had he bothered to notice he would have seen from my fraying clothes I was already on my uppers. Then again, Viren seemed to have a mercifully short attention span. I would be rich, is what he knew, and that was all that mattered. He was already shrugging his shoulders because he really wanted to talk about his own dilemma, which was whether he should go into business, continue with his education, or get married. 

‘You can do all of them, can’t you?’ 

‘I will, probably. Mother wants me to get a certificate. It matters in this country.’ 

‘It matters everywhere,’ I suggested. ‘Education is about more than just a piece of paper, you know.’ 

‘Yeah, yeah.’ 

‘What sort of business?’

‘I don’t know’ 

‘Have you any idea how, or who with?’ 

‘Yes. With you.’ 

‘Me? How ridiculous!’ I took a sip from another icy Gin Fizz. 

‘Why not? We can sell milk, or sweets. I tell you there is so much we can do.’ 

I nodded towards Naina, who was approaching us. I noticed a gleam in her eye, in advance of a startling question:

‘So, what I want to ask you, my dear, is whether people in England drink the urine of the cow?’ 

I nearly dropped my glass. 

‘I must drink it, you see,’ she said, her eyes glittering humorously. ‘All Hindus must take the five products of the cow: urine, dung, milk, curd, butter. Dung and urine are very holy.’ 

Viren came to my rescue. ‘Mother’s been reading,’ he said, drolly. 

‘Oh?’ 

‘Yes,’ said Naina, enthusing. ‘Mr. Ackerley’s ‘Hindoo Holiday’. It is such a funny account of his time as a Maharajah’s private secretary - in pre-independence India, of course. I thought you should know.’ 

‘About what?’ 

‘Cows. You know they have been venerated for thousands of years, both as Universal Mother, and the Seat of the Unknown. Since this ghastly new government has come into power the cow has become a political tool. It has always been a symbol, of course, but for those who feel the need to preserve and protect our country, it is now a weapon!’ 

‘Really? A weaponized cow?’ 

‘You joke?’ 

I felt myself redden.  

Naina was ready to forgive. ‘Well, it is a joke. Our country is becoming a joke.’ 

‘Mother is passionate about this,’ Viren said coolly. 

‘I see.’ 

‘The cow apparently needs protection, but from whom?’ 

Kamila suddenly reappeared. ‘Sorry Mummy. The Office. Now, what are you talking about?’ 

‘Cows,’ I said. 

‘Oh God.’ 

‘God has nothing to do with it,’ her mother snapped. ‘It is Westernization, or so we must believe. When a country opens itself up to multi-national corporations for the benefit of inward investment, when it invites international leaders, businessmen and women, and designers, to help progress the country, when everyone converses on Facebook and Snapchat, or whatever, and goes to Hollywood movies, buys western products, then there is an obvious imperative to preserve our heritage. Right?’ 

‘The trend is not unique to India, Mummy.’ 

‘I know, I know. It is Populism, and it is everywhere on the rise. You see, there is an even greater need to cling to identity. Reverence for country has never been as important. Flying over Connaught Place in our beloved capital city is a quite extraordinary Indian flag, the largest in existence. It is so big that I wonder whether it is there for those who doubt which country they are in.’ 

Kamila leaned over to rest her head on her mother’s shoulder. ‘It’s for the poor, Mummy. They need the flag.’ 

Naina snapped, ‘It is grotesque. Have you seen it?’

I said I had. 

‘How could you not? And you must have noticed what has been happening to our country. It has been much in the press.’ 

I told her I was aware, though I had no grasp of the details.  

‘And cows!’ she snapped. 

Viren rolled his eyes making Kamila laugh. ‘Mother!’ 

Naina snapped angrily. ‘What, Viren? We shouldn’t talk about such things?’ 

‘He doesn’t want to talk about cows.’ 

‘I should think he might. It will be his job. He has eyes. He sees. You see, don’t you?’ 

Naina struck me as an intelligent and rather grand lady but nothing in her appearance, or her background, suggested she might be politically so astute. In that I was obviously mistaken. Naina had brought up a family and had run a household, she met friends who discussed all the events of the day, and all of them, she said, were appalled at what was happening to their country. In the club, holding a glass of imported Pinot Grigio, she was ready to argue her case:

‘The more the country dilutes from the pressures of global influence and fast-moving technology, the more it spirals into closed-thinking nationalism, resulting in some strange policy making. Do you know that in Rajasthan, for instance, a ten percent surcharge is being levied on all transactions attracting stamp duty – anything from deeds, house leasing, purchasing, and bank loans – all to conserve the cow and its progeny. It sounds amusing, doesn’t it? It really does sound like something one might read in Ackerley, but I spent a weekend with friends who expressed to me their concern at what was happening in India. You know about that recent horrific incident?’

I shook my head.

‘Four Muslims were transporting cows bought from the market; they were transporting them from point A to point B, all with legal papers, each costing forty-five thousand rupees, but they were stopped and dragged from the truck and lynched. Three managed to survive. One, I am sorry to say, succumbed.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘How do you explain that? Is that the meaning of Gau Raksha? She snapped her fingers. ‘Oh, Viren, help me here.’

‘Cow preservation.’ 

‘Yes, that’s it, cow preservation. I just don’t understand it. Let us be kind to man and beast but why single out the cow? And if she is so sacred, how come they are all over the streets eating plastic? Have you seen?’ 

I said I had. 

‘And does it make any sense to you?’ 

It did not, but then so many things in India did not make sense. Perhaps one day, if I bothered to stay that is. 

Naina was clearly very angry, but it surprised me more to see in her eyes the beginnings of tears. ‘Are these people behaving any better than fanatic Muslims?’ she shouted. 

Viren looked embarrassed. ‘Mummy!’ 

She ignored him. ‘This has been happening ever since our new government came to power. The prime minister has not said a thing, you know. It has been four days and the prime minster of this country has not said a thing. Some have had enough of being tolerant to the point of being weak. When you are not doing well, you start lashing out at the weak just to make yourself feel better. It probably explains what is happening elsewhere in the world. It certainly explains what is happening here. People are so fed up with Muslim terrorism they have lost the ability to think. It is sad that our like-minded friends, all Hindus, who normally sit around in a circle and agree on many things, are now divided. Many are now Nationalists. We can no longer call this country a secular democracy. It is becoming an intolerant Hindu state. It is very scary!’ 

Viren leaned forward. ‘Mummy! 

‘What? 

He gestured in my direction. 

‘Oh. Am I putting you off?’  

I smiled, hoping that it would be a sufficient response. Kamila, I noticed, was fingering her phone as if in need of a useful distraction. When she put it to her ear, I surmised she had found one. 

Naina’s eyes, in the meantime, had narrowed as she stared at me. ‘Oh, I know those English ways. I know what’s behind a smile.’ 

‘Mummy!’ 

Rather playfully, she slapped Viren’s thigh. ‘Stop it. Anyone would think you were ashamed of your mother.’ She turned toward me again. ‘Really, I wonder about this generation. How will they cope? Many of them are already flag waving zealots. Not Viren, I am glad to say, or Kamila. They have heads on his shoulders. They will do well. Viren will if he can decide what he’s going to do next.’ 

‘Or who to marry?’

I had meant my comment to be amusing, but Viren looked at me murderously. Naina beamed, however.

‘Ah, now that is another especially important subject.’ She did not pursue it because