The One Who Wrote Destiny

Nikesh Shukla

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786492791
• Print ISBN:
  9781786492807
• Subtopic: Literature General

Evening Standard's Wander List Guide to 2019 Getaways
Guardian's Best Summer Books, 2018

"A beautiful, brilliant modern classic." Sabrina Mahfouz , Guardian

Neha has just been diagnosed with the same terminal cancer that killed her mother. Was this her destiny? She codes a computer program to find out, one that intricately maps out her entire life and the lives of those closest to her: her dad, who left Kenya for windblown northern England; her brother, a struggling comedian whose star is finally beginning to rise; her grandmother, who lost the man she loved to racist violence. By understanding the past, Neha hopes to come to terms with her present - and reckon with her family's and her country's future.

RAKS

Multiple. Now

Colonialism, what’s up with that?

Raks Jani

‘A Flea Can Trouble a Lion More than a Lion Can Trouble a Flea’

Laila. London

She masturbates with tears in her eyes. No nudity but good facial expressions needed.

Not for me, I think. No thanks. I log off the casting-calls app and open my phone’s camera. I practise what I imagine are good facial expressions for wanking. Biting my lip seems forced. Scrunching up my face and smiling makes me look as though someone has placed a vinegar-soaked rag under my nose. I close the app and look to make sure the bus hasn’t gone past my stop.

I know it hasn’t, I’m too familiar with the area to let that happen – the event’s in a house opposite my old school.

I can’t do wanking face. I won’t be applying for this casting. I didn’t study for three years as an actor to take jobs where a fee constitutes £5 contribution towards my travel and a sandwich lunch. All for the artistic satisfaction of simulating wanking with good facial expressions.

The men get the castings where they need to be a good-looking nerd, or a superhero, or the type of guy everyone wants to fuck. If I’m lucky, I get to play one of the girls who gets to fuck the guy who’s the type of guy everyone wants to fuck rather than the girl who doesn’t get to fuck the guy who’s the type of guy everyone wants to fuck.

I close my phone and put it in my pocket.

I get out the printed-off email with information about today’s gig. I look at the photo of the guy who I’m supposed to act for. I recognize him. A comedian. I’ve seen him perform before. He’s okay, seemed too nervy to get his jokes out, which were funny, could have been funnier with better execution. Comedy is, ummm, errrr, what is it? That thing, what is it again?

I look at his face, tracing the froth of his curly hair with a finger.

Timing.

Comedy is timing.

This is the weirdest acting gig I’ve ever had. But it beats masturbating with tears in your eyes.

The door to the house is wide open so I enter. I take my shoes off and blend in.

These types of wake I remember well. They’re often an opportunity for family to catch up, so relations descend on the house to show their faces and offer condolences, eat the lukewarm khichdi and leave. You either sit reverentially in the room where the prayers are happening or natter in the kitchen with the aunties.

This is the first time I’ve been to a Gujarati wake in a cramped flat above a photocopier shop, though.

People will look at me and assume I’m a cousin, probably Prabhula masi’s daughter. Every Gujarati family has a Prabhula masi.

You imagine these occasions to be sombre. People sit in front of the mandhir and sing tunelessly, for thirteen nights, going from sad to more sad to depressed to bored to numb to sad again.

This wake is much more alive.

The hallway is the battleground for a four-way Nerf-gun fight, girls versus boys; the girls, at the top of the stairs, are obliterating the boys who fight relentlessly, too stupid to realize that if you have the high ground, moral or physical, you win the war. The kitchen is brimming with aunties, kakis, masis, mamis, fais and granny bas, all shrieking in Gujarati and cackling through the sides of their teeth. The men sit in a circle in silence. B4U is on. Shah Rukh plays coy with Kajol. I remember the song well, though the television is on mute.

I feel at home. With the men in the front room and the women in the kitchen, I try to find somewhere to compose myself.

I move into the dining room, which appears empty, where snacks are laid out in steel bowls. I take a samosa and let it crunch into my mouth. There’s too much garam masala on the potatoes but it is warm and tastes exactly like the pre-made samosas my mum buys and deep-fries. I haven’t been home for months. The train to Leicester costs the same as twenty-two bottles of cheap wine and I enjoy getting drunk more than seeing my parents.

It’s hard to feel like an intruder when the house seems familiar. The clear plastic table cover, the huge Hanuman painting on the wall, the statue of Kali stamping fools’ heads off, the steel bowls of samosas, bhajias and chutney, the music.

It takes me a second to realize. It’s a song from the film Naseeb. Hema Malini, in a shimmering black sequinned dress and ridiculous fringe that’s also a quiff, sings with the microphone at arm’s length, while Amitabh Bachchan plays the happy-go-lucky waiter in a red suit, John Jani Janardhan, falling in love with her from across the room.

‘Naseeb?’ I say, to an empty room, hearing the Nerf-gun fight descend into boy tears.

‘Yeah, I think so,’ I hear from a small voice to my right.

I jump in shock and turn to face the chair.

It’s him – Raks Jani. Sitting in an ill-fitting black suit with a black tie that’s too thin, wiping clean his glasses as he squints at me.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘You okay?’

‘I’m sorry about your sister,’ I tell him.

He stands up, putting his glasses back on. I steel myself to do the thing I’ve been paid to do. Here he is. I can do this job within five minutes of arrival, with a bonus samosa in my belly, and go straight home to invoice for the £750 fee.

It’s ridiculous. I don’t understand it.

He tries to smile.

‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘I mean, it’s not. I just mean, thank you. Thanks for coming, right? You’re, errrr . . .’ He hesitates, trying to pluck my name out of the same roster of Gujarati cousin names that we all live through, hoping to land on a girl’s name.

Manish, Dipesh, Sailesh, Rajesh, Sita, Rita, Manita, Kajal, Radha, Dipti, Vimal, Vipal, Bipal, Minul, Minal, Rinum, Manan, Minan, Minay and Karthik. Maybe Manita, Tina, Naina, Bhawna, Amee, Mira, Mina, Bina. It’s in there somewhere.

My nerve breaks.

I do what I’m paid to do.

I reach out my hand to his.

Instinctively, he reaches his out to mine too. I keep my face frowning and serious, as instructed. One foot back. One foot forward.

I thrust my hand into his and shake three times, firmly, up and down definitively. I look him in the eye and his sightline darts between our hands and my face. When the hands have shaken three times, I draw mine back in a wiggling-fingered explosion.

‘Good. Bye,’ I say firmly. ‘Good. Bye. One day you will die. Until then, good. Bye.’

Raks hesitates, then he looks at my hands again, surprised. Almost robotically, he replies.

‘Goodbye,’ he murmurs. ‘When I die, I’m bringing you down with me. Goodbye.’

I can see his face tense up, as though he’s holding back a well of tears. I can feel his body trembling. He snorts as a tear falls down his cheek. He hunches and puts his hands in his pocket, frozen.

I let go, grab another samosa, turn quickly and walk out of the room. My cheeks sting. My head is bowed.

I do not look back at him.

A passing masi offers me a, ‘Hello, beti, how’s your mum?’

‘Fine,’ I stammer, high-pitched, desperately searching amongst the rubble of open-toed sandals and black Clarks shoes for my Converse, wishing I’d chosen shoes that you could slip in and out of, instead of having to stop somewhere, put the things on and tie up the exceedingly long laces.

I see my beaten formerly-white Converse with the biro marks on the left shell toe from a long boring train journey, and I pick them up, rushing out of the door towards the front garden. I can sit on a wall and put them on.

I feel like crying. What was I doing in there?

I still don’t understand the job.

£750’s a lot of cashola when you’re a jobbing actor, especially a woman who has to deal with castings involving your body, nudity, humiliation and dressing like you’re well up for it.

Busty female. We require a scene where we spray fluid on you and you make out with a small old man.

Thugs will try to grab your butt so I need you to wear something enticing but conservative-ish.

You will be caressed in a subtly erotic way by a deformed pig-man.

Needs to be okay that we glimpse her butt in the shower and comfortable with the ‘rape’ scene.

‘Excuse me,’ I hear, a few houses down as I lean against the brick side wall of a garage and try to wrench my sweaty half-a-size-too-small Converse on to my flat feet.

The film contains some tasteful allusions to sexual assault.

That last one, that one nearly lost me my agent – sick of me saying no to parts with mostly one line, one nipple, one butt cheek, my agent took umbrage with this one – it was a feature, with a semi-famous director, if your Mastermind specialist subject was British directors with derivative gangster film knock-offs to his name.

I told him I was holding out for the main part in the Mae West biopic. The timing was canny. The next day a Mae West biopic was announced in the trade papers. I sent my agent a picture of myself in a blonde wig, with the caption, ‘What time’s the audition?’ and it must have charmed him enough not to dump me. I mean, he’s a shit, the industry’s a shit but ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Mukesh
• Neha
• Raks
• Ba
• Acknowledgments