In India, as in America, the number 420 has taken on layers of meaning associated with unlawful activity. While in the latter, it has come to be correlated in a decidedly celebratory way with the consumption of cannabis, in India, char sau bees, or four hundred twenty, refers to cheaters, liars, swindlers, and conmen: frauds conducting fraudulent activity. The origin of this association comes from Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, which addresses cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property, but the usage has become much more casual, referring also to everyday dastardliness. To date, no numerologists have published any findings on how this one particular number came to have a crime-related meaning in two different languages on two different sides of the world.
On a frigid, miserable day in November 1988, Prem was thinking about the number 420 and how he had let another char sau bees so easily into his life. A week after he had handed over all of his money to a stranger, Prem sat alone for a very long time at Pizza Hut. He went home and tried calling the number Vinnie had given him but found it not to be in service. His heart pounding, he raced his bike back to the Pizza Hut, where he questioned the manager, who said he hadn’t seen the man since the previous week. Prem tried to convince himself not to jump to conclusions, but even he, with all of his naïveté, knew in his heart what had happened.
As he waited for the following Thursday to arrive, Prem attempted to track Vinnie down. He looked through the phone book for Assurevent Analytics, hoping they might have some contact information for their former employee, but there was no such company. When he called the operator to find a listing for Roopesh Ghosh, he had a moment of uplift when he was given the numbers of seven different men of that name in the tristate area. He spent the afternoon calling them, some of whom were quite nice, but he did not find the Roopesh Ghosh he was looking for. It hit Prem particularly hard when he deduced there probably never was a Mary or John either.
When Thursday came around again, Prem entered the Pizza Hut with trepidation. He wasn’t afraid of not finding Vinnie there; he already understood that he would most likely never see the man or the money again. What he was afraid of was the depression that he knew he was about to be plunged into when the matter became final. He walked into the dining room and found the table vacant once again. Feeling lightheaded, he pulled out a chair and sat down to catch his breath before the bike ride home. Around him, everyone was enjoying unlimited fountain soda and meat lover’s pizzas, having a good time just as he and his friends had on the day they first met Vinnie. How charismatic and magnetic he had seemed. Never could Prem have imagined the level of deception that he would practice. He thought of the salad bar with the delightful croutons and felt more hapless than ever before.
In the following weeks, Prem brooded over a lot of things. He pondered whether this was punishment for his desire to make money without working, or if the tracksuit brothers from the airport were somehow involved. He would never know. He left the apartment only to do his job at Exxon and then came immediately home to sleep or listen to a depression-themed mixtape of his own design. Day after day, he immersed himself in “Din Dhal Jaaye” (Guide, 1965), the most hauntingly beautiful and upsetting song he had among his cassette collection, and he stopped shaving altogether. His roommates began to ask questions, and reluctantly he shared what had happened. Those who had met Vinnie were shocked to learn that the charming pizza-sharer was actually a rakish scam artist. Soon, everyone in the building and King’s Court and the neighboring complexes had heard about poor Prem, and they became, again, alarmingly nice to him. Aunties brought him food and his roommates refrained from teasing him, giving him time to mentally recover. Even Amarleen, sensing his need to reflect and recuperate, desisted from flinging herself onto his mattress.
On a sunny day at the end of the month, Prem reached an even darker, lower point. Beena came to break the news to him herself, gently, before he heard it inadvertently: She had finally caught a glimpse of the medical-student suitor and could confirm that he was, unfortunately, exceedingly handsome. As if this were not enough, Beena had also learned that Mikesh Aneja, almost MD, was polished and charming and studying medicine right there in New Jersey. It was like a punch to the heart. With no money, no plan, and a highly accomplished and apparently ravishing rival close by, he felt his own failure even more acutely. He thanked Beena for her discretion and showed her out. Sunlight poured into the room and he felt somehow pressured by it. He drew the curtains, and those who were home did not question it. Prem pulled out his ledger and began a new entry. Right under “Did you hear that I met Amitabh Bachchan?” he wrote, “Did you hear that a guy ran away with all my money? Did you hear what a loser I am?”
Hemant had heard. It brought him no pleasure to hear of the boy’s hardship; he felt proud, in fact, of his sympathy for Prem’s plight. As he was restocking the ghee shelf, he commended himself for his great depth of feeling and for his wisdom in warding off the useless, unlucky boy from his daughter.
Things had been going well ever since the unfortunate episode. They had taken on, along with Viren Bhai, a series of new paying guests, all of whom turned out to be reliable and harmless, owing to Hemant’s new policy of taking in only married couples who planned to stay just a few weeks until they found a place of their own. The grocery store, which had recently added Vicco Turmeric skin cream and Sunsilk egg-based shampoo to its wares, continued to thrive. Even Hriyan was sprouting new vines all the time.
And of course, the most splendid thing of all had occurred when he and his dear friend Sanjay Sapra had orchestrated the meeting of Leena and Sanjay’s almost-endocrinologist nephew Mikesh. On a snowy December morning, when Hemant and his daughter were visiting his sister in Minnesota, he invited Sanjay Sapra’s cousin Sanjana to come over for tea at his sister’s house and to bring along her promising young son, who was home for the holidays.
“This is Mikesh,” Sanjana said. “He is doing medical.”
Hemant lit up like a Diwali diya. “Welcome, welcome, come sit!”
Leena had just stepped out to run a few errands despite Hemant’s vehement protests, but it turned out well because he had a chance to learn the basics of Mikesh’s history. He had just completed his first year of medical school at the prestigious UMDNJ, which Hemant knew to be a highly prolific producer of Indian American doctors. Mikesh came from a respectable Punjabi family that boasted several physicians back in India and was the first to bring his exceptional brain to America, where he was doing a stellar job of reinforcing the stereotype of the model minority.
After having tea and biscuits, the mother and son stood up to leave. Hemant practically pushed them back down in their seats and gave them more tea. They couldn’t leave before Leena came home. Sanjana seemed to catch on to this plan when Hemant and his sister began frying samosas. Four cups of tea later, Leena finally returned from the store.
“Leena! Look who is here! Our dear friend Sanjay Sapra’s cousin, and look who she has brought with her, her son Mikesh. Mikesh come meet Leena, she works so hard in the store, she is the reason it is even open, and now she is thinking of opening a salon. Leena, tell them about your salon idea.” The excessive caffeine seemed to have hit Hemant hardest, although Mikesh appeared to be shaking considerably too.
“Uh, hello, I have a salon idea,” Leena said.
“He is doing medical,” Hemant said.
“Tell her, Mikesh,” Sanjana said.
“I am doing medical,” Mikesh said.
“You know, Sanjanaji,” Hemant said, “you were going to show me that thing, that new item, frozen batata vada, in Annapurna Grocery Store, was it?” He shoved his dear friend’s cousin out the door and pulled his sister along as well. Looking over his shoulder before pulling the door shut behind him, he caught a glimpse of Leena’s supremely annoyed face. She will thank me later, he thought.
Twenty minutes later, when the three returned, they found Leena and Mikesh laughing together on the couch, looking already like honeymooners. “Have you seen how nice his teeth are?” Hemant said. “Also, no family history of heart disease.”
Leena and Mikesh looked at each other and burst out laughing, which Hemant thought was just great.
* * *
A few weeks later, Prem realized even greater depths of despair when he saw Leena with Mikesh at Tun-Tun and Tony’s New Year’s Eve party. He hadn’t wanted to go, but his roommates, coworkers, Beena, and assorted other friends said it would be good for him to get out. He walked over with Deepak and Lucky, whose chest hair was especially resplendent that evening. The sky looked perfectly white and blank. Prem found a relatively quiet corner at the party and sipped whiskey from a disposable cup while feeling unnecessary. Leena came in an hour later with whom he presumed to be the doctor. “Is there scope for her to get any prettier?” he overheard one guy say to another. He tried to will her to look in his direction, but she did not notice he was there.
18
Prem left the party almost immediately after that and stumbled out into the cold. There were people milling about, huddled together, drinking, celebrating, their breath appearing and disappearing before them. Still clutching his plastic cup which he’d topped off with a heavy pour, Prem sipped and struggled not to slip on the ice. Hindi music seeped out of more than one building. A light snow started to fall, and the k of the Quicker Liquor sign flickered on and off. He turned toward home but thought better of it. What comfort would he find there? His cup now empty, he threw it into a bush and plodded through the hardened snow until he came to his bike on its rusted rack. He got on, not knowing where he would go.
After pedaling a long time down Oak Tree, up Grove, and across James Street past the JFK Medical Center, he found himself on Route 27, chasing distraughtly the crumbling concrete orb of the Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower in the distance. The road inclined and he began to breathe heavily, the cold air sharp in his lungs, when a car swerved and nearly hit him. The bike spun out and he was thrown into a snowbank. The entire right side of his body was wet and the snow stung his cheek. In that miserable moment, he wondered what reason there was to bother getting up. What had he achieved in his life? Nothing. Was there a chance he could win back Leena? No. All was lost and he would have to live in that snowbank forever. But something—call it fate, call it frostbite—made him climb out and get back on his bike. He spotted the tower’s Art Deco sphere looming up Christie Street and determined to get there.
The memorial tower was in a sad state of disrepair unfit for the man whose laboratory invented the movie camera. Nothing remained: no evidence of the labs, no sign of the machine shop. Exactly 110 years ago to the day, Christie Street had become the first street in the world to be lit up by incandescent bulbs, but on that night, it was completely silent and dark. Prem dropped his bike at the curb and plodded through the snow toward the tower, looking up at it as he approached. Coming so close to the 131-foot structure, he was overcome by his own insignificance. He fell to his knees and pleaded as if at the feet of Thomas Edison himself, not unlike Amitabh communing with Lord Krishna in Mr. Natwarlal, or in Deewaar, challenging Lord Shiva. He begged for a sign.
The only thing that happened was that Prem’s knees got wet. He looked around for any indication, but everything was the same, cold and quiet. Then he did something he’d never done before: he screamed. A savage, primal scream that would have terrified anyone had anyone been there. At the end of it, spent, he saw a light coming up the road. It wasn’t headlights but rather one weak shaft of light moving slowly forward. Prem rose out of the snow and turned to get a better look.
Coming up the road was a shadowy figure with a sort of old-timey lantern. Prem could make out that it was an older gentleman, the moonlight reflecting off his silver hair and wild eyebrows. He was dressed in an old-fashioned way, with a vest under a jacket and a loose bowtie. When the figure was directly across from him, he stopped and shone the light straight at Prem, who froze. Then he moved on, up Christie Street and past the tower, leaving him behind.
Forever after whenever Prem would recall that encounter, a shiver would go up his spine. He couldn’t say for sure that he had seen a ghost that night, but he certainly saw something inexplicable, which was sign enough for him. He picked his bike up off the curb and started the long ride home, sobered by the encounter. He went the other way down Route 27 this time, in the direction of the Metro Park train station. At the first light, still shaken, he was happy to be around a lot of cars. Turning left past the competing Exxon, he thought about the strange turn the night had taken. As he started up the incline of Wood Avenue, he considered its meaning. He remembered reading about how Thomas Edison had pushed forward through ten thousand or so failed prototypes before building a successful electric light bulb, and he pedaled harder. As he came upon United Skates and Marshalls to the left, he reflected on how the American dream was not handed to you when you got here. It was something you had to work hard to earn a piece of. Gasping for air while passing the Chinese restaurant and Hallmark shop, he realized that to move on with his life, he had to try harder. He had been too depressed to act—lately and always. Passing now in front of the Drug Fair, he decided he would apply more vigor in accruing the curious, single-hued money of America. This would require a major shift. And though it may not bring him any closer to Leena, it wouldn’t bring him any farther either. He would prove to Hemant that he could make a million and one dollars, maybe even more. He would prove it to his skeptical father and his siblings who had written him off as a clown, the friends who called him pumpwalla, and ultimately, himself. The time had come to acquire some dignity.
By the time he reached the top of the hill and rounded the corner onto Oak Tree, the car wash and defunct drive-in on the left, he made a resolution to build something from the ground up. As King’s Court and the India America Grocers beyond that came in sight, he decided to start a business of his own.
It was past midnight and the parties were still carrying on, but Prem went home to his mattress. Thus he climbed out of the darkness—that night and in life—with a notion to do something big.
* * *
That winter, all of King’s Court watched a lot of Hindi movies. It used to be that they had a limited array of uncomfortable and inconvenient venues to watch their films. They squeezed into Tun-Tun and Tony’s apartment with thirty others to view a shaky pirated copy with a slight rainbow on top that they’d brought with them from India; they attended a screening at John Adams Middle School, where they would sit on folding chairs and at the interval eat cold samosas in the vestibule next to a trophy case; they trekked to a theater in Jackson Heights that played a Hindi movie one Saturday per month. All of this changed when India America Grocers started renting out videos. They began with a meager offering—a few newish movies, a couple of seventies hits, some Raj Kapoor classics for good measure—but when Hemant observed their popularity, he ordered hundreds more, built shelves to house them, and raised the rate from one to two dollars. Soon, the tapes were everywhere, stacked up on the counter, piled up on the windowsill, and the windows became overwhelmed by film posters. Customers learned to pop into the store on Wednesdays when the new movies tended to arrive, and if they couldn’t find what they were looking for, they would comb through the returns bin, asking, “Is this a camera copy?” and “How is the print?” As a result of Leena’s brilliant business maneuver—and her ability to convince Hemant the idea was his—there was an uptick in the purchase of VCRs by King’s Court residents, many of whom bought them before even buying a bed.
That year would go down as a banner year for Hindi movies. The songs from Chandni, Ram Lakhan, Tridev, and Maine Pyar Kiya were hummed and whistled on street corners throughout India and Edison, and decades later, they would still be evoked in conversations about how they don’t make them like they used to. At the same time, all of India—and subsequently King’s Court—was consumed by Mahabharat, the television series based on the Hindu epic. When it aired on the state-sponsored Doordarshan channel on Sunday mornings, the streets became deserted and businesses shut down for exactly one hour.
On New Year’s Day, Iqbal Singh unveiled his new VCR. He had bought it two days prior and had picked up a video that day as well, but he decided to wait until the holiday, when everyone would be home, to debut it. Behind all his loudness and tallness, Iqbal was an insecure soul in need of validation, which he’d given up on extracting from his wife years ago. Somewhere along the way, he’d begun stuffing his apartment with as many paying guests as possible and inviting others to come by regularly. He lived for the moments when people were pleased with him and praised him, forever trying to plug a hole that could never be plugged. The reaction from his paying guests to the VCR was even bigger than he had hoped it would be. Gopal shed tears and Lucky embraced him for a very long time. Word spread through Buildings 3, 4, 5, and 11 that the Singhs had issued an open invitation for a screening of Janbaaz, the 1986 thriller featuring a steamy song sequence in a horse stable with excessive hay. No one in King’s Court had seen it yet; Iqbal had snagged the only copy from the grocery store as soon as it arrived. An enormous crowd poured into the cramped apartment for the inaugural viewing, and by the time Uttam Jindal arrived with his wig, there was no room for anyone to enter; even the standing room–only section by the refrigerator was packed.
“Sorry, house full,” Amarleen said at the door.
“But I won’t take up much of space,” Uttam Jindal said. “I can sit on the stove.”
“On my stove where I make chicken curry? No, thank you. Why don’t you buy a VCR? Go to Crazy Eddie.”
“His prices are insane,” Mohan called from behind.
