Unending Stories...

The Story of Heer Ranjha

2011-12-14T04:05:00.000-08:00

The Legendary Love of Heer and Ranjha

(This article appeared in a publication in U.K.)

Few stories that are recounted from generations to generations can command the pathos and poignancy of two folk icons and Jat youths Heer and Ranjha – the story of the beautiful Heer and the youthful Dheedo Ranjha. Legends have been spun around the story and it now stands as a tale that unites people on either sides of the Punjab – the state that was divided between India and Pakistan after the partition in 1947. The story at once has popular mass appeal and romantic allusions of undying love. Understanding the story of Heer and Ranjha also means understanding the social underpinnings of Punjabi society, and Punjabi culture to be specific.

Beautiful Heer is born into a wealthy Jat family of Sayyal in a village called Jhang. Dheedo Ranjha (Ranjha is his surname) is also born to Jat parents in Takt Hazara by the Chenab (one of the rivers that give Punjab its name, which means land of five rivers). Jats are an enterprising and strongly traditional clan of people who live around Punjab.

Dheedo was his father's favourite son, and the youngest of eight sons of his landlord father. Unlike his brothers who had to cultivate the lands, he led a life of ease playing the wooden flute (Wanjhli or Bansuri), and legend has it that he had bohemian looks and long hair. When their father died, a dispute arose between Dheedo and his brothers over the distribution of land. The brothers had taken possession of the best land to themselves and gave Dheedo only the barren land. He, after a heated argument with his brothers, left home in protest and headed aimlessly southward along the River Chenab until he reached somewhere near the present day Jhang where Heer lived and her tribe the Sayyals ruled.

The chief of Jhang was one Chuchak Sayyal who had an extraordinarily beautiful and headstrong daughter, namely Heer. On meeting Dheedo, Heer is instantly taken by his wild and romantic looks and the soulful tunes of his flute. She persuades her parents to hire Dheedo as a cowherd for their cattle. He is hired, and thus begins the legendary romance between Heer and Dheedo. The two lovers often meet in the forestland along the river where he takes the cattle to graze. While the cattle graze he plays his flute and she listens by his side. The days and months pass in total bliss — one of love and eternal happiness for the lovely couple.

However, Heer’s uncle, Kaido, becomes suspicious and starts spying on her. He gathers sufficient evidence to report about the romance to her parents. The parents admonish her and warn her to stop meeting Dheedo. When she is undeterred they call in the village Qazi, or priest, to advise her.

The Qazi tells her that good girls, when they come out of their home, keep their gaze lowered; that they always keep their families’ honour uppermost; that she should spend time in tiranjans (places where village women gather to spin yarn on spinning wheels and chat). He also reminds her that, being from a higher caste and a renowned family, it is unbecoming of her to mingle with family servants like Dheedo.

Seeing that Heer is committed to her love for Dheedo the Qazi threatens her with a fatwa of death. But Heer is undeterred by his threats. Exasperated by her behaviour, her parents decide to marry her to a man named Saida Khairra from village Rangpur. The wedding ceremony, or nikah, is arranged and the Qazi is invited to perform the ceremony. According to custom, the Qazi first asks the bridegroom if he would accept Heer as his wife, which, the bridegroom readily does. Then the Qazi asks Heer, still very much in love, and her answer is a loud No. When the Qazi insists for an affirmative answer, Heer says, “My nikah was already made with Ranjha in heavens by no less a person than the Prophet himself, and was blessed by God and witnessed by the four angels, Jibraeel, Mikael, Izarael and Israfeel.”

The Qazi goes ahead and solemnizes the marriage, anyway. After the ceremony Heer, in tears, is sent to Rangpur amidst great celebrations. Heer languishes in Rangpur, pining for Dheedo. Meanwhile, Dheedo is heartbroken. He is left to walk the quiet villages on his own until eventually he meets an ascetic Baba Gorakhnath, the founder of the "Kanphata" (pierced ear) sect. He becomes a Jogi, pierces his ears and renounces the material world. Reciting the name of the Lord, "Alakh Niranjan", on his travels around the Punjab, he eventually finds the village where Heer has been married.

Heer also comes to know through her friends that the young handsome jogi in town was none other than her lover. The two meet and, with the help of Heer’s friends and her sister-in-law, Sehti, manage to elope one night.

The two returns to Heer's village, where Heer's parents, convinced about their love, agree to their marriage. However, on the wedding day, Heer's jealous uncle Kaido poisons a sweet Laddu to prevent the marriage from taking place. Heer eats the Laddu. Hearing this unfortunate news, Dheedo rushes to her side full of concern for her, but he is too late, as she has been affected by the poison and dies. Brokenhearted once again, he takes the rest of the poisoned sweet which Heer has eaten and dies by her side.

Thus ended the tragic love story Heer and Dheedo Ranjha.

Susamma's Story

2011-09-22T03:26:00.001-07:00

Nobody knows how Susamma died. Some say she was killed, some say it was suicide, some say it was a natural death – a heart attack. Her husband was not at home. So a murder was ruled out. She had a red mark on her neck. People interpreted this as suicide by hanging. But then how can she die if she tied the knot, changed her mind, and decided not to kill herself? I knew Susamma wouldn't kill herself. Even though she went through many hardships she always bore it with a smile and a kind word. No, Susamma can't kill herself. She is not that type.

Then how did she die? Nobody was at home. Her brother telephoned her twice the previous night and didn't get a reply. He got suspicious and went all the way to Thiruvalla, where he found her lying on the floor of the living room. In the big bungalow that was built with the money she earned as a nurse. She lay supine in her Mother Hubbard, her face a ghostly grey, her mouth dry. The bungalow was a two-storied one with four bedrooms for them and her daughter and for guests. It was done in the most modern fashion of the day. But then she went through many hardships before she started earning all that money. Many were the years she spent doing overtime on night shifts in operation theatres in the Persian Gulf city of Muscat to earn enough to make the bungalow.

I know her as a promising student in my class scoring the best marks. She was from a middle class Christina family, the sort who read the bible and prays every day. Her faith was a source of strength and pride to her. She was a good sportsperson and won the school championship trophy five years in a row. Teachers praised her as a model student who will succeed in life, will be an asset to the school and the community and society. Everyone praised her. She was the debating champion, the keen athlete, and nobody could beat her in running and long jump. She was goodlooking with her head full of curly hair and had a graceful walk. All my friends - Chako, Athiran, Chathukutty and Varghese lusted after her voluptuous figure and personage.

"Everybody should learn from Susamma. She is the house captain of the Green House even before she has reached the tenth standard, in the nineth standard itself. Everybody should emulate her hardwork and her application. If only we had more students like her," Basanti-teacher, the teacher assigned to our class said.

Then we graduated and I lost touch. I went away to my job and raised a family in distant Bombay. However, I kept hearing news of her whereabouts whenever I would come on vacation to Thiruvalla. She was married. Her parents – rustic farming people – thought they had a good match because the groom drew a good salary. Then her problems started. Her husband – Thankachen – was a salesman in Bangalore and she shifted to Bangalore to be with him. Thankachen, being a salesman of plastic briefcases travelled on business quite a lot. He had the practicality and easy charm of a salesman and could talk very well. On the rare occasion he was in town he would drink too much and abuse her, beat her. Soon Susamma came to know why. Thankachen had a girlfriend in town and most of the time was spent in her company. He also spent most of his money on her. He found Susamma ordinary and not urbane enough. He got mad when Susamma couldn't use a fork and knife in a restaurant and couldn't use the western closet when on vacation in Goa.

Small differences became great fissures and then chasms. After a fight over the taste of fish curry, Thankachen beat her and left her with a puffed eye and then sought the company of his girlfriend. Susamma packed her bags and went back to live with her parents in Thiruvalla. She lived with her parents for seven years. She made use of this time to apprentice herself in Pushpagiri Hospital as a nurse. She learnt fast, as she was a good student, punctilious in acquiring knowledge and perspicacious in her studies. She soon got a job in the same hospital. She was also declared the best student and scored the highest marks in theory and practicals. During these seven years Thankachen never visited her even once. She is supposed to have said once to my sister Babykutty, "I am a woman who has suffered great emotional turmoil, you can't even imagine what I have been through."

Her next ambition was to go to the Persian Gulf. She got herself a passport. She was soon selected to work in the Royal Hospital of Oman. She did well there, rising fast to be a matron. Her salary induced Thankachen to re-establish contact with her again. He wrote her and asked for forgiveness. The reason was that his girlfriend had left him. He had become an alcoholic.

"I am sorry for all that I did to you. If you take me back I promise to be good to you and mend my ways. I am sure you will consider this in Christ our saviour's name."

Susamma forgave him. He soon got himself a passport and joined her in Muscat, Oman. He got a job as a salesman there. However, his ways hadn't changed. He drank heavily even in the country where drinking of liquors was prohibited. However, he didn't beat her. It was during this time that their daughter Sheena was born. Both Susamma and Thankachen were happy together for some time. Then Thankachen started doubting her and accusing her of being unfaithful. He even went to say Sheena wasn't his daughter.

Again the chain of atrocities against her started. Though Thankachen didn't beat her he was cruel in his words and accused her of being unfaithful. With his drinking the accusations got worse. He accused her of having affairs with doctors. It seemed there was no end to Susamma's tears. That's when she decided enough was enough and decided to come back to live in Thiruvalla.
She bought a plot of land. She built a big bungalow with the money she accumulated in Muscat.

Thankachen, too, gave up his job and came back to live with her. Their daughter started studying in a residential school in Thiruvalla. Their fights would occur even in Thiruvalla. Susamma would go to her ancestral home where her father and mother lived and relate to them about sleepless nights and Thankachen's increasing demands for money to drink. The neighbourhood also came to know of what was happening. They then got used to the nightly shouting matches and to Susamma crying in the night.

Anyway, it was a sad end to such a promising life. A wrong choice of a man had made Susamma's life miserable. But nobody knows how she died. Neighbours said that the night before her death there was a big fight and Susamma was heard crying. The next day Thankachen left for Bombay to see his sister. There were all sorts of stories about her death. People said he killed her with his cruel words. Some say he strangled her before he left, in which case she would have been lying dead in the bungalow for a day. However, her body was warm and had not decayed. Suicide was also ruled out. The police was not summoned as her people didn't want an enquiry. Thankachen came back from Bombay and pleaded innocence.

I attended Susamma's funeral. So did my friend Chako, Athiran, Chathukutty and Varghese, all classmates of hers. We met for tea at my house after the funeral. We mourned the passing of a promising and talented classmate. That's Susamma's story.

P.K.Koshy’s Daily Routine

2009-07-16T06:31:00.000-07:00

As I, P.K. Koshy, sip my morning tea I look out to see if Waghmare is anywhere around. Question is: Do I want to even see his face on the way to my morning walk? No. He has a car and he has a dog, and I dislike both. And I loathe him. Problem with the dog is it shits everyday before my door and I suspect Waghmare (In Marathi – the killer of tigers) has taught him to do that, I am sure. The sly bastard, I know he is a cunning and crafty man. He works for some life science company and is home most of the time pottering around in his chuddies. His sole aim is to give me a lot of headaches, which I can feel digging its monstrous fangs in my head right now. I know he is around, I can hear him shuffling in the row-house next door. I time his morning walk, which may be over by now. Then he takes his dog out, which too has been completed now that it’s 8 a.m.

The car is another possession of his that I detest, indeed hate. It’s a Maruti Swift, his proud possession, a symbol of his prosperity. I don’t have a car; neither do I have a dog. He parks it right outside my door as if it’s his father’s road, just to make me jealous as I don’t have one. I shouted at him many times. The bastard, he won’t listen to all my ranting, and continues to park it at the entrance of my row-house. I had complained to Oondirmare (literally: the killer of mice) who is our row-house association’s secretary, but he is too much in awe of Waghmare, the killer of tigers. It so turns out that the killer of mice is afraid of the killer of tigers because of reasons I needn’t mention, but then why he is the association’s secretary? Killing rats is not such a big deal, nor tigers, for that matter. His grandfather’s grandfather might have shot at a tiger and missed, and now he carries the name of Waghmare. Doesn’t “mare” mean “act of killing” and not “marnara” meaning “man who kills.” Next time I speak to him I will say this, only to embarrass him a little.

I read the newspaper that has just arrived. A few months back I used to subscribe to two newspapers, but Marykutty told me to cut down on expenses. Now I only get the Hindustan Times to read as I sip tea. Marykutty asks me if I need more tea. I say, “Why you want my tummy to protrude even more like a chakka, a jackfruit?”

My tummy, like all Malayalis’ tummies protrude a bit, no, in fact, more than a bit. It has grown in size since I had retired, last month. They say, the Malayalis I mean, that it’s a sign of prosperity. I think the eating of a lot of carbohydrate-enriched rice – the Malayalis’ staple diet. And, what if my tummy protrudes, whose father’s goes? Like they say in Hindi, “Kiska baap ka kya jata hai.” Waghmare’s tummy also juts out. But he is a pathetic sight in his striped chuddies, jackfruit tummy hanging out, and the exposed thread that holds it to his waist. “Chee, no shame, this man has,” Marykutty would say watching him walking his dog and scratching his arse. And he called me a “besharam” when we had a fight over the dog shit.

That’s why I avoid him during my morning walks. We have fought many times. Over dog poo, over car parking, over overflowing gutters, over hundreds of silly trivial things which he doesn’t have the civility to acknowledge, the illiterate. He has connections and is all the time glued to his phone, talking in the entreatingly cloying voice of his, the moron.

x-x-x

At last, I finish tea, throw away the paper to be read later, and peering carefully through the window to make sure Waghmare wasn’t around, step out. His dog is sitting on his steps panting, and wagging its tail, glad to see me, the abominable creature. But my quarrel is with his master, the chuddy-wallah. I have nothing against you koochi-koo, may you and your master rot! I never wear chuddies like your master does, what an insult, can’t you do something to stop him showing his hirsute legs?

I am dressed in polyester trousers, my checked shirt, and my branded walking shoes. Today I have to visit the office from where I retired after 27 years of service. They are giving me a send-off party, they said, sort of after thought. I am an employee of Bard, no, nowhere related to the poet, but BARD as they call the country’s nuclear research program – Baroodwala Atomic Research Department. I don’t believe in parties, but I think I will go and meet my colleagues, though it might make me teary eyed to see my desk being occupied by a new chokra boy who succeeded me.

I walk along the road that connects to a nature park in Belapur, a road that cut into what they say is a tropical rain forest. The road is full of puddles from last night’s rain, and I avoid dog shit, cow shit, and little puddles that are everywhere. There is garbage lying around thrown by lazy people in the night when no one’s watching. I think this country needs strict laws. They will break laws when no one’s watching. So opportunistic are they! My friend Joseph, the only person I speak with on my walks, says Singapore fines 500 dollars for littering. We should do the same. I meet some of my usual friends, the old man who tutors students, the retired man who is always humming a carefree tune, the yoga freak who does breathing exercises, and the Old Geezer’s Gang (OGG), as I call them.

The OGG consists of retired chootiyas, too far gone to redeem their failing bodies. They spend their morning time gossiping about other walkers, laughing, huffing and puffing their tottering bodies. They don’t get any exercise at all, the way they talk excitedly, badmouthing their former employers, this minister or that, or even the haggard women who come for a walk to escape the drudgery of cooking, washing and cleaning.

I dismiss their jollity as frivolity and only exchange a few polite “Good mornings” with them. They walk so slowly that I feel their bodies would disintegrate and die in a few days. If I become one of them then I would be discussing cardiac arrest, arrhythmia, blood clots and a host of other diseases with them, and would lose my teeth and my confidence. I walk fast and leave them behind. The OGGs are there in practically every part of New Bombay, indeed the world, old men without any meaning in their lives, their minds having been eaten by the moths of mediocrity.

x-x-x

Leaving the OGGs behind I walk to the top of a hill that overlooks the highway to Bombay. There’s the constant roar of traffic and the rainforest is alive with the sound of birds, the echoes of which reverberate in the trees. I shut my eyes, relax my body and sit down to my meditation session. The OGGs have caught up and are teasing me now.

“Kya Koshy-saab, ithna medition math karo. Kuch duniya ke barre mein bi socho.”

(What Koshy, stop meditating and start thinking about the world.)

I tremble with anger, but I hide it. It’s said: do not pick a fight with people who have nothing to lose. Besides I have to come here tomorrow too.

“You booddhas, you with your gossip and bitterness, you will die fast.”

They laugh.

I didn’t say it in jest, but seriously. It was a curse. I leave them, the old farts, feeling a throb of pain in my temple. I then begin my descent down the hill and the songs of birds grow thicker and louder, a symphony of sounds, which soothes me. I like bird songs. They are so natural and beautiful, their every note so pure. I am more relaxed now. What do those old geezer’s think?

x-x-x

As I near home I see Waghmare looking at me from the terrace of his row house, a sarcastic sort of look. I don’t greet him, the dog. If I greet him, I am sure he will come wagging his tail like his cur. I used to be friendly with him when we had come to live in Belapur, twenty or so years ago. But then there came the fights and I stopped talking to him.

“Who will talk to such a fellow, no manners, keeping dogs that have no sanitary sense?” I ask Marykutty. She has grown fat over the past few years. I tell her to come for a walk in the morning but she won’t listen. Even since Benny, our son, went away to the USA she has been like this. Not talking much, only doing what is necessary. Her hair is white and unkempt, her ways slovenly. I can’t help it. I go for a long walk in the morning and evening to escape from the ruin that is my wife.

x-x-x

I take the 9 a.m. morning train from Belapur. It is crowded and though it originates in Belapur I don’t get a seat as the commuters from Nerul have travelled back to Belapur so that they are assured of a seat. So I stand in the cramped space between two seats. This is the most coveted place to be in the first class compartment, because whenever anyone in those two seats gets up, by the fact of being first in queue, I get to sit down. I know these things. I have travelled on this route for 30 years. It is my routine, rather, was.

But my turn doesn’t come though we have crossed the Thane Creek Bridge at Vashi. There’s too much rush of people, perspiring, their wet bodies sticking to me in the heat. I can make out the regulars, the Sardarji in his usual seat by the window, the bald man who is a nodding acquaintance who works for a cigarette company, the company secretary with a shock of black hair which he claims he doesn’t dye, the bank manager with his usual bunch of newspapers.

When Kurla comes, a lot of young fellows get down. I get a seat vacated by a young chap with a heavy knapsack which almost knocks me down as he swings it on his shoulder. Wonder why they all carry knapsacks these days like menial labourers. They are the people working in the new economies – software, hardware, the outsourcing units – coolies all of them. They dress nattily; listen to pirated music on their iPods, or imitation music players, talk incessantly on the phone – probably to their girlfriends. What’s there so much to talk about, I don’t know. I and Marykutty hardly talk a few words everyday – sometimes, nothing at all. All we have to say have been gone over and exhausted. Now, silence speaks. One such executive type is saying on his cell phone.

“Total weirdo, men, my boss, men. So much like that only, no? Like that mad old uncle deLima, exactly. I feel like giving him two tight slaps, phat, phat. Har, har, har. He tho, I don’t know what to say, [listens] tell me what you did this morning? Had a head bath? What the f*** for? Tell you no, men, you will get a cold and be paying for medicines and stuff. [Listens] That’s cool, men, so, so, nice I feel, whaddappen, no, it’s, sort of, sort of, aaah, heee, hummm....”

What sort of talk is that? This teeny-weeny impudent fellow is talking of slapping his boss. What’s the world coming to? I am glad to be out of their rat race.

x-x-x

At the office everyone gathers around me. As expected, a chokra is sitting on the assistant’s seat that I had vacated. My boss, the director of the nuclear research program, has gone to a meeting with his boss, so I wait in the reception. Everyone is extra nice, which they weren’t when I was working here.

The new assistant apologies profusely. The sort of words I used to employ only a month ago.

“So sorry sir, he will be back soon, sir, will you have some coffee, sir, I am told you like coffee, sir,” then to a shabby individual in a khaki uniform “saab ke liye coffee lana.”

x-x-x

In the conference room they have put a fresh bouquet of flowers, they make me sit beside the boss, Mr. Rao, the man I tolerated with all my patience the last so many years. He is all jolly good manners now. The young assistant – yes, I remember, his name is Krishnakant Sharma – keeps a wrapped rectangular thing before his boss. On it is a card with messages from all my previous colleagues in vivid colours. Krishnakant has brought his cheap digital camera and is clicking pictures of me – of me! I can’t believe it. They are taking pictures of me!

Then everyone troops in and the boss gives a speech in Indian English praising all the qualities I never knew I possessed. Too late! He says I always had a smile on my face, even when he was rude. What to do? So bad no? He couldn’t help it, part of his job. The hypocrite! He doesn’t know what Herculean effort I had to put up, just to listen to his insults, because I had a family to feed, and a job to keep.

Then he takes the rectangular gift and gives it to me. He smiles and asks me to turn towards the camera held by his assistant. Resourceful chap, he is, this Krishnakant Sharma, smart dresser, too. “Smile” he says, and I smile. Only a few front teeth show in the picture, which Sharma comes and shows me on his camera. It’s the age of instant photography; you can see the results in seconds.

Then there’s a round of handshakes and some refreshments are brought in – sodden samosas from the canteen, tea in plastic cups, and a few potato chips.

Is it all I am worth? Have I worked all these years, sacrificing my freedom, my self respect, my joy for this? My colleagues want me to open the gift. I open it and they watch my face. It’s a picture of a waterfall with a wire attached and they say if the wire is plugged in, the waterfall will come alive with the sounds of birds in the background.

“How did you know I like the sound of birds?”

“You told us, didn’t you? Don’t you remember?” A friend, Mr. Muthuraman, who will be retiring next year said, “You said it brings out the poet in you.”

“Oh, so you write poetry, Mr. Koshy, I never knew. What a talented person we have had in our midst. It will be a complete loss, will miss you, really,” Mr. Rao said. The hypocrite!

I felt like telling him, none of my poems are published, all of them were rejected by a world, which is no longer in need of poetry or poets.

A murmur, a titter goes around. “Ah, I never knew he wrote poetry, in Malayalam, it seems, he is from a tradition of poetry, ah, murmur, murmur, titter, titter....”

I eat the soggy samosas, drink the tepid tea.

x-x-x

It’s 1 p.m. I have begun my journey back having had lunch in Swagat Restaurant in what was once the fort area of Bombay. I stumble several times as I walk with the rectangular picture under one arm. Several people jostle me as they pass me in a hurry. Bad mannered, all of them, no respect for elders. To think that this would be what I will be up against for the rest of my life, makes me nervous and jittery. I step over puddles, I side step gobs of spit on the street.

With difficulty I make it to Victoria Terminus train station and choose the train to Belapur. Trains are less crowded at this time. There are a lot of women, children, and petty traders in dhotis, kurtas, lehengas, some of them carry big loads on their heads and under their arms.

I, too, am carrying this load, this picture, this burden of my past, the thing that had divested me of my life, my writing, sucked the blood out of me with its dreary routine chores that needed to be done for my boss, which had in turn developed into a habit. Now I had to consciously get out of the habit every day. It sits in my hand, unwieldy, incongruous, obstructing the flow of people. They dash against it, turn and stare, even curse. It nauseates me how they couldn’t think of a better gift. All they could find was an artificial waterfall with artificial bird sounds whereas I like natural bird sounds. How dumb!

The 1.45 p.m. local to Panvel is empty. It passes through Belapur. I climb inside the deserted compartment and sit holding the packet in my lap. I am not sure what to do with it. I hate what it represents, the repression I felt, sacrificing everything for a government job, the dreariness of the function in the morning in which people were so cloyingly sweet. But I could sense their impatience. It was as if they wanted to get rid of me and go back to their work and get on with it. Mr. Rao had looked impatiently at his watch several times, the man who had said, “Mr. Koshy you are too slow with letters, you need to learn to manage your time, speed up, you know. I have no patience for your slowness.” He had the sarcastic look Waghmare sometimes has when he speaks to me. I hate them both – one my former boss, the other still my neighbour. Two unpleasant people who dominated my life these years.

The picture grew heavier as the train progresses on the Harbour Line. Masjid, Sandhurst Road, Dockyard Road, Reay Road, Cotton Green, Sewri, Wadala, Koliwada, Chuna Bhatti, Kurla, Tilak Nagar, Chembur, Govandi, Mankhurd, all pass in a sudden flurry and clatter of metal. It seems as if I have passed these stations a million times, but in the haze of the monsoon afternoon, when drops of moisture on my shirt seemed like swords stabbing me, I feel a strange oddness, as if I have never seen these stations. My daily routine has become alien to me.

I was sweating profusely. Is a stroke coming? Why am I feeling so funny, prickly all over? As the train passes over the Thane Creek Bridge I go and stand near the entrance to get some fresh air. The sea breeze calms me, I breathe in deeply, then tears streaming down my face, my face contorted into a hideous sob, I fling the picture over the railing into the sea. I have got rid of Mr. Rao for ever.

I look back. It lies there floating for a few seconds, then it slowly sinks into the brackish water and mud. I feel light, as if a burden has been lifted, I smile. I will take care of Waghmare when I reach home.

The Queue-jumper

2009-03-15T04:27:00.000-07:00

I had gone to my village of Kidangannoor on holiday (where my parents [now deceased] lived in retirement) and went to the Chengannur railway station to buy tickets for my journey back. It was summer vacation season and tickets for the return journey to Bombay were scarce. So I had to leave home early hoping to get ahead in the queue to book tickets. After reaching the station, I had stood in a long queue for about an hour and was at the head of the queue when a youth appeared from nowhere, stood beside me and began pushing towards the ticket vendor. When I objected he started complaining loudly to the people present that I was trying to push him and that I was (you won't believe this!) the queue breaker!

Imagine! A Hindi saying goes, “Ulta Chor Kotwal ko dathe,” a case of the thief scolding the policeman.

Me, a queue jumper? I am not sympathetic to such boors and fought back and got my position at the head of the queue and bought a ticket. Then I saw something that upset me further. The man was buying a ticket after me! I said with all the animus I could muster, “People, people, my dear kind and law-abiding saars (they say “saar” instead of “sir” in Kerala), can’t you see, that man is a queue jumper and he is buying a ticket.”

“He said the same of you, remember,” one man said.

“But I am saying he pushed ahead of me, he is a reactionary, an usurper, a hooligan, an anti-social element, a..., a..., a..., blot on civilised society,” I blabbered on.

They stared blankly at me, you know, the way you would look at a dimwit.

By this time the man who had barged in front of me had bought his ticket and was coming menacingly towards me.

“Enthado thante problem? What is your problem? Podo ividunnu, haaaaahn, kanichu tharam! Go away from here, or I will show you.”

“Are you threatening me after jumping the queue, in front of all these people?”

“What people? Ask them. Did I jump the queue, people?”

“No, no, no, no....”

I couldn’t believe my auditory senses, or my visual senses, for that matter.

“Pinne... then?” the queue-jumper was moving menacingly towards me.

“Oh, dear and esteemed and highly-regarded saars, can’t you see he is turning the public opinion against me, against propriety, against the laws of civilised society, against every tenet that you, decent, mundu wearing, respectable people believe in?”

“Hey, who are you to give big lectures, haaaahn,” this is a member of the public whose rights, decency and civility I was trying to protect.

“I am no one. In fact, I don’t even live here. But if this man barges in, buys a ticket while you have been standing in queue over an hour today, mark my words, he will be raping your mothers and sisters, stealing from the government’s public coffers, thumbing a nose at law and order next.”

“Heey manushya, watch your words,” with this the queue-jumper came towards me, folding and tying his mundu in a tight double fold over his waist (the Malayali’s preparation for a fight). I could see his striped underpants and the loose-hanging string he used to tie it to his waist. It was a threatening gesture, alright; the sort used by superstars Mohanlal and Mammooty to scare the shit out of villains in Malayalam movies.

Hell, no! I am no coward when it comes to a fight. I have well-toned and exercised biceps and triceps that I flex everyday for around thirty minutes, even on holidays. I also know a few Karate tricks thanks to a lightning course in Karate I took when I was working with a former employer. The teacher didn’t think much of my moves then, but if I could scare him with a few grunts and shouts, maybe, just maybe, he will hightail it.

So I got into Shotokan Kata position, or some such, I don’t remember, and shouted really menacingly at him, “Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh.”

“What are you doing man; can’t you see the man has grey hair? At least respect his age,” this is from an esteemed member of the public, whose honour I was getting ready to protect.

I stopped in Karate-mid-stance and gaped at him open mouthed.

He untied and dropped his mundu and said, “Since this kind and nice saar says so, I am leaving you, or you know I would have broken that knee of yours.” (In Kerala they always aim at the knees, so that a man will limp for the rest of his life.)

I stare at him, at the people whose rights and privileges I was trying so hard to champion, and then walk away. At least my knees have been saved the bother, and I got my tickets!

Mr. Bandookwala, MBA, Harvard

2009-02-22T10:20:00.000-08:00

I recoiled at the sight of him. Was it the same person? Was it the man who, when he strode into Pinnacle Construction Ltd., used to make the receptionist and telephone operator quiver in their seats? Was it the same man who was known as the blue-eyed boy of the chairman, the MBA show boy from the US, who dazzled everyone with his brilliance and his personal charm?

Surprising how people can change when their positions are taken away from them. Fate had played a cruel game with Mr. Bandookwala. No, he neither had a bandook, a gun, nor was he in the business of guns, not that I know of. But he had all the making of an Automatic Kalashnikov 47 about the way he strode, the way he spoke, and the way the peons and the employees of his department scattered and hid from his gaze in those days.

Now I couldn’t believe the man sitting opposite me was the same powerful Dinshaw Bandookwala. The fire seemed to have died in his eyes, eyes which now looked sunk and haunted. His nervous tics and obsessions were more apparent, his fingers worrying a few polyps on his face. He carried a crumpled leather bag and didn’t wear his natty shirts and equally elegant ties.

Times were when I used to admire the clothes he wore, two-toned shirts straight out of the Arrow executive collection, something I wished I had. They were too expensive for me. I admired the deodorants he wore, and everything about him spelled class and panache. But the man who was sitting opposite me seemed to have shrunk, his eyes had lost its glitter, his well-cut hair was in disarray, and his shirt was soiled as if it hadn’t been washed for days. The way he sat opposite my executive chair, he seemed like a supplicant, the sort who came to me for advertisements and sponsorships.

********

Those were the days I had to queue outside his cabin to get his attention. He had left strict instructions that I had to have permission from him through the secretaries to meet him. Then when he gave permission, he kept me waiting outside his cabin till, at last, he had the inclination to meet me. All this for his own work, work for which he would take credit. I would hang around his cabin this way for hours, afraid of even knocking for fear that I would disturb his concentration. When I, a blubbering mass by now, finally entered the cabin to get approval on some proofs, he would look at me rather distractedly and shoot me something like, “Why is the article “the” not before “company”? And, I would come out of my dither with difficulty, think of what to say, and before I could say anything, he would dismissively fling what I had written at me and say “Rajesh, first read and edit carefully before bringing me such crap.” His lips would curl as he said this.

I would be so traumatized that I would stare at the sheet not knowing what had gone wrong with my writing, my words, and wonder whether I would ever make it as a writer, or, for that matter a “corporate communication executive.”

******

But things had changed. I had resigned from the job at Pinnacle Constructions Ltd. and moved ahead. I am now General Manager (Corporate Communications) of a leading construction company and Mr. Dinshaw Bandookwala wants my account. After leaving Pinnacle, Dinshaw hadn’t done well in his business and obviously he was now clutching at straws. I could see from his drooping expression that he was either lazing around in front of the television doing nothing or was into something addictive. He smelled bad and looked as if he hadn’t had a bath for a long time. Unbelievable! He smelled so good in those days, the best of deodorants for him, brands I wouldn’t even recognize. He drew the best salary in the company, he was given the company’s best car, a huge cabin with a view of the city, a driver, and a peon as a, sort of, personal valet. This peon carried his lunch bag and brief case from car to his cabin and back, shined his shoes, brought him tea, handed him papers, delivered his paper to other executives and stood outside to run errands and serve him lunch. He had mandated that the peon should wash his hands with soap every time he handled his food and also shouldn’t eat his food unless he had eaten.

With me he had similar rules. I was to be very attentive when I spoke to him as if he was some celestial deity, whom I had to worship for giving me darshan, or divine sighting! I would tremble when the peon rushed to me to whisper that he had called me. And then what I have described above would repeat and rarely was there a day when he wouldn’t throw proofs and drafts I had carefully written and taken to show him. “You call this writing, there’s no flow, no thought, no ideas, you are all over the place,” he would say shaking his head. I believed I was bad, and I would exit his cabin as would a man condemned to death by hanging.

Everyone in the organisation was subjected to such treatment. His secretaries, he had two of them, were insulted every hour for this or that. Sometimes he wanted his secretaries to call someone and make them hold on the phone before he spoke to them; sometimes he wanted them to connect them immediately. He never told who was to wait and who was to be connected, and this led to endless rows with his secretaries. Everything had to be done in seconds or the big man would become mad and angry. And when he became angry everyone would get mauled. He wouldn’t think before making personal remarks, “you are wasting the company’s time, you shouldn’t move from your seat unless I tell you to,” he told his secretary one day. A high-ranking executive working under him was told to fan him when a few flies settled on his face one rainy day. The peons called him yeda, mad, behind his back.

*************

What a change? Can a man change so much? I mean, how much can a man change when he is relieved of his position? Was he justified in misusing such a position with impunity as Dinshaw did? These questions buzzed around in my mind like bees. I was enjoying every moment that Dinshaw sat cringing before me, his facial tics making his discomfiture apparent. He used to be so glib in those days, articulating marketing concepts and spouting jargon as if he was an encyclopaedia of management concepts.

That he was the chairman’s blue-eyed boy was understood by everybody. They hastened to get out of the way of this fast-talking master of business administration (MBA) from Harvard when he approached. He was supremely confident then and flaunted his knowledge, poise, and charm. I couldn’t believe how such an individual could fall, and fall so fast in a few months. But that the cantankerous chairman could change his geriatric mind and dictatorial ways was not unknown to the staff. So when the staff kow-towed to Dinshaw they did it with the full knowledge that the powerful show boy could be a penniless pauper if he wasn’t too careful. But Dinshaw went cheerfully ahead, enlivening staid annual general meetings with presentations, socialising with industry leaders at dinner and cocktail parties, mingling with fickle minded media sales executives and advertising agency regulars.

Now when Dinshaw speaks he doesn’t have the twang of his American accent, proving that the drawling accent had been put on to establish that he was a foreign-returned MBA. Words didn’t issue from his mouth with hardly a thought about what harm it could do and he no longer had his collegiate charm. Oh God! I groaned. He hadn’t even shaved himself properly, stubble stood on his chin, and the hair around the temples had a few grey strands. Those days he went to a famous hairdresser who only served clients by appointment. No, no, this can’t be the Dinshaw Bandookwala I had worked with, no, this is another apparition of him, ruined, derelict. I couldn’t believe it. Was he depressed, or, ill with some incurable disease? I was feeling sorry for him.

************

He misused the system. There are certain people who take advantage of the trust that is bestowed on them. Those days he used to come at around lunch time everyday and leave around six in the evening. Most of his work was done from his posh flat in Peddar Road, also a company-owned one. Should he have been so totally dependent on the company’s perquisites? He should have known that the chairman “bestoweth” as well as “taketh away” as the good Lord often does. Did an MBA from Harvard not give him even mundane wisdom such as this? Or, was the MBA any good at all, considering it didn’t even teach everyday commonsensical truths? How can young people like Dinshaw not know the pitfalls of being totally dependent on his employer?

Now as he droned some spiel about synergistic convergence in the marketing space, which I knew was drivel, I interrupted him:

“What happened, Mr. Bandookwala? What went wrong?”

He looked up, a bit shaken at this question. He looked hurt. His eyes misted, a haunted look came over his face, and he bit his lips to stop it from quivering.

For a few moments he was silent and sat there looking at his fingernails, slowly shifting his gaze from one hand to the other, a sign of being depressed. I hadn’t got an answer; I was waiting for him to speak. His head slanted to his right, his mouth opened to speak but closed again and no words came out.

What went wrong? I was still wondering.

*******************

Mr. Bandookwala had a way with women. I could deduce from the day I saw him that he was something of a ladies man. The tell-tale signs were there: the confident smile, the small inoffensive jokes, the gallant manners, the opening of doors, and the saying of pleasant things like, “you look nice” and “I like your pendant” which women like a lot. He knew how to give a compliment without sounding like he needed something in return for it. Most of all, he could make women laugh with jokes that didn’t make him look like a male chauvinistic pig. And this made me admire him even more because I didn’t have those qualities. When I cracked jokes women stared at me as if something was wrong, but when he made them, women hung to his every word.

There was a steady stream of desirable women dropping in to visit him in those days. They were stunning-looking girls who had had been models for obscure clothes and jewellery lines, and the novelty of their faces having worn down, now were working as ad space sellers for magazines and newspapers. I had to admit that they must have got their jobs because they were good looking and the newspapers were desperately looking to gain entry into busy executives’ cabins if they wanted to sell any space. Beauty sells, especially of the feminine kind. So one newspaper had decided that they would hire only “pretty girls” and on any given day there was a queue of “Pretty Girls” from the newspaper waiting to meet charming and successful Mr. Bandookwala, the bestow-er of the company’s advertisements.

I used to be jealous when he would sit for hours flirting with the “Pretty Girls.” One day I was slinking outside his cabin trying to catch his attention through a tiny peep hole. He was flirting with a comely space seller inside. I had to send the proof of the company’s private circulation magazine for printing and needed his final approval, a squiggly signature he would write with a circle around it on the proof. He had taken one look at the proof and had flung it on me in front of the desirable specimen of feminineness, “Why is there a common before ‘and,’ I told you I don’t want serial commas in my magazine.”

But those days I had detected nervousness, an obsessive streak in him, his inability to let things go before passing on to the next project, his inability to accept the inevitability of things others see as stumbling blocks that should, at all costs, be avoided. It seemed these compulsions were eating into his family life as the staff often found that the ritual of hand washing was going a bit too far. “Have you washed your hand?” he would ask his peon obsessively. Was he alright? Was his marriage going okay? What’s obsessing him so much as to insist that his peon wash his hands before he handled anything he ate or drank? He also confronted people instead of finding ways mitigating common human foibles. He was intolerant of mistakes. Maybe, being ambitious, he wanted to be seen as a dynamic man, a faultless man, but there’s a limit to such an obsession.

************

“What happened, Mr. Bandookwala?”

I knew I was being blunt, but if I was to entrust him with the marketing and corporate relations of the company I am working for, I needed to know. Or, else? Or, else, I could be out of a job and could demolish whatever career I had painstakingly built after I left Pinnacle Construction Ltd.

“Is everything okay on the home front?” I knew I was being inquisitive but I had to know if I was to consider his proposal at all. You never know about such high-profile people, what with families breaking up, people wanting more space and all?

“No nothing, they are fine. Why do you ask?”

Still I wasn’t convinced. He was lying. Something had happened of which I wasn’t aware. A man who was considered a mover and shaker in the realty industry, a man who was considered the spokesman of Pinnacle Construction Ltd., was now a depressingly remote person without the charisma I had once associated with him. It shamed me to think that I had thought of him as my role model.

And then I ended the appointment as too many things were queuing up to be done. I wanted to help him, but I felt I couldn’t trust him with the company’s business as too much was at risk. In corporate portals your reputation depended on the people with whom you were associated, and I didn’t want my company to be associated in any way with someone who had botched up his life, real bad.

Then from the corporate grapevine I knew the truth, the naked, shocking truth. There were rumours of a few affairs he had had on the sly. His wife had left him and he was living alone in Bombay.

Deafness

2009-02-22T05:38:00.001-08:00

DEAFNESS

Dear Diary,

Sachin sits there in the Café Coffee Day outlet and drinks cold coffee from a plastic bottle. He is a Ryzer. He wears glasses. He has two ear pieces dangling on his neck; obviously, he listens to a lot of music. Is this what online relationships are all about, I wonder? Meeting a total stranger, another Ryzer, in the neutral territory of a Café, over cold coffee?

“What do you do, Menka?” He asks.

“I work for an outsourcing unit, a part of the GPN network.”

“What?”

The music is loud, the speaker beside me is blaring some techno music. A pack of dogs and bitches create a mad howling outside. I am frazzled. A pandal opposite is playing a loud Aarti.

“I said I work in o-u-t-s-o-u-r-c-i-n-g.” I raise my voice.

“You are doing some course?” He shouts back. The dogs start howling again. One was even trying to mount a bitch. Oh, God! How embarrassing!

I know this would not be a meeting conducive to getting to know each other. His Ryze profile says he is a broker of some petroleum products, or something. He looks prosperous enough, wearing an Adidas tee-shirt and Woodlands shoes. But it is as if he is from another planet, sitting and sipping his cold coffee. We are worlds apart.

“How’s the petroleum business, Sachin?” I ask.

“Oh, petrol, oh, yeah, prices have shot up so much, no?”

“I meant the petroleum products business….” I shout at him.

Why does this man who seemed so nice and charming online look such an awkward oaf in real life? Just then the dogs start howling again, this time they are yowling with pleasure as they see a man bringing their dinner.

“Yeah, he does that every day; no wonder the dogs congregate here outside the Café. So crude, no?”

“To each their own. Some people consider dogs as gods,” that’s the first intelligible repartee from him. I laugh.

How can I connect with this man, talk to him, understand him, when the speakers are dinning into my ears, and the people at the next table are making such a racket? They are talking in what they think is an American accent and are wearing what they think are modern clothes. I can see them pausing a split second to make up their mind, because they have to act out a careless shrug and put on the psueo-accent. It irritates me.

“Don’t you think it’s noisy in here?”

The loudspeaker starts playing “Churaliya Hai” and the boys and girls start singing and clapping.

“Yes, nice song. From the film Yadon Ki Barat, no? I love it.”

I exhaust all my patience. I feel like running out in the street and screaming, but I control myself. The dogs are busy eating their dinner and the howling is now whines of contentment. How lucky they are, barking, whining, fucking, fighting whenever they feel like it, without the rituals of meeting online, carrying on a dialogue for months, and then, at last, meeting at a café which sounds like a Govinda movie.

“Are you deaf?” I ask, twisting my index finger in my ear elaborately.

“Yes I am fifty per cent deaf in both ears. Doctors say it’s caused by loud pub music and talking continuously on the cell phone.”

At last, he understood my miming. Poor chap, I feel sorry for him.

“Let’s get out of here,” I mime to him and take his hand.

More than anything he is in need of sympathy, and a bit more of silence and quiet. I don’t know why he wanted to meet me in a noisy café. We sit on a bench in a nearby park and talk for hours. When parting we agree to meet tomorrow. I just can’t wait. Dear diary: today I met the most interesting man I have ever met.

A SIMPLE UNCORRUPTED LIFE

2008-12-04T23:22:00.000-08:00

He looks old to me, his eyes are rheumy, and his hands are stiff on the steering wheel, which he holds the way I was taught to hold it – with both hands planted on either side. I put the taxi’s meter flag down for him, got in in the front seat alongside him, the old geezer seemed okay, driving smoothly, without jerks. Then I am in two minds: should I; shouldn’t I? I mean, I like to talk to taxi drivers, but not this one, suppose he kept silent and asked me to mind my own business.

But being the impulsive guy I am, I spoke.

“How long have you been driving a taxi?”

“Fifty years.” He warms up instinctively to conversation.

“Fifty years!” I say incredulously.

He nods.

“And how old are you now?”

“Seventy-six.”

My God! Brijpal Singh Yadav, that’s his name, is a marvel of modern medical technology. I am sure he is being kept alive with tablets and such like. At his age father wasn’t very alert, he was eating a lot of medicines at this age: blood pressure, diabetes, heart blockages.

“What do you eat? You must be having a lot of pills to be so healthy.”

“I have only vegetarian food, lot of milk, don’t drink, no cigarettes, an occasional Paan is all I have. I have never been to a doctor in twelve years.”

I calculate mentally. Fifty years meant it is the golden jubilee year of his taxi business. He must have been a cabby right from 1948, a year after independence, and nine years before I was born. Seventy-six years old meant he was born in 1932. My God! This man has been around even before Indian independence.

“How was it then?”

“Petrol was Rs 5 a gallon (a gallon is 4 litres), a new taxi (Fiat, Hillman, Morris Minor) was only Rs 10,000, and for just one anna (six paise) you could have a full meal. Taxi far started at a minimum of half a rupee. For five rupees you could eat in a hotel for a month. I used to earn around Rs 15 a day, on a good day, that is.”

Old man sure has seen better days, I think. Petrol is now something like 60 rupees a litre (I don’t know the latest, but close), today a new taxi costs around two hundred thousand, and a meal costs nothing less than Rs 50, five days’ earnings of the rheumy-eyed man driving me so steadily to my office. The minimum taxi fare is Rs 13 today. He has kept his taxi well maintained, its interiors are upholstered, there aren’t the usual wires sticking out of the panels.

“What you are talking!?” I am amazed by his sharp memory. It seems this man doesn’t forget, he is a storehouse of information.

“Yes, I know you are incredulous, things have changed so much. It’s a dog’s life now in this heat. Yet I have educated my three sons, one is in Life Insurance, one is in a bank, and another is in the stock trading business.”

“What was it like in those days?” I am excited. I want to probe deeper. Here is the rare man, I felt, who is willing to talk openly about his past. Most people, especially cabbies are too cynical to talk, their minds are like closed books that will never be opened. So was my father, he never spoke about his old days.

“All these roads and buildings you see didn’t exist in those days. New Marine Lines and what you call Nariman Point weren’t born, the sea came up to the Oval Maidan and Churchgate station.”

“You mean all these roads we are passing through were empty, er, was actually the sea?”

“No, there were a few buildings here; I don’t remember all of them. There was Malabar Hill, Colaba Causeway and Worli. Bombay was a small place then, not many people around.”

He must have been through the periodic riots that are a trade mark of the city that leave many dead in its wake, been through the bombs that blasted crazily through trains, the floods that rendered cars immobile for a whole night, killing many, many people. Yet he seems so complacent and untouched by life. If only I could live a life like him, a simple uncorrupted life, I am in the wishing mode. Yet there is hope: my father too lived a simple uncorrupted life like him and died at eighty-four.

“And what is your wish for the future?” I reach my office and couldn’t stretch our conversation any further. My world beckons me.

He thinks for a moment, his hands working to put the taxi’s gear into neutral.

“I want Bhagwan to grant me this simple wish: lift me up while I am still doing my job. I ask nothing else.”

I pay him a generous tip, turn the taxi’s meter flag twice so that it was again in the upright position and he wouldn’t have to exert himself to do it himself. I, too, want to live a simple uncorrupted life. I walk away.

Seema and Preet

2008-07-19T03:09:00.000-07:00

It rained continuously on July 27, 2005. Seema left the office at 4 p.m. as her friends warned her that trains wouldn’t be running on the harbour railway line alongside which her flat was situated. She lived in Sanpada, New Bombay. At 4 p.m. she finished her work at the telephones office where she worked and descended the stairs to MG Road, near VT station.

As she walked, sari hitched up, to VT station, she could see buses and cars piled up, clogging MG Road into an immovable glacier of metal. It was still raining heavily. Her mind was on Preet, her two-year old son, given to the care of Himanshu’s mother, Aai. She phoned Himanshu and told him she would be late. May be he could leave office early as he worked in New Bombay where Sanpada is situated. “Go early, so that Preet and Aai would have somebody with them. Aai can’t manage on her own” Himanshu went home early and reached around 6.30 p.m., when it was still raining.

When Seema reached VT she saw to her horror that the station was full of people, standing restlessly, worry written all over their faces. So she decided to board a bus, which was crawling outside in the evening traffic. It was still pouring. It was a 1 limited bus to Dadar. At least, it would reach her to Dadar and from there she could board a bus to New Bombay. She already started missing Preet. How couldn’t she?

Preet… my Preet… what are you doing, son? Don’t worry, mummy will come home soon.

The bus hardly moved. She could have overtaken it had she decided to walk. She decided to sit in it and read a magazine. Time flew. She didn’t know when she had crossed Crawford Market, Masjid and Byculla. Soon it was in Dadar, and the bus wouldn’t move any further. It was 8 p.m. and the roads were full of people, drenched, walking in the cascading rain.

At Dadar she boarded a 504 Limited bus to New Bombay. It came to Sion circle and lay there for around half an hour. The rain poured in buckets. She looked at the watch. 12 p.m. She and a woman she had befriended on the bus decided to get down and walk. They walked on the Eastern Express Highway bridge to Chembur. Her feet were aching, but she kept thinking of Preet, now firmly ensconced in the lap of Himanshu. How can it rain so much? Was there so much water in the clouds?

Preet, my preet, mera beta, mera raja… my king!

They crossed the Thane Creek bridge in the rain coming down in torrents. The watch showed 5 a.m. in the morning. She had been walking most of the night. Her feet were swollen, her hands holding her handbag felt tired and numb. There was a long line of people with her, all wet, cracking jokes and trying to forget their ordeal. She kept thinking of Preet. She called Himanshu on the cellphone.

Himanshu said, Preet was okay, don’t worry.

Preet, my son, my king, hope you aren’t crying and missing your mummy. How I miss cuddling you to me.

Preet was crying, Mummy, mummy, mummy…

Nothing Himanshu or Aai did would shut him up.

At Vashi Seema’s friend said goodbye and told her to take care of the potholes and manholes. She would be safe if she stuck towards the centre of the road. She carried on the highway full of people walking. A car offered a ride till Sanpada. At the station she crossed over to the East of Sanpada, under the railway bridge. From the distance she could see the tower of Sai Deep Society her apartment complex. She called Himanshu on the cellphone and told him that she will be home in fifteen minutes.

She quickened her steps, breathing heavily, her eyes misted with tears as she thought of Preet, Himanshu and Aaai.

Himanshu, thanks, re, for coming early… Aai thank you for being so nice and looking after Preet, my son.

She was closer to the building now. She was walking rapidly, almost running. Breath was issuing from her mouth like steam from a locomotive engine. She was also crying. Tears and snot streamed down her face. She closed the door of the lift and pressed the button to the fifth floor. The door of the flat was open as she opened the lift’s gate on the fifth floor. She could dimly see Himanushu, Aai and Preet at the door.

“Preet my son. Did you miss me? Come here, re, baba….”

And then her world blanked out.

--------------

(Probably apocryphal, this story is one of the several tragedies that are still being narrated as having happened during the deluge of July 27, 2005 in Bombay.)

Doesn't Accidents Happen to Others?

2008-02-16T21:55:00.001-08:00

10.30 a.m. I lie there in the spreading blot of red, no, blood is dark red, almost black. It is slippery, as jelly. The mangled metal, twisted and sharp, in my flesh here, a big splotch near my stomach, a thousand wounds smarting at the same time, it is as if I am being poked all over. I am tired and aching. Oh God, did this happen when I am on my way to Shirdi to visit and pay respect to you, my God?

It all happened with a deafening screech. I had only taken my eyes off the road briefly. Then my world kept turning, turning, turning, upside down. Then this eerie silence…. Accidents don’t happen to me. It happens to other people, I think. It happens in newspapers, movies, and television channels.

It’s sunny and hot outside. Cars, trailers, trucks whiz past in a mad rush. Why isn’t anybody stopping? They look, but they don’t care. Perhaps they are scared. Scared of this happening to them.

I look towards the back of the car; my mother is slumped on the rear seat. The car on her side is like a crumpled pappadam. A piece of metal has pierced right through her and the blood has drained from her body. The truck in the back was carrying steel rods; one of them has smashed through the rear window. Her skin is an unhealthy pallor and… a breath leaves her… the last breath.

Then she slumps, slowly, in slow movement, the slowness of death. Then her eyes dilate, and she looks upwards. She is dead.

The car is at an angle to the road. My wife, Suman is moaning beside me. But she is breathing regularly. I guess she will live. My son Vasu, is in her lap, and is sleeping. He hasn’t even woken up. She is at the bottom of the inclined car. So she is safe. Vasu’s breathing is regular except for a smooth snoring sound.

I look to the right of me. “Appa! Appa!” Appa is slumped in a sleeping position, against the side of the car that is not mangled. His mouth is open as if he was going to say something.

My sister, Janaki, in between Appa and Amma is bent forward. Oh, my God, I forgot about her. How could I?

“Janaki, Janaki,” I call. I crane my neck; she is slumped forward… I can’t see her. Is she dead?

No, she isn’t.

“Anna, Anna,” she says feebly, “My shoulder is splitting. Help me.”

I try to move. But my body is stiff with pain. I am at an angle, the upward angle. I guess if I move much the car will topple on its roof. I better wait for the welding torches, and metal cutter.

Why aren’t the police here?

******

My mind wanders… I am inside my glass cabin in my office. I can see my agents making calls… only the hum of so many voices. The office is flood lit at night. The idea is to keep people awake. I haven’t slept properly for many days. Sleep is a waste of time, I think.

Why are things so hazy? Hazy or bright? My agents go to sleep if there is a little corner with a bit of dusky shade. They have to work, make calls the whole night. I am with them twenty-four hours, seven days of the week. I need that promotion, that raise. That’s why I don’t sleep. Only then will I be able to pay back the entire loan of my flat in Seawood Estate, and the loan on the Maruti 800 car I bought. I want to pay them off, those vultures. Once when I had missed an installment they had come every day to harass Suman, till she became all upset. I will pay them at once, and then be a free man, free for life.

After that I can enjoy all the holidays in the world. Maybe, go on a world tour on a luxury liner, the advertisements of which keep appearing in the papers. Aaah… to bask in the sun on the deck of a luxury liner. Wasn’t that in that movie, Titanic? Well, that’s my dream. But that’s too far into the future, isn’t it?

I must not dream too much. Right now my agents are clamoring and are full of silly doubts. I have empowered my assistants to deal with them firmly but in a friendly way. I must gain their respect, at the same time their trust. Or they would leave. Most business process employees are fickle minded. If they don’t like something they leave. Turnover is very high, I must avoid a big turnover in my company. Yes, I call it my company, and my bosses are happy with me, my “proprietorial sense,” as they call it. I call them “guys” female, male, all of them.

“Guys, guys, work hard and achieve something in life. Your behavior is your responsibility, remember that. If you achieve your target, you have the satisfaction of a job well done. Otherwise you go back to some low-paid clerical job,” my voice is a bit bullying, but I can’t help it.

I sleep in the office. I eat in the canteen. I brush my teeth in the office toilet. I call home once a day and tell Suman it is all for them that I am doing this. After all, following my last promotion, I brought Appa, Amma and Janaki from Chennai to stay with us. The flat is a three-bedroom flat. I gave one bedroom to my parents. Another bedroom is for Janaki, and the remaining is our bedroom.

So Suman is not alone. She has Appa, Amma and Janaki to care about her. They like each other. Well, except mother’s bitching about Suman’s cooking. But that’s usual in any family. Besides, Vasu also loves his grandparents.

I have around a hundred agents working under me in three shifts. I am the operations manager and have a small glass cabin. From there I can see everyone who work under me. I give each batch of agents a pep talk as they begin work and then I am free. Then the floor supervisors take over. They are smart people and know what to do.

But I am a bit worried about the targets. This month’s sales show a downward trend on the graphs. I tell my agents I want results.

Why don’t results come?

Why doesn’t the police come?

***********

My flat in Seawood Estates weaves into my field of vision, as a hallucinatory dream. A dream in this heat?

My memory is a hazy… though oddly clear. The winter morning sun seeps in so gloriously. I want to take a day off. I lay on the sofa reading the paper. The project was finished. Well, the target wasn’t achieved. My boss agreed that best efforts were put in and that the results were acceptable. The general manager however is grumpy. Mean old man. He says I could have tried harder. There will always be criticism; however well one do ones job.

It was time I took a break from work. No, not for that world cruise. At least, a short vacation to a near destination. Appa suggested that we go to Shirdi as he believes in Shirdi Sai Baba.

“I have always wanted to visit Shirdi Sai Baba temple. I have always been an admirer of his.”

“Why Appa?”

“He is an icon of what India should be. Not divided but free and united.”

Well, Appa has been an idealist all his life. I don’t stand in the way of his idealism, or his happiness. He has done so much for me.

“Okay I will make arrangements, but have you asked Amma?”

He asks Amma.

“No,” Amma says, “my reading of the charts say we shouldn’t travel now.”

“Charts, charts, charts, all the time,” Appa teases her, “when will you give up your superstitions?”

And today, exactly a week later, she is in the back of the car, dead.

I had checked the tires of the car, I had it thoroughly overhauled, I filled it with petrol, I wanted to be cautious, as my entire family, my universe, was squeezed into that small vehicle. Then I studied the road maps and chose the best time to make the journey and back.

Two days later we were on the road. We took enough food for the journey. Amma and Appa both dislike hotel food. We took a lot of lemon rice, pickles, and sambhar in a bottle, which we ate in the car during a break at 9.30 a.m. Amma said she wanted to pray for a good boy for Janaki and offer some money to the temple. Appa said this was bribing God. Amma wouldn’t listen. Appa gave her the money.

Now in this eerie silence I see her lifeless form through the broken shards of glass, and disfigured metal. Appa seems to be in a comma. Does he know she is dead? Why, oh, why did this happen?

I am a good driver. We set off early in the morning for the seven-hour journey from Bombay to Shirdi through Manmad. I drive carefully. I let traffic pass. I am in no hurry. But I worry a lot about my job. Are my agents working? What is happening back in the office? Will I meet targets and deadlines?

When we reached Manmad, I felt a little sleepy. My eyes kept shutting though it was only ten in the morning. At one stage I caught myself veering away from the road. I shook my head, took a deep breath. Suman was too absorbed in Vasu to notice. But Amma noticed. She was a little nervous and fidgety.

“Suresh if you are tired we should stop and rest somewhere,” she said.

“What? When we are already there?”

“Tell him to stop, no?” She pleads with Appa.

“He is a grown up. Let him concentrate. You don’t disturb him,” is all Appa said. He always defends me. After all, I am his only son, his only hope.

I take a deep breath and squint at the road ahead. It is hot. It is unusually hot for this winter morning. Again I feel a numbness creep through me. No, it isn’t sleep. Is it an attack? I am passing through rough country. There wouldn’t be a doctor or a hospital within hours of drive in this place.

Again that feeling is creeping, crawling, this numbness in the limbs. Numbness in the hot afternoon. I shake my head. I sit forward, lean on the steering wheel.

Then I break into sweat, cold and congealing in the hot afternoon!

There’s a big hole in the road ahead. Damn! I hadn’t noticed it as I was negotiating a turn. I slammed the brakes hard.

Screeeeeeecccchhhh!

We all screamed as the truck from behind smashed the car and sent us spinning like a top. Swirling, toppling, a series of loud thumps and thuds, and now I am in this sideways position. I wriggle, I contort, I can’t move. I am trapped in metal.

Then this eerie silence, like I am having a nightmare. I pinch myself. No, this is reality. I must hold still. But, how, why does it happen to me? Me of all the people in the world.

Some of those passing cars must have informed the police. They will come. They will come with welding torches and metal cutting equipment as I have seen in the movies. But accidents happen to others don’t it? Amma was right. Now, Amma is dead.

I can hear the police sirens.

The Cobbler

2007-11-22T04:34:00.000-08:00

Raman sat on a small wooden bench in the small makeshift hovel while the cobbler was replacing the soles of his shoes. His shoes tended to chafe fast and this one had developed cracks, and the sides had given way to expose socks. He had used the pair for close to ten years, and it was full of stitches and leather patches. He decided it was time to give it a new sole, in which case it would last another five years. This man was his favorite cobbler, sitting by the intersection of the two main roads of Belapur, and he opened early and closed late. The other cobblers in the locality were all lazy and opened at 10 a.m. and closed at 6 p.m. for their nightly drink of bewda.

On previous occasions their exchanges had revealed that he was from Uttar Pradesh, and he was a farmer too. Twice every year he would go to his village to look after his crop.

“Bhai-saab Make it majbooth, so that it will last me a life time,” Raman said to the cobbler.

“Yes I will.”

The hovel was made of plastic sheets held by bamboo sticks, in which rested a trunk which contained the cobbler’s implements. There were assorted leather sheets, rubber tubing and other accessories lying around. A policeman came to the small hovel. He wanted his shoes polished. He was as dour, humorless man, and was breathing heavily, and cleared his throat often.

Policeman’s shoes were polished by the cobbler’s assistant, a thin individual with a high-pitched falsetto voice, more like a woman’s. He seemed an honest policeman for paid the cobbler before he walked to his beat position at the intersection. Raman could see him look at all the vehicles that passed, and occasionally gesture to a vehicle that was about to break some law.

The morning was hot and Raman could see people on the way to work. There were cute-looking girls wearing chappals, some of them so worn that he wondered why girls took no care of their feet. They may wear the best dresses but on their feet would be much-repaired sandals from a cheap road-side vendor. There were nicely filled out girls, whose bodies would give a “twooooingggggg” sound like a tuning fork if you even touched them. They vibrated all over as they walked their self-aware walk. But Raman knew they were all bitchy and very hard to please, something to do with their genes. His wife was bitchy, too.

“What should I charge for the bananas?” The cobbler’s assistant asked.

Then Raman noticed a basket of bananas that sat beside the hovel.

“It’s twenty rupees for a dozen, but you can give it away for eighteen, that would give us a profit of three rupees,” the cobbler said.

But there were also apples, and berries laid out on a wooden plank, covered by a cloth that looked like a woman’s.

“So, you are into the fruit business.”

“Yes. I am. It belonged to my wife.”

“Where is she now?”

“She left me.”

Raman’s breath caught, sweat had formed on his brow, and he wiped his face with a handkerchief. He somehow managed to hide his embarrassment.

“With whom?”

“With a havildar.”

“That one?” Raman asked pointing to the policeman who was standing in the middle of the road directing traffic. He was now wearing a cheap goggle to protect his eyes against the afternoon glare.

“No. Not that one. He is a friend.”

“You mean the one who ran away with your wife?” Raman asked.

The cobbler looked irritated.

“What saab? How can I call the man who ran away with my wife a friend? But it happened and I accept it.” He turned his face and spat, not bothering to get up.

He had torn off the old sole and was fitting a new sole to Raman’s shoe. Somehow he seemed willing to talk. Replacing the sole would fetch him Rs 150, a good amount. Raman was curious to know his story, how it all happened.

“She just walked in one day and sat here next to my shop to sell fruits, she was pretty and about half my age, and beautiful, aah, the sort of girl who would go “Tooiiinggggg” like a tuning fork if touched,” he giggled and spat at the spot where she presumably sat.

“Her name was Suman,” he added.

Oh God! This is a lucky bastard, this tyke of a man, Raman thought.

“Then our love started, in between cobbling shoes and selling fruits.”

So this man, this nondescript, rough-looking man who chewed tobacco had an affair with a girl half his age? His teeth were protruding. But about love’s caprices Raman knew plenty. Wasn’t he one of its victims?

“You had a love affair?”

“Yes, it happened, just happened. Not like they show in the movies, initially it was just talk, and then it went on to intimacies. Then I married her in front of a temple in the presence of a priest. Then she came to live in my zhopda.”

Raman knew that the richest and the poorest were often the most promiscuous. They marry and leave their partners, and go away when they find someone they like a little more. It was the middle class that remained stuck to their ideals of morality and monogamy. This man probably had a wife in his native Uttar Pradesh, and had made one here too. Enjoying life, Raman thought.

“Initially it was a good arrangement. Our business began doing well and we put that phone booth over there. We had three people working for us: two people at the phone booth and one to help with the fruits.”

That’s a typical Indian enterprise, the roadside vendor. There’s money to be made in a small hovel by the road, in the swelter, exposed to smoke, heat, dust, and the streets. They sold anything from fruits, telephone calls, and services like mending of shoes. This man is an entrepreneur; he must have made a lot of money.

“Then it all began to go wrong. When she first came here and I gave her this space, she said she didn’t have any family, just a wandering fruit seller. And there was this havildar, like that one there, who would stand at the intersection and come to buy fruits and have his shoes mended. I was suspicious of him from the start. She started flirting with him saying he was from her village in Ratnagiri and spoke her language – Marathi.”

The shop assistant called out in his effeminate voice. He wanted to know how much he would have to charge for one and a half dozen bananas, at Rs 18 a dozen.

“Twenty-seven, you lazy idiot, bewakoof,” he shouted to him.

“One fine day she said she wanted to go to the market to buy fruit and didn’t come back. The havidar also was not to be seen. So I went to the police station to write a complaint, and told them one of their havildars had done this to poor me.”

“Did they write the complaint?”

“No. They laughed at me and asked me for papers to show that I had married her and to show proof of her identity. I didn’t know a thing about my Suman. I had never bothered to ask. I have a wife in Uttar Pradesh and she hardly talks to me when I visit her twice a year.”

“You were at fault keeping two wives; do you know it is a crime?”

“What about us poor people, saab, we have no fixed life like you people. We go where we please, make any woman as our wife; we don’t know all the kanoon-binoon.”

“Oh, okay,” Raman grunted as he watched the cobbler give his shoes a firm hammering on the cobbler’s shoe last.

“And you made no further attempts to contact her?”

“No. But I know she will come back. She has to come back one day.”

Raman was surprised, “How do you know?”

“She was pregnant with my child when she left.”

“How do you know she will come back?”

“That harami Havildar will not bring up another’s child, would he? He would soon realize he had been cuckolded! Meanwhile, I will keep running this fruit shop for her.”

Raman’s wife, too, had run away with his only child. The man who seduced her was a clerk in the revenue service. On evening Raman returned from work and found a note on the kitchen table.

“I can’t stand your stingy ways anymore. I am leaving you,” it had said.

I still have hope, Raman thought.

He paid the cobbler, wore his freshly-soled shoes and walked out into the hot sun. The shoes felt odd on his feet.

Seats, Red Spit, and Being Steve Smith

2007-08-05T22:10:00.002-07:00

The SUV drops me at Vashi station. The Vashi Infotech Park is just above it, a tired-looking structure in the evening sun. I can see it’s seven towers rising like some futuristic monument, no, some kind of tomb, I think. Manju, my girlfriend, and Satish, my friend, aren’t with me today. So, my mood is out. I climb the stairs alone to our floor.

I, Manju and Satish travel together in the vehicle to the outsourcing unit where we work. We stick to each other, perhaps, from habit. We have to. We also go for movies together. We smoke when we travel, and Satish sometimes bring something to drink, like Coke and rum mixed in a plastic bottle. We all sip from that only. We aren’t as high-funda as the rest of the call center gang. But we stick together and nobody bothers us. When they go for rave parties, we go to the movies or to a pub. Cool, na?

Our floor in the huge park made of granite is dirty; there are red spit marks. Dust and cobwebs hang everywhere. By the way, the inside of the call center is also called “floor.” The man - okay, okay, a boy, hardly my age - who manages the floor is called “floor manager.” From the tube lights the rays filter down through the cobwebs, the air is thick and musty. The elevator is nearby, but I don’t take it. It is littered with coffee cups, chewing gum wrappers, and tea bags. The roof of the elevator hangs down on a screw and, if it collapses, it can kill someone. Who cares? Life and labor are cheap, so, cool.

The Vashi station downstairs is full of flies. There is a steady rumble when the trains come in from Victoria Terminus and Thane and people disgorge like some fishing net being opened and the fish being let out. And they writhe like fish too. Really! A few dogs lie about in stuporous sleep. Wonder what they dream about, dogs, I mean. I think they are so lucky. Eat, sleep, eat, sleep, like there’s no care in the world.

People walk about listlessly. There are announcements booming from the loudspeakers. I can’t make out anything that is being said. A few policemen sit around and doze. They are supposed to check for explosives. Why aren’t they? I know they don’t have the guts to check me. They only check a few grimily clad individual from the villages who wear unwashed clothes. Then they ask them for money to let them go. Rascals!

Our boys and girls are playing cricket in the corridor. They aren’t supposed to, but they do. Who is there to stop them? The security men tried, but found the young, well-built boys too rough and smart. That’s how we are, rough and smart. The other offices have complained but it’s no use. How can they fight the gang of ruffians, rough- and wild-looking boys with strapping muscles? We all build our muscles. We all need to look good, like we are Salman Khans, or, the girls won’t even look at us. We all wear dirty baggy trousers and round frayed neck tee shirts. That’s okay, grunge is in fashion the more grungy we are, the better the girls like it. We wear our hair long, shoulder length, and often it is streaked blonde.

**********

I meet Satish. He tells me that a new floor manager has been appointed and that he is very rude and aggressive.

-What’s it to me. I do my work and go home.
-He is going to f*** our asses.
-Then I f*** him back.
We laugh.

Almost all companies in the complex are named infotech this, or, infotech that. Information technology. That’s what they mean. Everything depends on one thing – information - and we are the guys who are giving information to the world. We, just out of college, our beards recently grown into goatees, hair long, our jeans dirty, our shoes grimy, working in the airless office we call “the floor” are the ones running companies in the US. Papa detests the look. But he is old-fashioned and wears safari suits and eats betal nut all the time, and, and spits on the walls. Yetch!

- Imagine me wearing a safari suit, I tell Satish.
- he,he,he, we laugh.

I still remember how papa threw a fit when I told him I was going to work in a call center. He is a hard and careworn man. He has laugh lines on his face like Martian craters, you know, like the ones through which - according to National Geographic - water used to flow at one time. Don’t ask me, I don’t know when.

He says I being his only son, and all, am going to inherit his spare parts business. He was just furious. I know. But I have my own ideas, compulsions. My friends were all in call centers and I wanted to be there with them. Besides the girls in call centers are really the forward types. They give. You know what I mean? They really, truly, give, not like the girls in our locality who guard their virginity as if it were some buried treasure. Not that they are virgins either. I know everything.

**********

So I am picked up every evening at 7 p.m. and am dropped back in the morning at 8 a.m. by the ugly toad of a vehicle. But I have fun. The night shift is the best part of working in a call center. There’s lots of music and fun in the cafeteria, and my girlfriend Manju and I go and sit for some time on the ledge that faces the Thane Creek. She’s not the kissing kind, so I don’t force her. Yaar, you have to be careful with these girls, you know. And she wants protections when we do “it.” It’s okay with me. Some “infection-vinfection,” she says. See, she doesn’t want to get them. What the f***, if that’s what she wants, man, then that’s what she gets.

Satish and I have a drink from a coke bottle before our shift starts. I can hold my drink and nobody in the office knows we are drunk. I make calls. I am super-confident when making calls. In fact, the drinks make me confident, that’s my secret. “Yea, partner,” I high-five Satish in the office. After all, those idiots who are sitting in America; they can’t reach out and slap me through the phone wires can they? So I assume the persona of “Steve Smith” and I talk unhurriedly, spelling out each syllable as if the man or woman at the other end is some dumb f***all creature. I make them calls, calls, calls, and when it’s break time my girlfriend and I join the gang playing cricket, or, badminton, and we have fun.

And I see the new floor manager as he comes out of his cabin. He seems as if he is in a big hurry. All he can talk is targets, targets, targets. Man, he is smart, an MBA type from the ayeayeyem, as Satish says. He gave us big, big lectures on productivity and rate per seat and income and overheads. Lots of bullshit, we all laugh. Don’t say all that crap to us. We know you people are fooling us, cheap labor, huh? Talking as if we don’t know, eh?

**********

Sometimes around that time, I don’t know when, Manju tells me she is going to leave the job. It seems the new floor manager spoke rudely to her when she bungled a call. I am shocked. I am so like crying, crying, you know! I am so very sad, sad only. Also, her parents don’t like her working.

-Even my parents don’t like me working in a call center, I say.
-The new floor manager is a madman, yaar, I don’t want to work with him. But we will meet, you know, Sandeep.
-Yes, we will meet, sure, how can I forget you?

She cries. That day we go out to the multiplex to see Spiderman3. She cries and cries a lot burying her head in my chest. I haven’t seen anyone crying so much. I don’t even watch the movie. Why are women like that? My mom also does that. Man, you should have seen her when grandfather died. It could have filled buckets. Honest, man.

**********

That night when I go to office, Manju isn’t on her seat. I feel like my heart has been torn apart by a nail driven into it. So much pain in life, no? I can’t bear it. I cry inside but keep working. That’s when the new floor manager calls a meeting with all of our team leaders and us. He says production is down since we are making less calls. Fewer calls mean, less money, as simple as that. Less money, he pauses, means he is going to cut seats.

That’s what he calls us, “seats.” As if we are some wooden benches made by some carpenter. A**hole he is.

That day I am so upset, I forget to call Manju. She also doesn’t call me. When I got home my papa is again in the lecturing mood. I look at his balding head, gray hair, laugh lines that run crazily over his face. He sits there in his boxer shorts and lectures, and lectures. Do I want to be like him?

-At your age I was going from office to office hawking spare parts. I didn’t have a shop or an office then.
-So what, papa? I can be better in this line than you. Look at my manager. He draws a salary of 100,000 a month. I know I am much better, he is such a freak.
-What did you say? “Freak” where did you get that word.
-That’s how we talk dad. F***ing freak.
That got him so mad she started shaking.
-Get out of my house. I don’t want you here.

That pisses me off. I then go to Satish’s house in a huff. We go out and drink a beer and smoke some ciggies. (Yes, that’s what we call cigarettes.) And we drink a lot of Coke with it and eat a lot of chicken. It’s like this only when we are upset. We have all good, good things when we are disturbed. It makes us feel good. Then I remember Manju and call her.

-Manju sorry I didn’t call.
-It’s okay.
-You should have called, no, yaar? Don’t wait for me to call; you know things in office aren’t that good.
-How am I to blame? I was mood out, no?
-What mood out, mood out? What are you doing at home? Sleeping all day?
-None of your business.
-Don’t talk to me like that. Arre, what happened to you, you were not like this only, no?
-Sorry, Sandeep. I wanted to tell you earlier. Now, I have another friend.
-What?

The cellphone beeps. She has disconnected. I tried calling again. She just disconnects. I send short messages. She doesn’t reply. I am mad with anger. I don’t know what all I call her. I curse her. I send a messaging calling her a bitch. She doesn’t reply. I guess it’s the end, end of our relationship.

***********

That night I sleep in Satish’s house, as he has a room to himself. Next day I go to work from Satish’s home. I can see his dad and mom don’t like me the way they look at my frayed jeans and loafers. What do they know that it’s the fashion these days? I bought this torn jeans for twelve hundred and fifty bucks, yaar. What do they know these old buggers? A**holes, like my papa. Thinking they are so nice because they dress nice and clean? And they think I am a bad influence on their son’s life? I can feel their hatred. They really hate me for spoiling their son. As if their son is some saint or something. He is the one who brings drinks to the office.

I go to the call center. I am depressed because of the incident with Manju. But I concentrate. I got to achieve the target so the company gets money. At midnight I get a call from that short, skinny little girl in human resource.

- What’s the problem, I am working.
- Can you come please? She says it urgently.

They are so polite, “please” and all.

When I go to her office, she is all nice and asks me to sit down. I sit facing her. I know something is up, or, going to happen.

-Well as the Manager-sir said we are cutting down on seats. That word “Seats” again.
-I know. I am cool.
-We have identified you as one of the unproductive seats. I am sorry.

I feel like grabbing her hair and punching her face. But I control myself. What’s the use? At least, I am out of this dump. I coolly come back, high-five my friends and say I quit. I am cool. I write a resignation and mail the short, skinny human resource girl.

It’s not the end of the world after all. Let Manju go her way; I will get a hundred girls like that every day. I will miss playing cricket in the corridor, and the pizza parties, however. I don’t mind. I am okay. I have my options. I can join my dad’s spare parts business. I might wear safari suits and even eat betal, and leave those long red spit lines on the walls one day, who knows?

Seats, Red Spit, and Being Steve Smith

2007-08-05T22:10:00.001-07:00

The Girl Who Fell in Love with Shahrukh Khan

2007-05-05T00:03:00.000-07:00

“Ha Chokri tho nathi sudharvani che!” Baa says in Gujarati from the kitchen, in between flattening dhokla with a wooden roller. This girl will never improve, never!

“Look here, Bapu, father of my daughters, Cricket or Shahrukh Khan movies; she will go mad, and drive us mad one day.”

“Leave her alone,” is all what Bapu would say.

Parul is seated on the doorstep of their modest house in Ghatkopar in a lowly housing complex listening to the radio which is playing the song “Badi Mushkil Hai,” from Anjam. She likes Anjam in which Shahrukh Khan leaps over cars to flirt with Madhuri Dixit. She likes the song particularly because of her favourite star: his raw energy, the twinkling of his eyes, his dimpled cheeks, his full lips, “Oh, what a man, hai, hai!” she exclaims.

She watches all his movies, wheedling compact discs from friends to watch them on her friend Pallavi’s compact disc player. Her father can’t afford discs or players, he is too poor. She fancies him playing negative roles that none of the others stars would touch: serial killers, and characters veering towards the dark side of life.

“I am fond of him because he has unconventional looks, he isn’t tall and strikingly handsome, is good-looking in a homely way, which adds to his charm,” she tells Pallavi.

“But aren’t you aiming too high, dear girl?” Pallavi taunts.

“Doesn’t matter I know he is made for me. If not in this life, in the next,” Parul says. She believes in Karma and rebirth.

“He is such a super star and you….” Pallavi doesn’t complete the sentence and Parul knows what she means. She has acne on her face, and she is fat.

“She is in love with a star,” her elder sister Purvi teases.

“Why are you troubling my girl so much,” Bapu says between reading the newspaper. He is a writer and a dreamer that is when he is not teaching in a nearby school.

“But what if she fails in her final B.A. exams? You will responsible,” Baa accuses Bapu.

But Parul Kapadia keeps dreaming of Shahrukh. How his hair falls over his eyes, how his cheeks dimple into those deep crags of the flesh, how shapely and attractive his lips are.

Oh! How she wishes she could meet him once!

*********

Then along comes Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, hosted by Sharukh Khan. Parul knows this is her chance. She sits beside the phone and dials the contest number, for hours. Her fingers ache. But she knows she can, at least, be in a room with him, even if she doesn’t get to the “Hot Seat.”

Her mind is a whirl with the hum of the telephone’s recorded messages repeating in her mind. She imagines Shahrukh talking to her in her sleep, his lips forming the words like magic. She imagines talking to him when going to college, when in class, and when she is at home listening to the music of his movies.

She wants to win the KBC quiz contest and take Bapu and Baa and Purvi out of the miserable housing complex they live in. She wants to see her father, Bapu, happy.

“Soo thaye gayo? What’s wrong with you people? She has a dream, that’s all.” Bapu would scold Baa and Parul. Baa is old-fashioned and superstitious, both her daughters know, but on this she has Purvi’s support.

“If she goes and does something unusual, then don’t blame me,” Baa warns.

Parul knows Baapu like Baa doesn’t entirely believe in her and thinks this is a passing phase, something all girls go through. But she knows he believes in the power of dreams, how dreams are made of the substance of the mind. It is the force of the mind that makes her dream and, if she strongly believes in her dream, her mind can achieve anything.

*********

Unusual is what Parul does. She skips meals and sits for hours holding the telephone in her lap, dialling.

“Did you get through, son?” Bapu would ask from his easy chair in the small verandah of their house. Since he doesn’t have a son he calls Parul “son” considering her the son he couldn’t have.

“No, Bapu, not this time. But, next time when the phone lines open I surely will,” she says, rubbing her bleary eyes.

“Son, why are you doing this? See how angry Baa and Purvi are. We aren’t getting any phone calls because you dominate the phones so much.”

“They don’t understand. They just don’t understand me, or, what my heart says. Shahrukh is a really nice man and I have a feeling I will meet him, talk to him.”

Bapu looks at her earnest face, her misty eyes, her chubby cheeks and his heart melts for her.

“Do whatever is right, son. I will support you, I am with you.”

************

Then it happened, without warning. It marked the end of all her expectations and the beginning of all her fascinating dream, now slowly coming true. When she is selected to appear in KBC quiz contest; she dances all over the house, teasing Baa and Purvi.

Two nights ago she had dialled the phone numbers till her fingers had grown numb and her sleep-deprived brain had become blank. “Next one, next one…” she had kept goading herself. She knew no telephone line could be engaged for ever. Then she got a recorded message with a simple question to which she gave the right answer.

And so things begin to happen! She receives a letter from the KBC organizers with the dates and details of when and where she has to appear for the show.

“Don’t worry, you will never get past the first round,” Purvi says.

“Yes I will, I will tell Shahrukh to blow you a kiss,” Parul replies.

“That is if you first get through, no?”

“You wait and see,” Parul says.

“You lucky girl,” he friend Pallavi says. Pallavi is happy for her.

********

On the day of the quiz Bapu escorts Parul to the studio of KBC. She is amazed by how a television studio looks. The shooting is done during the day. She had imagined it would be done at night as it was broadcast daily at 9 p.m. A shooting takes hours of preparation. There are the studio hands, there are bright lights, there are people hurrying about shouting instructions. Then there is make-up, and all seem to pass in a whirl.

Then Shahrukh makes his appearance. He looks so relaxed and jovial; all nervousness disappears when she looks at him. Here is the man she truly loves, and the man of her dreams, now right before her. Her Shahrukh! She can reach out and touch him if she wants.

Then the opening round of “Fastest Fingers First” starts after the previous episode’s contestant withdraws after winning Rs 650,000.

“Arrange these films of Shahrukh Khan, that’s me (Oh! He dimples so sweetly!) in the ascending order in which they were released. Meaning starting from the earliest, arrange these films of mine in the order they were released,” his super-confident voice rings out.

Parul swallows hard. She can’t believe it! Luck is on her side. She has seen all his films, and knows the years in which they were released.

A. Darr B. Anjam C. Swades D. Mohobatein

Her fingers fly on the screen; she is done in a flash. BADC. Then a pause when she can hear her heart beat, her ears ring, and the music pauses for effect.

“The winner is Parul Kapadia, who answered in 3.02 seconds, congratulations Parul!” Shahrukh has called her by her name.

**********

It feels like a dream when Shahrukh hugs her. She walks to the hot seat as if she is in a dream. He wears a nice-looking suit that looks expensive and his face and skin are glowing as he looks at her. She is going to ask him to marry her, she is determined.

The first few questions, till she reaches Rs 20,000, are simple. She knows all the answers.

“From now on Parul the questions get a bit tough,” he says, “are you nervous?”

“Yes,” she mumbles.

“Main Hoon Na? I am there for you. Main Hoon Na is one of my films. Do you know that?”

“Yes.”

Then he reaches across and shakes hands with her. His hand is a little moist in hers.

“Shahrukh, I have a request,” she says, her voice tremulous. A silence falls over the audience.

“Tell me,” he says with all his usual earnestness.

“I want you to greet my father Bapu, who is here, my mother Kantaben Kapadia, my sister Purvi Kapadia, and my friend Pallavi.”

Shahrukh greets Bapu with a namaste. Then he turns his shining eyes towards the camera.

“Kantaben, Purvi and Pallavi, I hope you are watching this. Here’s lots of love and, muaaaaa,” he blows a kiss towards the camera.

A twitter passes through the audience.

“Shahrukh I want to ask you a question.”

“Yes, go ahead.” He looks slightly puzzled; one eyebrow shoots up effortlessly, eloquently, as she has seen in his movies.

“I know how much you love your wife Gauri, but I am in love with you, too. I want to marry you.”

The audience looks on, stunned. But the star doesn’t look ruffled and it seems as if he has met with such girls, with similar requests, that too, often.

“Yes, I will marry you,” he beams, his dimples cutting fissures down his cheeks.

“Y-y-y-yes?” she is ecstatic and couldn’t control her voice from breaking.

“Yes, not in this life, but in the next one.”

Her heart almost misses a beat. Her head throbs, drowning the audience’s laughter.

“That’s enough for me. I believe in Karma and after life. I will wait for you, Shahrukh, promise?”

“Promise.”

*********

That answer makes her happy, and she glows all over. Her mind works faster; even the answers come fast to her mind. For the Rs 1, 250,000-question she is asked:

Q: What did Galvin Corporation first manufacture under the brand name Motorola?

A. Battery Eliminator B. Walkie Talkie C. Cell Phone D. Car Radio.

She knows it’s a trick question. Motorola’s famous brand is Cell Phones, but they still manufacture all the other products. The question is what they manufactured first under the brand name. Cell phone is the obvious answer as Motorola is a popular brand. She answers “C.”

Shahrukh is playful now. Something tells her she is wrong. She has exhausted all her life lines.

“Shall I freeze “C”?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says seriously while the star, her love, tries to create tension with his trademark goofiness.

“No. I think it is “D” Car Radios,” she says. Epiphany has struck.

“Shall I freeze “D”?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, why did you change your mind? Parul, you were playing so well, you got all your answers right. I told you to be careful. I told you, if you gave the wrong answer you would lose a lot of money.”

Gone, all that money gone in a second! Parul is disappointed and angry with herself. She has acted stupidly and has lost a lot of money, and her dream of a better house for her family is never going to be a reality. The handle of the Hot Seat seems to slip from her grip. Her eyes can hardly meet his. Her throat feels as if furry creatures are clawing at it.

“However, if you had answered “C,” you would have been wrong; “D” is the right answer.”

Was she right?

“You win Rs 1,250,000. Congratulations!”

Yes, she is right!

The next question for Rs 2,500,000 is:

Which cricketer’s autobiography is titled: Beyond Ten Thousand – My Life Story?

A. Sunil Gavaskar B. Allan Border C. Steve Waugh D. Brian Lara

Parul is a cricket addict. She knows it is Allan Border who has written that book. But she hesitates.

“What importance does Rs 2,500,000 play in your life?” he asks flirtatiously.

“I want to take you with me on a Hawaiian holiday,” she says.

He pretends he is touched, places both palms over his heart and says, “Jaaneman, sweetheart, my loving wife in my next life, what is the answer?”

Oh, how her heart beats when she hears him call her “sweetheart.” How she would have liked to hug and cling to him for that. She is prepared to give all that she has won, to be his, only his. How her eyes betray her love for the man who sits opposite her, his eyes twinkling in the studio lights, his face a halo of charm, calm and friskiness.

But she has to help Bapu, Baa and Purvi. They need the money to move to a decent house away from the lowly housing complex in Ghatkopar.

“The answer is “B” Allan Border.”

“Congratulations Parul! “B” is the right answer. You have won Rs 2,500,000. Now you can take me on my Hawaiian holiday.”

The next question is tough and Parul is so excited, doesn’t remember what it is. She is ecstatic and in a frenzied state of mind. She says she would quit rather than take any risks.

As Sharukh Khan, the star, her love, envelopes her in a warm hug for the last time she is wondering, does he mean what he says? But she believes in Karma and the eternal chain of death and rebirth. She plans do a lot of good work with the money that she has won. Then when she is reborn he would be hers, in her next life.

As they exit the studio into another world Bapu looks at her and the cheque she is holding and says, “Son, the power of dreams. Didn’t I tell you to trust in the power of dreams?”

ANAIDA

2007-03-23T10:06:00.001-07:00

I am Anaida. People call me “Ida.” Blossom auntie and Percy uncle call me “An idiot.” I live alone in a flat on the first floor of a building in Bandra’s East Indian quarters beside Andrew’s bakery and cake shop and Bhatlekar’s betel-and-tobacco shop. I have lived there all my life at the intersection of two meandering narrow streets with buildings like mine on either sides dating back to the British times. The buildings are all greenish with age and mine is the only one with a lot of bougainvillea tumbling out of it. My bougainvillea. You will recognize them easily. I also have dandelions and some chrysanthemums.

I have lived among the bustle of the cries of trinket vendors, the clang of ice cream sellers’ bells and loud cries of the bread and pastry vendors all my life. From the balcony of my flat I have a good view of the intersection. I sit on a high stool in the balcony and look at the world passing by. I don’t go out and play with Margaret like I did. Margaret is my friend from St Andrews Convent School, where I studied.

I am alone because dada and mamma died two years ago, one after the other. Dadda died first of a heart attack and mamma immediately after that because of some viral infection. When dada died mamma wept a lot. After that she stopped eating regular meals and started wasting away. Blossom auntie brought her food, but she never ate. I know she was going to die. Cunning Percy uncle wanted her to die because being dadda’s only brother he could claim the flat for himself. But I am my dadda’s daughter. I wouldn’t let go of my beautiful flat with the bougainvillea and dandelions in different colors of the VIBGYOR spectrum. I studied that in school, about VIBGYOR, which then seemed like a nice word to know.

I work for a publishing company in Colaba. I am a typist. I type envelopes for the company whole day. All I do is type envelopes and addresses. I am surprised there are so many people to send these envelopes to. But Baretto, my supervisor, tells me the company’s income comes from these envelopes. If these envelopes don’t go we don’t get subscriptions and if we don’t get subscription the boss can’t pay us salaries. So I type and type and type till my fingers ache and ache. But I don’t mind as long as they pay me a salary that will pay my milk and bread bills.

I board bus number 81 to work. The bus route is long. But I take a seat by the window and watch people, my favorite pastime. I like to watch people. I like to watch the gleaming cars cruising past the dingy buildings of Mohammed Ali Road and the racket the drivers make by honking their horns at traffic intersections. Sitting in a bus I feel alone and at peace with the world, just like I feel peaceful when I sit in my balcony with my bougainvillea and my dandelions.

When I reach my office Mr Baretto is ready with the addresses I have type.

“These addresses are live people. Consider them people who eat and breathe. We depend on their business. They are givers of our food. Don’t make mistakes. It is easier not to make a mistake than to correct mistakes. I may not check an address and it may go to the wrong address and we will lose business. Right? Agreed?” He would say.

I would nod my head.

But I make mistakes and Baretto would get angry.

“Can’t you do anything properly, men? How many times I tell you to be careful. You don’t listen only.”

He is like Uncle Percy. Only uncle Percy is worse. Uncle Percy looks like the wrinkled and dour gremlins one sees in movies. He owns a community newspaper and is a compulsive gambler. He also drinks a lot and his face is red and florid like a ripe tomato.

In the evening I take the same bus back to Bandra, waiting with office workers like me for the crowds to thin so that I can go comfortably. Well that is my life since dada and mama passed away leaving me all alone in this big world. Dadda had warned me several times to be careful about the “big world” outside. He said “big world” with a roll of his eyes and pursing of lips below his Clark Gable moustache, as if the world was a frightening place. I am not afraid of anyone not even the “big world.”

Actually mama was sicker than dada and would have died sooner hadn’t she been blessed by her Wednesday Mahim novenas. She offered novenas for five full years, that too without a break. She would be there every Wednesday at Mahim Church praying for dada and me.

But when dada died she lost all interest to live. It was like she had no purpose in life. She became like a vegetable you buy from the market, getting up only to go to the toilet. She died in the toilet and neighbors had to break open the door to remove her still body. He face was all contorted and wet with sweat. I felt her hand and it twitched once, that was all. She was suffering from a viral fever for many days and hid it from me.

Soon after the funeral uncle Percy and aunt Blossom came with Fr Alphonso of St Andrews church with so much concern on their faces. I knew their ploy very well. Uncle Percy has very narrow eyes and mama told me never to trust people with narrow eyes.

“Anaida, we will take care of you, no, girl? You can live with us, like our own daughter,” Uncle Percy said.

“See, we are the only ones you have got,” aunt Blossom said.

I said I wouldn’t leave my flat with the lovely bougainvillea and dandelions. Who will water them if I left? If I don’t water it for one day it looks all wilted. Uncle Percy wouldn’t water it. He would sell the flat and then put the money in his loss-making community newspaper and pay off his gambling debts.

“Who will take care of my bougainvilleas,” I asked them.

“What men, bougainvillea, bougainvillea, as if bougainvillea is more precious than your blood relatives.”

“To me it is.”

I didn’t go with them because I would have to live with cousin Martin. Cousin Martin is drug addict and a rough man. He also drinks. I know I won’t be safe anywhere with him around. And when Uncle Percy and aunt Blossom get drunk what ill I do. They fight a lot when they are drunk. All three of them are capable of being rude and abusive when they are drunk.

No baba, I am not going anywhere leaving my balcony seat, the one beside the creeping canopy of bougainvillea stems that looks so beautiful as it tumble out from my balcony. Sitting behind them I can watch people and they would never see me looking at them. Only Margaret knows I am there behind the bougainvillea and waves to me. I wave back.

The next time uncle Percy comes visiting he has Fr Alphonso and Fr Pereira who used to teach us religion at St Andrews school. Fr Pereira is the one who said the funeral mass for mama. I like him more than Fr Alphonso, perhaps because he looks a little like dada with his Clark Gable moustache.

“Anaida, child you need some family, No? Who will look after you when you are sick? You become sick often, often, no? You get these stomach cramps no, painful, painful, then what you do?”

I think for a while. I know it is all uncle Percy’s doing telling Fr Pereira about my stomach cramps. He has no right to. He can rot in hell for doing that and I am not going anywhere leaving my bougainvillea and my dandelions and my balcony. They are my best friends and these people are my enemies.

Like that, like that it went on and on. Sometimes Percy uncle would come along, sometimes he would come with Fr Alphonso and sometimes with Fr Pereira. So many priests came and went with uncle Percy trying to rid me of my precious flat with the bougainvilleas.

My work suffered, Mr Baretto became short tempered and angry.

“Anaida, your productivity is falling, I don’t know how I can recommend you for a bonus this year.”

All I do is type his envelopes, envelopes, and envelopes all day. Still he brings me more and more envelopes and addresses.

“Anaida you are absent minded, you typed ‘Gorey’ for ‘Morey’. Look ‘Gorey’ and ‘Morey’ are two different people. If they get angry they won’t give us business. If they don’t give us business....” his voice trailed off into a very ominous silence.

That day on the bus I thought and thought a lot. What can I do to get that Percy uncle and Blossom auntie off my back? My work was getting affected and if I lose my job, I won’t be able to keep my flat and look after my bougainvillea and dandelions.

That day when I reach Bandra I didn’t go to my flat but went straight to the evening service at St. Andrews church. The church was where both dadda and mama were buried and I looked at their graves from far, I didn’t have the time. The church had gravestones in the courtyard and I walked carefully so as to not disturb the souls resting in them. The beautiful church was full of people and Fr Kenneth D’Souza, head priest, was celebrating mass.

After mass I went to the priests’ chambers and asked to meet Fr. Kenneth D’Souza. Fr D’Souza was preparing to go to the confessional. He saw me and stopped, his eyes wide with surprise and recognition.

“Anaida, what brings you here, child? How are you?”

I wished him good evening and said I was fine.

“Everything okay, baba? I know it has been a terrible loss to you, child. What to do both dadda and mama gone. That too in such a short time. What a terrible, terrible thing to happen, no?”

I was silent.

“Is anything wrong, Anaida? Why are you so quiet?”

“It is uncle Percy, father and Fr Alphonso and Fr Pereira. They have been visiting me regularly asking me to go and live with uncle Percy. I know their intentions aren’t honorable or honest, father.”

Fr D’Souza became silent and thoughtful. He adjusted his belt around his protruding girth.

“How long has this been going?”

“Ever since dadda and mama died.”

“Really? And they didn’t tell me a word,” he looked thoughtful.

“I thought you knew Fr D’Souza.”

“No. I don’t. I am hearing it from you only.”

“I know uncle Percy will take me to live with him and then sell my flat. He is already heavily in debt.”

“ I know, I know. I have been hearing stories of his gambling debts. Card games.”

“Yes, father.”

“Go Anaida. God will bless you and protect you. I will see about Percy and the priests.”

That ended the visits of uncle Percy, aunt Blossom, Fr Alphonso and Fr Pereira to my flat.

I, Anaida, have saved the day, at least temporarily, for me and my bougainvilleas and my dandelions.

CHRISTMAS WITH CHERIACHEN

2007-03-14T10:46:00.000-07:00

Cheriachen is sad. It is Christmas, a season to be joyful, and none of his children are around. It’s a day to be happy and jolly but he is not the least happy. He invited me for lunch on Christmas as my family was away and I went, as I am an acquaintance. We are related, yes, but a very distant relationship, in fact, he is a cousin four times removed.

The afternoon is a wintry cool, not too hot, not too cold, the plants in Cheriachen’s balcony dance in a complicated rhythm weaving patterns on the roof of his plaster-of-paris roof where Christmas baubles and streamers hang forlornly.

“There is no future in India. You know something? You should have gone abroad long ago,” he says morosely, “there is no happiness, no future here. Only sadness.”

“Then why didn’t you go?”

“See I could have gone. My brother is in the US, my daughter is in the US, a daughter is a nurse in Ireland, I can go and live with them even now, but I am comfortable in my life here, though I am not happy, I am not very unhappy here,” he says chastened.

“The same with me. I have learned to adjust. But I read there are guns in schools, violence, and racism, in fact, color discrimination, ten times that we have here.”

“What color discrimination? What are you talking? My daughters are as white as milk, put them next to the white Saiyips, you can’t tell the difference,” I forgot that Cheriachen and his children, though they were a darker shade of beige, considered themselves white, as white as an Occidental.

He pauses as his wife enters and offers me a cool glass of some colored water and Christmas cakes.

“How are you?” she asks me perfunctorily to which I give the standard answer. There is great tiredness and deliberation in her voice, as if she is not feeling too well.

“We were corporate employees. Our lives are gone. We get a pension, which is enough to make ends meet. Our children are enjoying the fruits of our labor.”

I remember, Cheriachen and his wife would walk the three kilometers from home to railway station every day, and not waste money on rickshaws. They would scrimp to the point of starving themselves, but they would save every extra Rupee. They taught their three daughters the value of thrift, and the children all grew to be responsible adults who knew the value of money, and, most importantly, how it is retained and not frittered away.

I know his routine nowadays as I live nearby. He goes for a walk in the morning, comes back exhausted, looks at an animated picture of a waterfall with sound effects, birds chirping, water falling on rocks, which the company he worked for gave him as a retirement gift. That’s all the nature he can afford in the concrete building in which he lives. The building is part of a complex named “Sahyadri,” in Vashi, New Bombay. Then he sleeps the whole day before he goes for an evening walk for purchasing groceries.

The phone rings insistently.

“Lillykutty, pick up the phone, it may be Jessy,” he says from where he sits. He has arthritis and a lot of other illnesses of old age, and is slumped in his chair, his chest collapsed into himself, his stomach protruding, and his face sagging with tissues that were once taut and healthy. His eyes have large circles under them due to sleeplessness, or, due to extra sleep. He sleeps all the time.

“It was difficult,” he reminisces, “bringing up my girls, the work was hard, I was a storekeeper you see, and if something is missing you have to take the rap. I slaved all these years.”

“Jessy is on the phone,” his wife Lillykutty says, “she wants to wish you.”

He gets up heavily from the chair and waddles to the phone re-tying his loose loin cloth around his waist. It had slipped.

“Haaaan, happy Christmas,” he cackles, “how is Shinymol? Fine? How is Joji? Fine?”

Static and an excited metallic voice at the other end.

Yes, he is happy for some time. But the happiness doesn’t last. His face droops again, his eyes again take a haunted look, he sinks into the chair.

“There, I mean in the US, they work only five days. And they don’t have to work like the company has bought our souls. They do their work and then go home. On weekends they go to beach resorts or holiday homes. If you don’t have a job the company pays you five hundred dollars a month, imagine. Around Rupees Twenty Thousand for doing nothing, just sitting at home. It’s not like here.”

It seems he is very upset and disgruntled, “Is that so?” I prompt.

“My other daughter, Jomi, who got married recently to a doctor, she is luckier,” he says pompously, “she is in Ireland and only works three days in a week and rests for four days, and draws a handsome salary, unlike here, you work six days and… all the harassment…,” he groans and shakes his head.

“And free healthcare, do they have free healthcare?”

“Yes, everything is free, absolutely free. Even education. I remember the difficulty I went through to get my daughters admitted to nursing school. I had to pay the hospital fifty thousand rupees. Then the fees, and after passing the miserly stipend they get for two years. Then for the passport, I had to bribe the officials. Yeverywhere corruption. God, it was so awful, but now they are enjoying a good life. God bless them,” Cheriachen says.

“Jomi took her doctor husband to Ireland, and he has a job in the same hospital where she works,” Lillykutty says from the kitchen. She sounds morose and depressed, too, two unhappy people in an empty two-bedroom flat. She is preparing our Christmas lunch. The smell of mutton and assorted curries fill the flat in Sahyadri housing society.

“Jessy’s daughter Shinymol studies for free. You should see her photographs,” he fishes out some photographs from the bottom of a pile of newspapers on the teapoy, “she is so fair, chubby, and fat, anyone would want to take her in hands and kiss her.”

“I guess it is the food they eat there. I read it is full of fat.”

“No. Not that. They don’t have to exert themselves, no? All they walk is inside their houses, from this room to that. To go anywhere they sit in a car, to go to school they sit in a car, to go to church they sit in a car. Not like we used to do. When I was a boy, I would walk five miles to our school, in Kerala.”

So that’s it. The number of empty, wasted miles spent walking is making Cheriachen a bitter man. He should have been in another country, sitting in a car, I think.

The phone rings insistently again.

“Lillykutty, it must be Jomi from Ireland,” Cheriachen says from his chair. He doesn’t make an effort to get up. He can’t.

Lillykutty comes into the room. Picks up the phone and says the usual “Merry Christmas.” She sounds happy.

Then she say “What?” into the phone and listens for a while. I can see her face fall, her body sag. Then she says, “Why do you want to do that? God, help us! God help us!”

Some static from the other end, a distraught voice. She motions towards Cheriachen.

Cheriachen comes to the phone, smiles joyfully, says, “Merry Christmas,” his sagging face muscles stretch, up, up, as he listens. He is imagining in his mind the heaven from which his daughter is calling him, free of worries, free healthcare, in fact, free everything. He is about to cackle when the whole muscles and integument of his face drop like a stone dropped from a height.

“What?” he says and looks at Lillykutty. Their eyes meet. There are tears in Lillykutty’s eyes. She sobs. Cheriachen puts down the phone. His eyes glaze with tears.

“Now, why would she want to do that? She has everything, works only three days a week, has around two lakhs salary per month, a good-looking husband, has everything virtually free, everything free….”

“We found the best husband for her, imagine, a doctor, handsome, too. We arranged the best wedding for her in the community. Now she says she wants to leave him, and she can’t get along with him,” Lillykutty says.

I look away. The rest of Christmas with Cheriachen was a torture, for me, at least.

THE COMPLETE MAN

2007-03-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

“Georgie, you should eat your medicines.”

“Yes, you must,” they all agree.

His brothers Luke and Sam are here to make him take his anti-depression medicines regularly. So are his former classmates and childhood friends, Ravindran, Sanjayan and Gopi.

Georgie is acting strange. He is depressed. He won’t go to work. He lies all day in bed and reads strange, spiritual books. He knocks on people’s doors and says weird things. Things like:

“They are coming for us. Don’t open the doors.”

“There is a riot going to happen. Close all doors.”

“The Americans are going to bomb us. George Bush is coming. Take shelter. Go to the maidan and lie flat on the ground.”

He imagines things and thinks they are for real. He wasn’t like this, his brothers Luke and Sam agree. In fact, Georgie was the most brilliant of the three. A good student, a good sportsman, a good marksman, a good speaker, a good… in fact… good at everything he did. He would score maximum runs for the Red House he led in school, win hundreds of marbles in games, win the elocution and memory competitions, come first in the art and writing competitions, and still stand first in class.

Everybody was jealous. Jealous that he was so talented and they weren’t.

“He was good in everything?” Ravindran, an artist who now has a cult following in the advertising profession reminisced. He is content with the way life has treated him, with a lot of money and fame. For him Georgie is now the past, though he felt sympathetic. He remembered the time they would spend together in the school compound chasing butterflies, and Georgie laughing his good natured laugh. He doesn’t deserve this, he thought. Secretly Ravindran was jealous of Georgie in school . He always tried to outdo him in drawing and painting and each time he failed.

*****

The school term was about to end. Ravindran, captain of the Yellow house, was worried about his house’s performance. They would add up the scores in the art and writing competitions and his house would be last in the list of honors. His main rival was Georgie, captain of the Red House, and nobody could beat him in drawing, painting and writing.

Slyly he made a plan. He tackled Georgie rather roughly from behind during the afternoon football game prior to chasing butterflies. George fell and his hand was sprained and had to be cast. But he came back for the art and writing competitions with his hand in a cast. He scored well and took Red House far ahead of Yellow House. Ravindran had lost face.

*****

“Georgie, you should eat your medicines. You shouldn’t worry about what America or George Bush does. It’s their worry,” Sanjayan said. Sanjayan is now a chief executive of a newspaper group, and is widely traveled. Around him there is the smell of success, which is actually the smell of the various expensive colognes he buys when he is abroad.

“No. It’s my worry, no? My children are growing up. I have to support them, no?”

“But first you got to go to work and earn, to make your children secure, like this you have no security only,” Luke the elder brother says impatiently. He seems an impatient man.

*****

Back in school Sanjayan was the goal keeper of the Blue House and he was also a part of the humungous jealousy that Georgie generated in students of AFAC School (students of a rival school expanded this to “After Farting Attending Classes.”) He couldn’t understand how Georgie could do everything he did with complete dedication and seriousness. If he sets himself upon scoring a goal, he did it with an intensity that was frightening.

He was terrorized by Georgie’s appearance anywhere near his goal post. Georgie’s marksmanship was unerring and he could maneuver himself from any angle to score a goal. No goalkeeper was safe with Georgie around. Jealousy rose like a tide inside Sanjayan.

So when Georgie came menacingly towards him during a friendly football match, he saw his chance. He dived, collected the ball and gave it a kick in Georgie’s direction, aiming it at his face. The aim was accurate. The ball hit his face, and Georgie fell down. The kick of the ball had taken him by surprise. His nose bled and he had to be carried away to the school office before Luke came to escort him home.

******

“He was so brilliant, I was scared of his brilliance,” Gopi says. Gopi heads a knowledge process outsourcing project. He has a fetish for expensive shoes and casual wear.

“Yes, I, too,” Ravindran says.

“But he is still intelligent. He needs your sympathy and he would be all right,” Sam says. Sam is the younger brother, a softer version of Georgie. All brother look alike.

“That’s why we are here,” Gopi says, “I thought he would be someone very big some day. Not like this.”

“What do you mean?” Georgie asks indignantly. He thinks the people gathered in the room are a bunch of hypocrites, and knows what they have done to him. How dare they talk about him this way, as if he was some object, a dog that wouldn’t obey its master?

Georgie prefers not to say anything. He keeps to himself. He listens and listens to everyone’s opinion of him, and grows more and more estranged. Why do they talk about me thus? He wonders. This loneliness had turned into self-absorption, and then into seeking solace in drinks. When the world cut him out, he wanted to cut them out, as simple as that.

But a hypocrite such as Gopi seems to be provoking him too much today.

“He was so quiet and so dedicated to his work,” Sanjayan says, “He would solve algebra sums in no time, and I used to take my doubts to him.”

“This one here is the biggest hypocrite of all,” Georgie thinks. Gracy, his wife makes an entry, balancing a tray in both hands. She puts the tray down on the teapoy and with her slender arms passes tea around the room.

“You all tell him, no? I say to him take medicine, take medicine, all the time. He won’t listen to me, only.”

“You shut up, don’t talk,” Georgie tells her.

“I won’t shut up. You shut up. What?”

“If you don’t shut up, I will shut you up,” George’s face darkens with rage.

“People, imagine how I live with a man who talks this way,” Gracy says to everyone, “I don’t want to live with him. I will go to the police.”

For a moment Georgie looks like he would throw something at Gracy, but he doesn’t. He has a sweet nature, everyone knows.

Instead he says, “Does anyone know what that means?” He points to an elaborately framed picture on the wall. The picture shows a man and a woman, standing close together with an intimacy that could only mean they are lovers.

Everyone present shakes their head.

“The complete man. I wanted to be a complete man, once, perfect in everything I did,” his voice is inaudible.

There is a moment’s silence, as the meaning sinks in. His friends and his brothers look at each other and then at the brilliant man, now the antithesis of his own perfection.

“But, look at you, what complete? You are hardly a man,” Gracy’s harsh voice cuts in and then she ambles towards the kitchen.

*********

Gopi was the boy with writing abilities in school. He fancied himself as a future writer. But competition was stiff from Georgie. A love for literature and fine writing bound them. They used to exchange classic novels in comic format that they would borrow from the lending library paying Rs 1.50 each. Thus they would get to read two classic comics for the price of one.

One day Georgie had exchanged the comic version of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe with Rajendran’s Superman comic without informing Gopi. He came to know of this. Georgie confessed it was his fault. But, jealousy was a big thing, eating into their little personas, especially when they were children just forming the iron-cast personalities of their future lives.

Gopi stopped talking to Georgie. He thought that was the best way to punish him. He didn’t know what harm he had done. Georgie is hurt so easily, he has a tender mind, a tender soul. His soul cried for his friendship with Gopi. It was years later that they started talking.

Now as Gopi sat before him everyone wondered how he had succeeded when Georgie had failed. Gopi owned a car, a large flat, and wore expensive dress shoes. But Georgie’s house was barren, the paint was peeling and he wore dusty slippers.

*********

“Georgie you must eat your medicines,” Gopi says.

Georgie can’t take it anymore.

“See this jealous hypocrite. See what he is saying. Have you all no shame, where were you when I was really in need?” Georgie couldn’t control his words, he has lost touch with reality.

His friends and his siblings sit with mouths agape. Shock: disbelief: incomprehension.

The room falls silent. They do not talk for a long while. They realize they are all guilty of what happened to their brilliant friend/brother Georgie. If only they were a bit kinder to him forty years ago, in school, at home. They are all comfortable in their jobs and careers they have selfishly carved for themselves over the years, but they never even thought of the cruelty they had inflicted. Georgie was like the punching bag in the school gymnasium. Now that it’s too late, they realize that their words echo with hypocrisy, and their attempts at helping Georgie seems like a big sham.

The tea grows cold, the steam stops rising from the rims of the cups. They all rise to leave and Georgie escorts them to the door.

“Anyway, thank you for coming, so kind of you,” he says at the door.

LAUGHING GAS

2007-03-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

She is ahead of him in the crowd. She is wearing the shortest of kurtas and a churidar that is so tight the buns of her behind form a perfect round football-ish sphere in red. The skin is so fair it is almost golden ("The golden girls" is the name he has coined for her type. They seem to have stepped right out of a golden chariot driven by Eros himself), the profile of the face is even and so well formed that water would glide from her forehead and touch only her nose and would slither further down and only touch the fronts of her breasts. She is wearing heels and the sleeveless yellow kurta only covers up to her waist. Aaah, he groans.

Adrenaline pumps. Nitrous oxide, or, laughing gas releases into his scrotal region, dilating the blood vessels, so that more blood pumps into his sexual organs. He had read in medical school that the reason for an erection is quite simply, nitrous oxide, or, laughing gas. Ha... ha... ha....

He remembers the texts he had read in physiology. "Mechanically erection can be compared to an electromechanically controlled hydraulic system. The most important roles in the phase of erection are played by nitrous oxide and vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP)." So the sexual process is nothing but a release of laughing gas, the physician concludes. He as a doctor knows.

He... he... he....

But the exquisiteness of the human being in front of him is what he cannot understand though he has closely examined many of them in the hospital. But then there he is a physician, but here? What's wrong with him? Has he forgotten medical ethics?

He feels an urge to talk to her, but she doesn't look at anyone. She is inhabiting a world presided by the deity Eros, lost in some sweet memory of someone. A man? A woman? That someone is very lucky to at least know her. Of course, she would like to meet and talk to a post-graduate physician such as him.

Model? No. Airhostess? No. Office worker? Could be.

He was sure the work in the mundane and drab office in some congested lane in Andheri would grind to a halt today. Everyone would be staring lustily at her buns, her slow lilting walk, her silky black hair. Could he talk to her.

From what he could see from behind, as he slowly inches forward on the Kurla railway bridge is a soft cheek, and a bit of down around the ear. The slow-moving crowd has come to the end of the bridge and is slowly descending the steps to the west of Kurla. He is careful to keep right behind her, and it's easy because on both sides are slowly inching office goers clutch their rexine bags.

May be, at the exit when there is some more space he can walk ahead and introduce himself with a killer pick-up line. Something like, "Hey beautiful, it's a sunny day, can we make it funny?" No, that won't do. It has to be a lot better than that.

The crowd has moved glacially to the end of the stairs and is dispersing now. The slow crawl has come to an end. Now is his chance. he walks ahead. His heart thudding he prepares to turn around, he does.

"Hi! Darling! Goodu Maarrniinnggguu!"

He could have killed that man, the boor! He feels rage. Some men are so crude. This Road Romeo is dressed in cheap jeans, has his cowlick falling over his eyes, and has a hundred bursting pimples on his scarred face.

He walks ahead, glances back at her one last time. He freezes.

She has earplugs on! She is listening to music. There's no way she could have heard either him or the Road Romeo. He heaves a sigh, then groans, and then laughs ha... ha... ha.... After all, it's only laughing gas.

DO YOU BELIEVE IT?

2007-03-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

“Three in one, three in one. Three movies for the price of one.”

He looks tired, his hair has not been dyed for a long time, white strands show under the black color that has been washed away. His voice grates. The evening is hot. The junction is clamoring with vehicles.

Pakya spits, drinks the glass of water in the smudged glass. Sweat drips inside his shirt.

“Which picture?”

“Loot Gayee Laila, Don, and Unkahee Chahat.”

“What?”

“It’s a hit. Laila’s honor has been looted. Genuine movie, what acting, just like real.”

“How much?” Pakya asked.

“Rupees fifteen for three movies, aree, baap, no sisterfucking theater will show you three movies. This Javed Kanya guarantees.”

There’s a poster of Amitabh Bachhan and Zeenat Aman, stars of Don, and a lurid poster of Loot Gayee Laila. She shows a lot of smooth, chubby thighs, and heavy bosom. It is dark and Pakya can’t see too well. The tea stall is clamoring with people sipping tea.

Should he go in? The so-called theatre is in a slum, there is a dark room that opens through what can be called a door, some seedy looking characters lounge near the door, suspiciously looking like murderers or rapists or both.
Pakya takes the glass of tea and sips it, downing it with the slow deliberation that wants to make the sweetness last.
The night is young and Pakya badly wants something to happen. That would include a visit to the dance bar, which is expensive, or this dingy, ugly little room in a slum that shows X-rated movies for Rs fifteen on a big LCD screen.

But he doesn’t like the look of Javed Kanya, who is dressed in white shirt and trousers, which were white once. Now it is a shade of brown. He is one-eyed, he squints. His long-sleeved shirt isn’t buttoned. The shirt front is open and the sleeves flaps about as he moves. His mouth is masticating betel nut, and when he speak the red juice runs down the corners of his mouth.

“Don, we are showing the old Don, starring Amitabh Bachhan, not the new Don, starring Sharukh Khan, baap,” he wipes his mouth with his hand, and afterwards scoops his private parts with the same hands and kneads them, balls and all. He shifts his hands and legs around a lot, in a sort of filmy style.

“What’s the difference between that Don and this Don?” Pakya asks.

“Old Don, Amitabh Bachhan, new Don, Sharukh Khan. What is Amitabh? What is Sharukh?” He ends his sentence with a derogatory lowering of his jaw.

********

Pakya looks at the inviting posters and imagines the bliss of seeing it all. At least the mystery of Laila’s taut thighs and bosom would be solved when he sees her on screen. Pakya drools. The sensation of lust passes down his head to his toes, pausing at his crotch. He works in an automobile spare parts shops where he is constantly fetching parts for his corpulent boss who sits, and sits the whole day ordering him around. The work frustrates him so much that he needs to escape every evening.

“Make up your mind fast, fast. What? Or, you won’t even get a ticket for Rupees Thirty. This Don is the best movie every produced. I can dare anyone to contradict me. Even our real-life Don grew up on this movie.”

“Which Don?”

“Arree, what Don, you don’t know. He grew up here. Have you ever heard of Chota Chetan?”

“Arre, that Don? Who doesn’t? What, you know him?”

“Know him? We played cricket together, he and I. We sold tickets in black market together. We were close buddies once.”

“And you?”

“Fate. He makes movies now. He controls an empire. I am still a hustler of movie tickets. He sits abroad, I am here.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe it or not, it’s your choice. Tell me do you want tickets, kali fokat, don’t do shanpana, what?”

“Hey Kanya, I will buy your ticket, huhn? But tell me your story. I mean, your story and Chota Chetan’s.”

*******

Pakya hands him the money. Kanya wets his fingers with spit and tears a ticket and gives it. There’s a long time for the show to start. The evening is getting warmer. It must be hot inside the theatre.

“Then listen. First buy me a glass of cutting tea.”
Pakya looks at his face, a million finely etched wrinkles crowd it like spider webs. He has only a few teeth left in his mouth, his speech is rough, disjointed.

“He and I were friends,” he says blowing into his tea, “why, we are friends even now. If he came here we would have a drink. He is from these parts, we grew up together, played cricket together.”

“Really?” Pakya is incredulous. His mouth hangs open. He had only read about Chota Chetan’s exploits from newspapers and television channels. That this ruin of a man knows, or knew, the real Don, the real real Don, not the Don of the films, fascinates him.

“Yes. And we sold tickets of the old movie Don together at the local theatre.”

“What does he look like?”

Javed Kanya tries to remember, but his memory isn’t that sharp. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve and leaves a long stain.

“Short, long hair just like you. He always used to toss it off his eyes. And yes he used to walk very fast, his rubber slippers flopping after him.”

“How did he become so big a Don and you are left in this dump,” Pakya asks motioning towards the dilapidated theatre made of tin sheets. Some Hindi music plays inside.

“I can make a picture with that story. Tell you a secret? Chota Chetan was inspired by this movie Don, the old Amitabh Bachhan movie, I mean.”

“How? You mean the movie Don created a Don in real life?” Pakya asks incredulously, his jaws dropping further.

“Yes.”

“You think I am a chootiya, a fool to believe you?”

“Abey, don’t call me Chootiya, what?”

Then Pakya remembers he is a friend of the real Don, and shuts himself up and listens.

“Those days… what a life we had. We were only small children, innocent of the ways of the world. We thought selling tickets in black was fun. It would fetch some money to buy clothes, a bike, and we could see movies for free.”
He is silent for a long time. The clamor of traffic around the junction is getting louder. More people are anxiously gathering around the theatre. Javed Kanya seems too engrossed in his story to care.

“We used to sit in the back rows and whistle and clap as Amitabh came on screen. Chetan would be too engrossed in the movie. His eyes would light up, he would jump on his seat, clap, whistle, and throw money at his hero. He was a bit too involved.”

Finally, Kanya drank what was left of the tea and spat on the road.

“You know this dialogue, ‘Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahi namumkin hai’?”

“Yes. That’s my favorite dialogue.”

“It was his favorite dialogue too.”

“Aree, your mother’s! What are you talking?”

“Yes. Only he believed in it so strongly, so strongly that he couldn’t be caught by any one, not his enemies, not even the police.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it or not, it’s up to you. But this is his story. Now I have to go, got to sell more tickets.”

******

After the movie Pakya looks around for Javed Kanya. He is there lolling against the makeshift table that has a cash box and a bossy-looking man sitting in a plastic chair.

“Do you believe me now?” Kanya asks.

“No, I still can’t,” Pakya says shaking his head. He could never believe that a mere movie - floating pictures and dialogues on a screen - can create a real life Don out of a make-believe Don.

“Disbelief cannot alter the truth,” Kanya says wistfully. The night is hot as Pakya walks home. He fervently hopes he isn’t inspired too much by the movie.

2100 – THE LONG COMMUTE

2007-03-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

The year 2100. Another morning, another commute, I groaned. I parked my mini electric car at CBD Belapur station and saw my friend Shashi N emerging from the thick yellow-tinged morning fog, wearing a heavy jacket made of bullet- and bomb-proof material. He is a technical writer and so am I, and, moreover, he is the only friend, and relation I have in this world. We are close.

We work in Bangalore, only a two-hour ride on the 500 kmph train from Beloved Leader Sharad P. Railway Station, the erstwhile Vashi Station, Bombay, named after the last of the great Marathha politicians. The former island of Bombay was totally destroyed in the great flood of 2047, and the then New Bombay, nearby, had assumed the identity of Bombay, for commercial and historical reasons. All that is left of Bombay is a few islands where the hills were, inhabited by the die-hard hill tribes who once used to boast that they were a superior race as they lived on Malabar and Pali hills. The CBD Belapur station hasn’t been cleaned, Teflon coffee cups and dazed sleepers lie around in careless disarray.

“Hi Shashi N.,” I greeted him. Surnames weren’t to be mentioned as religious fascism had peaked and religious mercenaries were everywhere planting bombs, shooting through small, light-weight, rapid action Mauser pistols. One could get killed if one’s surname was known.

“Hi,” he acknowledges morosely.

“Late again?” I ask.

“Yes,” he said mournfully, “I reached home at 2 a.m. this morning, and slept for hardly three hours. I had bought a thousand units of electricity and didn’t know I had let my computer on through the day, and when I reached home there isn’t even a single unit to light a bulb, or even heat some water for a bath.”

He looked shabby and unwashed, his hair matted with dust and dirt, as if he had slept at the station like the P.O.O.R. people lying around us with their impact-proof blankets. Electricity was strictly rationed and had to be paid in advance. No electricity meant nothing would run in the house, everything depended on electricity, and there was such a big scarcity. Gas and petrol was the privilege of the super-rich who owned cars run on fossil fuel, a scarce commodity.

“What’s that you are licking?” I ask.

He was licking the last slobs of a gooey liquid from a tube, shaped like a toothpaste tube.

“My breakfast. It contains enough nutrition to last me till I reach the Goohoo canteen.”

Goohoo was formed when Google and Yahoo decided to merge in 2085 when the Lin-Baden-run Vironi Corporation operating from Babylon unleashed deadly viruses on the networks that almost destroyed all World Wide Web servers.

I was wearing my bullet- and bomb-proof jacket and an old-fashioned helmet with a radiation-proof visor. Violence was common after members of the parliament fought with automatic weapons inside the law-making body and the Consortium of Corporations (called CC, in short, dominated by Goohoo) had taken over the legislative functions of the country. The transition was overseen by Beloved Leader Sharad P. who maintained that instead of corporations funding the government it was better if the corporations took over and gave politicians a percentage of the profits. There would be less wastage. Politicians drew a handsome salary sitting at home. The executive authority stayed in the hands of the policing machinery, now controlled by the Consortium, or, CC. They are the ones who introduced high-speed trains between Bombay and Bangalore. It was a big success.

“Nice Jacket,” I say.

“Five million rupees,” he says, “even after a special discount to Goohoo employees.”

Around us are a milling crowd all wearing hooded jackets and helmets. A small mean-looking person pushes us apart and scurries toward the platform. He is skinny; his walk is jerky, but fast. He is wearing a computer screen on one sleeve of his jacket and on the other has a keyboard. He is typing something on the keyboard even as he is cutting a neat swathe through the hundreds of morning commuters.

“Did you see him?” I ask.

“Yes, he is a Code Devil who works in Goohoo. I know him.”

Code Devils are the elite programmers trained by corporations like Goohoo. In a world totally dependent upon programming they are the new stars and idols, as movie actors used to be at one time, in another century.

The train arrives with a great sonic boom. It is bulging with commuters, all going to Bangalore, the technology capital. There are people clinging to it everywhere, even some mysterious hooded forms sitting on the roof. Life would be hell for them, what with the cold and chilly slipstream.

I close the visor of my helmet and Shashi zips up his jacket. Entering the train would be like squeezing through a fruit juicer.

A posse of women surrounded by heavily armed women police arrive and the jackets of all the desire sensors worn by the men on the platform light up and shimmer with desire. The rare creatures were escorted inside the train even before there is the possibility of Cupid aiming an arrow or two.

“Hey, to think that once they used to mingle with us!” I say.

“Blame skewed sex ratios. If they mingle they would be raped and killed. The CC did the right thing. At least, they have security now,” he says wistfully.

He knows. He has a girlfriend and is in love, a feeling the CC has patented and copyright controlled. Due to a variety of reasons including the population growth the CC legislated that all love should be a copyrighted commodity, like a program, and any use should attract a heavy Love Tax.

Therefore these desire sensors were mandatory. Anyone not wearing it could be sentenced to the Love Dungeons and anyone found coveting the opposite sex would immediately be arrested and confined for breaking the copyright code, unless Love Tax was paid.

For procreation the CC’s Ministry of Love had arranged for exclusive hospitals where a woman could walk in and have a sponsored baby and donate it to the care of the Consortium which would train them to be Code Devils. The consortium needed only programmers and the risk of casual flings upsetting the genetic engineering code was terrifying.

“How is Sangita?” I ask.

Shashi’s girlfriend’s name is Sangita. He had written and posted a love poem to her on the online forum Neterati. The Ministry of Love’s detection department had sensed this in their latest Love Audit. They also found that Shashi hadn’t paid Love Tax which should have been deposited in advance before a man and woman can fall in love.

“I feel so hopelessly torn apart. I haven’t met her in a week though we work for the same corporation. She is in a glass bubble across the lawns but I, I am so helpless, I can’t meet her. I fear for my life and hers, they are monitoring my thoughts, I can feel it, and I am broke, I can’t afford to pay Love Tax,” he says as we find a convenient corner inside the door of the train.

“Then give her up. Break up and tell her you can’t afford her.”

“It’s easy for you to say that, yaar. We are way too much involved.”

“But the most they could do is ask Goohoo to pay on your behalf, since they have the controlling interest in CC, and are represented on the governing board.”

“No, stupid, that won’t work. I get these fainting fits. When they monitor you they fill you with fatal love thoughts that almost kill, just testing us. Of late, it is happening frequently. I am afraid for my life. Even you are at risk if you are found with me.”

The CC had embarked on a Total Asexualization Drive to curb the sexual instinct that they hoped, rather vainly, would boost productivity in the workplace. This was fully supported by Narayana Premji and Azim Moorthy (grand children of the two pioneers, the second generation having inter-married) who had all along maintained that corporate goals should be above personal goals.

“Then what about all the books, novels, films on love and longings and the love poems that existed and still exist in libraries on this mysterious feeling called love. I don’t understand; I am lost,” I say. I haven’t felt any love for a woman since I haven’t been near one in years. I don’t even know who my mother is, or, rather, was. May be Shashi could explain what it was all about.

“Ah, that was the twenty-first century you are talking about. That was the time when Neterati was still an online forum of free expression for writers. I remember, a lot of love poems were posted there, a few of them were really atrocious, some were even spelt, ‘Pomes.’ Now they are underground. I still attend their meetings, though, surreptitiously.”

Shashi and I are wedged closely, inside the door, almost out of the train. The wind is howling around our ears and the sound is deafening as the train levitates within the field created by two powerful magnetic rails above and below it. I think of the hooded men I had seen sitting above the train. They would be shivering and their hands would be almost frozen by the cold.

We pass the Project of Outcasteing Religion (P.O.O.R.) areas between Poona and Bombay. These are the areas where the religious zealots live. Areas are marked by communal flags and their extreme poverty is obvious from the shabby hovels in which they live. They are all uniformly greyish, probably, the soot emissions from Alliance’s giant petroleum refineries in the area.

This is the dark space I had heard about, I mean, the P.O.O.R area. There is no electricity and life is as it was in pre-1879, the year the electric bulb was invented. They can’t afford electricity. The police ignore the denizens of these slums, they are afraid for themselves. Killings and riots are quite common and the CC is quite content with letting them decimate each other. After all, the Consortium assumes, it is their mistake that they didn’t learn to write programming code, or even understand computing algorithms, preferring to sow the seeds of religious hatred.

“So how are things at Goohoo?” I ask.

“Bad,” Shashi says, “at least for technical writers,” he has opened his jacket hood a little so that I can see his sleep-deprived eyes.

Poor man, I think, squeezed from all sides, not able to meet his girl friend, and, somehow, to add to all that the insecurity with his job.

A series of staccato explosions shake the train as it speeds across the vast arid land, still under a thick fog. The heavy rains had cut fissures through the landscape and the recent heat waves had all but burnt the earth to a greyish-black.

“Cluster bombs,” Shashi mumbles. The sounds grow distant. CC has instructed the train driver to disengage the compartment if there are any explosions in it. “Production should not be affected,” was the sole mantra. The rest of the train hurtled forward.

“Why is it bad?”

“It is bad, bad, bad, so bad I can’t tell you. My very existence in their mammoth air-conditioned bubble is at risk.”

“Why? Tell me no, why?”

“You know what those Code Devils have gone and done?”

“No.”

“They have written a program to author help manuals. They don’t need technical writers any more in Goohoo.”

“What?” I am so astounded I knock my helmet against Shashi’s head. He curses me in choice Malayalam invectives I won’t mention here.

“Yes, a bloody program writes help manuals. It writes stuff like “For p=p+1, next p” for something as simple as ‘turn to the next page’,” imagine, and the managers are happy with it. ‘After all, who reads help manuals,’ they say.”

That’s a holler. It is real bad news, without writing jobs both Shashi and I wouldn’t have anywhere to go, I think, as I look at the cold morning transforms suddenly into a hot mid-morning with temperatures hovering around 95 degree Fahrenheit. Presently we all are sweating.

“Global warming,” Shashi says, loosening his jacket, “they don’t seem to care. They have their climate controlled apartments in the Goohoo campus, and their minders and managers to assure them nothing is wrong. Why, even their television news channels are doctored by the Consortium. They only see the news CC wants them to see. They never travel in trains, and if they venture out, it is from their roof-top helipads to their private jets. What do they know about the long commute?”

“So if a program writes help manuals we writers would be out of jobs, what would we do?” I ask.

“Good question, dumbo! Even I don’t know,” Shashi shakes his hooded head, “What do they care? They say product life cycles are short. Before they can finish reading the help manual, the product is obsolete; the next model is in the market. So why write product help manuals?”

I shake my head, too. My career as a creative writer hasn’t taken off. Most of my manuscripts come back with form letters wishing me “all success in finding a suitable publisher.”

One publisher even said, “If you want to be published, become famous first.” That means if you are a woman, get laid by a famous man and write about the number of moles on his private parts, or if you are a man, well, the only alternative is tell all about the idiosyncrasies of corporations like Goohoo. But that could put my life in danger.

This could be the end of me. I would end up in a call center, after all, something I dreaded all along. I would be measured each day by the number of calls I make. I hate call centers. I hate them for being so uncreative, unoriginal, and so mechanical. There is software that senses and blocks all calls but they still persist.

Zap, zap, zap! Everything seems to spin around me. I am feeling a lot of love, er, feeling of being loved excessively. Though I have never been loved, I have sometimes fantasized about a queer feeling that came over me sometimes, and had given in to its frenzied rhythms.

Suddenly epiphany strikes. Am I also being monitored by the Love Auditors as I am with Shashi? Shashi is reeling, he holds on to me. His face seems a blur, so also the faces of all the hooded forms around us. The train, or what is left of it after the cluster bombs have struck, is hurtling along a vast desert that once used to be the Deccan Plateau, now laid waste by periodic meteor hits, as the outer atmospheric shield around the earth has mitigated to a very thin layer around the earth. The wind howls, the hooded forms, unzip their hoods, and I can see their eyes bulging, as they stare at us.

“You are Love Offenders. Get away from us,” their eyes accuse us.

I recover. Consciousness comes back at once. It was one of those Love Audits, and they seemed to have exonerated me. But what about Shashi? Shashi is slumped against me, his hood askew, drool at the corners of his mouth. I shake him, slap his face. No response.

“Is he dead?” I ask the man standing next to me. He has a red cross sign on his jackets and “Goohoo” written below it, apparently, a doctor working for the world’s biggest corporation. He is familiar with such situations as he has ministered to many employees who have died on their computer workstations.

“Yes, your friend is dead, you must throw him out now,” the doctor says.

“Should you be so cruel?”

“CC policy 11.13287.9840 on corpse disposal states that dead organisms could disturb the creativity index of the Code Devils who are travelling to Bangalore, and further, that dead bodies of Love Offenders should be dispensed of immediately.”

“But can’t I give him a funeral or something?”

“No, the body could putrefy by the time we reach Bangalore in this heat.”

I knew it was no use arguing.

Slowly he and other Goohoo employees, there seem to be quite a lot of them in this train, say a company prayer written in C--, nudge Shashi N, my only friend and acquaintance in the world, towards the door and push him out. Helmets, bullet- and bomb-proof jackets watch as the body disappears from sight into the fast-receding landscape outside the speeding train. The blazing afternoon is a blur. I close the helmet visor and say a prayer for Shashi. I must phone Sangita and tell her, if at all she is alive.

MARATHEKERI

2007-03-14T10:24:00.001-07:00

“Marathekeri.” That’s what her mother Mary calls Julie. She is different. She is a chattakari, chattakari meaning Anglo-Indian girl from Kerala. She does unusual things. She climbs trees, she sits under them and dreams and when Mary calls out to her to clean the fish and chop the beef she goes and sits near the backwaters and watches the boats glide by.
...

“Girl, how will you tend to your family if you are like this?” Mary would ask.

“Mamma, don’t get on my nerves,” Julie would say.
She likes dark colors. She paints her lips blood red.

People just stare at her, turn around and say, “There goes our chattakari.”

“Phoo, poda,” she would say to them.

She likes to read. She reads Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackeray. “Vanity Fair” is a favorite. She thinks she is English though she is half Malayalee.

“She has a Madamma’s blood in her you know. That’s why she is like that,” people say.

That day she climbed and sat on a huge tree in the compound her home in Trivandrum. The tree is old and gnarled. It looks like a Banyan tree. She actually meant to climb to the topmost branch. But she lost interest half way and she just sat there watching some children play.

The day was hot; it was also humid. She heard Mary call her, “Marathekeri, you again on that old tree? Wait till Pappa comes. I will tell him.”

But she doesn’t listen. She is listening to the sound of her inner voice. A voice that tells her she shouldn’t be here sitting on this tree. A voice inside that tells her she should stop dreaming of where beautiful women sit in beautiful parlors and speaking in hushed tones in the English countryside.

“You tell him what you want, Mamma, I am not afraid,” She calls out to Mary.

Then she listens to her inner voices.

“Julie you should fall in love. Didn’t Dennis make an advance during the last Christmas dance at the Railway Institute?”

“But I don’t like Dennis, he is so naïve.”

“But then how will you be like the heroine Amelia and her suitor Dobbin in “Vanity Fair”?”

“But Dennis isn’t like Dobbin at all.”

“What’s the matter? It’s time you had someone. Momma calls you a “marathekeri” meaning climber of trees. You can’t climb trees like this all the time. You are older now. You have to give up your childish petulance.”

“I am not petulant. And don’t call me a “Marathekeri” just because I like climbing on trees.”

“Oh, how can I tell you something without you flinging it back at me?”

“Then don’t.”

“Why?”

“I do what I like. I am Julie. I don’t need your advice.”

“Then do what you want. I am not bothered.”

She climbs down with a heavy heart. The day is still hot. Amelia was in her heart and her mind. She very much wanted Dennis to propose to her. But then what about her dream of Amelia, of being with soft gentle people who talk in whispers in the gentle countryside of England? Marrying Dennis would mean accepting the life of a railway man’s wife in some godforsaken remote railway station in India, like her mother Mary.

“Oh, tell me voice what should I do?”

The voice didn’t answer.

“Voice, voice, don’t leave me like this. Answer me. Don’t leave me like this.”

The voice didn’t answer.

"Oh, voice where are you? Don't leave me like this, please!" Julie cried bitterly.

The voice doesn't answer. The voice is dead.

(This was written for a writing exercise on Caferati)

COMPUTERBEN - A TRUE STORY

2007-03-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

The domain name expired, with it my website went missing from cyber world. I was desperate. I phoned the domain registration company. All this while I was basking in the mistaken assumption that my domain and hosting was already renewed having paid for it earlier.

“But that was hosting renewal, not domain renewal,” Ms. Computerben informed me.

“But I had bought it as a hosting and domain package.”

“No. You renewed the domain. Your site is already showing, “This page cannot be displayed.””

“That I know. Thanks for the kind information.”

Computerbenji didn’t get the sarcasm, as she measured out each word of well-practiced spiel and told me what to do.

“If you have a credit card, pay online. That would be fast and your domain won’t expire. I will keep your domain name on hold till then. But remember there’s only one day.”

But I have a credit card, and for a computer geek as me, making an online payment is child’s play, I think, I mean like adding two and two on an abacus. I maintain a deliberately cool attitude through all this, you know, one must never let the machine overtake one, least of all a computer.

“That would be easy. I have a credit card. I will pay immediately and I hope the site would be online soon.”

“Yes.”

So I accessed the domain registering website to pay for my domain name. Their website is a bit muddled but I write such muddle and I can wade through them easily enough.

Me, write content? Who says? This one is straight out of scientific fiction. Total mess up.

I had to wade through many pages with flashy icons before I came to the payment page. There I click and enter my credit card number, the date of expiry, my name, and the code number. Yes, they need all the security they can get.

Then I click “submit.” Hurray job done! Time to celebrate, uncork the bubbly.

“But no, my friend,” computerben says, “more is still to come. Try this:”

Transaction Failed! I look at the screen agast.

Computerben has a habit of playing games. I go back. Do it all over again. No luck.

Transaction Failed!

By now my coolness has developed cracks the size of big lunar craters.

I phone my credit card company. I keep all numbers safely, I am a computer geek you see, so I know what can go wrong.

“See you fools, I have bought your card after much cajoling, and now I can’t use this lump of excreta. You better do something before I dump your card in the nearest stinking gutter.” I let them have it.

The voice at the other end seems oddly metallic. I am talking to computerben again. She doesn’t understand me.

Dial 1 for English Dial 2 for Hindi, - says computerben sweetly, with a false enthusiasm that irritates me. She says as if she is having, well, what else, an orgasmic high.

I dial 1.

Dial 1 for existing customers. Dial 2 for new customers. Dial 3 for our credit card contests says computerben. Did I hear right. Is it 1 or 2? Am I existing or am I new?

I take a chance and dial 1.

Dial 1 for gold card. Dial 2 for silver card.

I dial 1 again. I have a gold card.

Dial 1 for billing information, dial 2 for a loan on your credit card outstanding, dial 3 for grrrrr!

Exasperating, rude and genuinely maddening.

I almost convulse with indignation. Instead I use my string of chosen expletives. Even that doesn’t work.

And then:

Dial 9 for operator assistance!

Phew!

What brilliance! Couldn’t they have put an operator there in the beginning and avoided wasting my precious minutes? Whatever happened to the human touch in business? No, this is the age of computerbens, they want to show that they are the superior species.

“I am computerben how can I assist you?” This model is the primitive human clone.

“I made attempts to pay using my credit card. Each time it failed. I want to know the reason.”

“But, sir, this is customer support not billing support,” says computerben sweetly.

“What’s the difference?” I ask belligerently.

A moment of silence.

“The difference? Well, we handle support and they handle billing.”

She is positively amused by my ignorance and I can imagine a perfect sneer in her voice.

But I fall flat for this seductive line and ask for the number of billing support.

By now I am thoroughly ruffled. The cool avoirdupois is gone. I dial billing support.

Dial 1 for existing customers. Dial 2 for new customers, computerben’s sweetness is unwavering.

Again?

Again I dial any random number. I am smarter, being wiser now. I want to circumvent the system. I keep dialing any number till I come to that part that says dial 9 for operator assistance. I know computerben’s ploy by now.

At last, computerben says, Dial 9 for operator assistance.

I dial 9.

Mesmerizing, lilting music assails me.

All operators are busy. Please hold on, she says.

Meanwhile, the credit card company plugs their loans, their SMS contests, the music concerts they are sponsoring and the hurricane and tsunami charities they are supporting. Then a human voice, a live computerben clone comes online.

Your card number?

I give my card number.

Your expiry date?

I give my card expiry date. I have all these written down in a small diary, which I keep with me at all times. After all, being wired and networked means you are working twenty-four hours of the day anywhere you are.

Your name?

I give my name.

Your address?

Now why would live computerben want that? Is she going to pay me a visit? If so, should I dress up in a tie and jacket for the grand seduction?

“So what’s the problem?” live computerben clone sounds as if she is tired of watching 24-hour music channels but her voice is still sweet.

“I charged my card twice on the internet and each time the transaction failed.”

“What message did you receive?”

“Transaction failed.”

“But, sir, I don’t see anything wrong with your card. Then how did the transaction fail?”

I grit my teeth. She is supposed to know that. How do they manage to pick the dumbest ones for the job?

“I thought I asked you the same question. Aren’t you supposed to know computerbenji?”

“Sorry, what? Did you ask me something?”

“Yes, I asked you why my transactions failed, you dumbo. What’s the answer?”

“Nothing is wrong with your account. Try using the card again. It looks perfectly okay to me. But I see you have Rupees fifteen-thousand outstanding in your account.”

“Yes,” I say and rue all the useless clothes and gadgets that are occupying precious space in my meager house.

Will she ask me to pay up, or else?

“We will give you a loan of Rupees fifteen-thousand that will pay off that outstanding amount. This loan will only attract a one per cent interest. Otherwise we would charge you three per cent.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” I am so grateful that I stammer very badly.

On hindsight, I realize, this was a ploy. If they pay me a loan to pay this outstanding, who will pay me to pay for future expenses? Computerben laid a trap and I very gullibly fell into it.

“You will get the loan this very day. See the benefits we give you at ABC Credit Card Company. You will pay only one per cent interest,” Computerben’s voice is exultant.

“Thank you,” I bow graciously.

Another sale made.

Some more music from the albums the credit card company is sponsoring, some more new loan schemes and SMS contests and Computerben disconnects.

I am totally disoriented and at a loss for words.

Why had I phoned them in the first place?

To pay for my domain registration.

Did I get that done?

No!

But I bought something didn’t I?

A loan for Rupees fifteen-thousand at one per cent interest per month and more loans to come till I am completely bankrupt.

I phone my domain registration company.

“Did you pay for your domain registration?” The Ms. Computerben there asks me.

“No. I tried to make a credit card payment. But it failed twice. So what do I do? Will my domain name expire?”

“You can send us a cheque by mail. I will hold your domain name for two days. But no guarantee.”

But why did I go through the whole exercise when I could have paid by cheque? And the thought of having to pay a loan for my credit card outstanding still rankles me.

Never in the whole episode did I feel as if I was a human being interacting with another, not even once. Well, next time I have a payment to make I will trust good old cheque, and not computerben.

RINA’S DOG

2007-03-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

I look at Moti from my window and feel sorry for him. How can I not feel sorry for a dog that thinks he is a bitch? That’s it, a bitch.

Moti thinks he is a bitch. Well, can you imagine that? That’s because Moti’s mother Kuthi had brought up him very protectively not allowing him to mix with other dogs. Moti became so effeminate that he started peeing like a bitch. He won’t raise his leg to pee like other dogs. Honest. He would squat on his hind legs like bitches do. Imagine a dog doing that. And, he wants other dogs to mate him. Now, that’s hilarious.

The whole problem of Moti thinking he is a bitch arose because Kuthi was very protective of him. How can he not realize he is not a bitch and do bitch-like things? He blindly imitates Kuthi. Now that Kuthi has a new litter she has no time for Moti. To compound matters for Moti, Kuthi treats him with disgust nowadays, and snarls at him when he comes near.

Moti is distraught and I can see loneliness in his eyes. He doesn’t eat. I feed him biscuits everyday but he is so depressed he doesn’t even eat. How sad.

“Rina what are you doing?” My mother calls out from the kitchen when I am feeding Moti. Mother doesn’t like dogs or bitches and would have nothing to do with the species. She doesn’t want dogs around her house and doesn’t like me playing with them.

“I am just feeding Moti,” I shouted out to her.

“You come back here right this moment.”

“But why, he is so feeble he will die if he is not fed.” I am stubborn and defend my friend Moti.

“If he is feeble let him die. I won’t have you touching that dog again,” she said appearing at the door of our house.

“But I like him no? He will die if I don’t feed him. Kuthi doesn’t care for him anymore.”

“That’s their problem. Who are you to solve dogs’ and bitches’ problems? Come inside right now.”

I go into the house downcast. I know Moti will die if I won’t feed him but mother doesn’t understand. Ma is like a dictator. She likes to dominate all the time. Sometimes she doesn’t speak to me for weeks when I disobey her. She is very unreasonable.

She thinks I get pimples because I touch dogs. What crap. Teenagers get pimples all the time. Look at my neighbor Simmi, her face is full of pimples, the size of small, small grapes. But I like Simmi. She and I play “house” wearing saris as our mothers do.

.....

I see Moti dying everyday from my bedroom window. I want to go out and feed him but I cannot. Mother will be furious. Even father doesn’t like canines. Between them there is a strong anti-canine lobby at home. I wanted to make Moti my pet. But, no luck. So I can only watch Moti’s agony, as he lies curled near Kuthi and her litter, wanting to cuddle up to his mother but shying away from approaching.

I call out to Moti as I go to school.

“Moti, Moti, come here.”

But he refuses to come. He only looks at with me with sad eyes. He is so confused about his gender; he doesn’t know whom to trust, as Kuthi has almost disowned him. Poor dog. A dog’s life must be terrible without a house or parents one can trust.

Kuthi is a vile bitch. Today I saw her bare her fangs and snarl at Moti. I threw a stone at her. That drove her away. I think she is ruthless. She must really be a wolf. Because near the place where I live in Panvel there is a forest. She must have lived with wolves in the jungles of the Western Ghats. I saw the ferocity of a wolf in her snarl.

......

Yesterday I saw some dogs biting Moti. Poor Moti was yelping with pain. Kuthi was nearby and didn’t even go to help her son. When will Moti realize he has to grow up and be a dog in his dog’s world? When will he realize that he has to pee with one leg raised and not squatting on hind legs like a bitch? I think that that bitch Kuthi hasn’t toilet trained him. Her fault. She has been too protective of him suckling him even after he was grown up and making him totally dependent on her.

I went and picked him up and petted him. I had to immediately release him as I heard my mother’s voice as she came walking to the door of our house.

“Rina, baby, where were you?” she asked.

“Here I am, playing.”

“You touched that dog again?”

“No.”

“I know you did. Look at your hands. I can see the cur’s fur on it.”

“No that’s just some sand.”

“Sand?” Ma fumed. “Go wash your hands before you enter my house.”

My house? Since when is it her house?

“Ma, don’t be so protective or I will become like Moti.”

I don’t think she understands. Kuthi denied Moti his life. She was overprotective and denied Moti the right to live his life. He doesn’t even know if he is a dog or bitch. So naive. I hope my mother wouldn’t make me too depend on her, now that I am grown up and all. I hope she realizes that I have to learn about life on my own.

I don’t want to be like Moti. I want to be independent, and my own person.

I went and sat at the table to eat.

“I told you to wash your hands,” Ma said.

“My hands aren’t dirty,” I said wiping my hands on my frock.

“If you don’t wash your hands I won’t give you the rasgullas I made.”

“Oh,” I controlled myself, “No, I don’t want. I am not hungry.”

I know I can come back, open the refrigerator and help myself anytime.

“What happened? You don’t like rasgullas anymore?”

“I like, but, not today. I am not in the mood.”

“Why?”

“Stop bothering me all the time, Ma. You know Moti is dying and all you can think of is making rasgullas for me to eat. He is dying out there,” I shot back.

Ma looked at me shocked.

I think the message got through. She didn’t talk to me for an entire week after that. Well, I needed the break. I am growing up. I am a young woman now. My friend Simmi tells me I did the right thing. She is a young woman, too, and we play “house” and talk as if we are grown ups.

As for Moti, the confused dog, he died a few days later. Poor dog. Simmi and I gave him a proper burial in the empty yard at the back of our house.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S LEGACY

2007-03-14T10:19:00.000-07:00

“Wordsworth-saab, want some fresh bananas?”

I am sitting on the steps of the Jehangir Art Gallery in Kala Ghoda, Bombay, opposite Elphinstone College. It's a hot and dusty day. It is 3 p.m. Sunlight arcs across the architectural details of this antiquated art district of Bombay. I am a bit exhausted and irritated when the man in an unwashed loincloth approaches me.

His eyes have that curious look of having seen it all, as if he can divine my thoughts. “Don’t disturb me, please,” I think. The idea was to shoo him away.

I am making background notes on yellow stick it notes and pasting them in a notebook for the novel I am planning to write about India, the country where my grandfather, Papa Wordsworth used to live and work. For clarity’s sake, I will call him Papa Wordsworth here. Yes, the same William Wordsworth, the grandson of the romantic poet William Wordsworth, my great, great grandfather, whom I will call Grandpa Wordsworth. Let me explain: Grandpa William Wordsworth had a grandson named Papa William Wordsworth – who was principal of Elphinstone College – whose grandson I am, William Bennett Wordsworth.

Elphinstone College also houses Bombay’s archives. I have been doing research there for, may be, two weeks. In these two weeks I progressed from reasonably well off to quite broke. It doesn’t matter, at least, to me. I am following my instinct. A story is what I want.

According to my research, grandfather was designated as an observer when the Indian National Congress, the party, was born. This is a pleasant revelation. I am an Indophile like him. I have loved India since the days I read about it in my grandfather’s yellowed volumes in his book-lined study. I loved his teak-wood-shelved study and the smell of old books. The musty smell still lingers in my mind as I sit here and look at a part of Papa Wordsworth’s life. To think that he walked these streets, that his shadow fell on these stones. Good Lord!

“Wordsworth-saab, please, buy some, they are fresh from the gardens,” the pleas are getting insistent, a tendency I notice in this great country. A “no” is probably a “yes.”

Again? But wait a minute, how does this old man know my name?

Papa Wordsworth was the principal of Elphinstone College somewhere around the turn of the nineteenth century, the eighteen-eighties, to be precise. Between Jehangir Art Gallery and Elphinstone College is MG Road on which the traffic is pretty raucous, horns blaring all the time. I have overspent, and my budget is all but depleted. I am ruined unless my literary agent, one David Darwin, could win me a million pound advance that he said the Wordsworth name could fetch. I never knew there is so much money in writing. But where is the story in this humming, screeching, hollering metropolis, where the crowds are as the ones in a fair in Hyde Park. It’s so hot, something I hadn’t bargained for, and dusty. Dust swirls into my eyes.

“Nature’s best fruit, Wordsworth-saab,” he is getting desperate, I can see from his sightless, cloudy eyes. I guess nobody has bought from this man since morning, as he sits beside the road looking earnestly at me.

I wave him away, show my displeasure. Go away, old chappie. I am hot and bothered and don’t like his importuning.

I see that roads in India are so noisy, unlike in England. First of all, the automobiles make a lot of noise. They seem to be working on some outdated internal combustion engines here. I am sure things haven’t changed much since my grandfather went back to England. I like the quaintness of these antiquated automobiles. It’s almost as if I am living in another century.

I see several antique Morris Oxford cars on the street. They are as round as toads. They call them ambassadors here. And there are many Italian Fiat models, which would have adorned automobile museums in my country. They make a big racket. To add to that, Indian drivers are horn-happy. Don’t mistake this, no reflection of racial bias, but they really like to create a ruckus. I ask Akhil why Indians talk so loudly, and he says, may be, it’s in their blood. Akhil is showing me around, he knows Bombay and says he writes. He is supposed to get me the big story idea. But I don’t see anything inspiring about his leads.

How does this wrinkled old man know I am a Wordsworth, the progeny of the grand literary tradition I am trying to propagate, alas, without success? I knew I would find my story in Bombay; discover something that I can expand into a novel. But, this heat and noise is killing me. My job as a journalist came to an abrupt end when The New English Sun sacked me for writing an article detailing the sexual preference of the English football team. Imagine. Most of those jocks there are homosexuals! I know these things. That revelation “wasn’t done” said my editor and he sacked me, the progeny of the Wordsworth tradition, I, William Bennett Wordsworth. Thereafter, I started writing short stories for literary journals and dabbling in collecting rare books, rare first editions of famous authors.

“Wordsworth-saab, want some fresh bananas, from the plains of Marathawada?”

His sightless eyes are rheumy behind his broken glasses; his skin is folded in a million small wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. His clothes haven’t seen water for, may be, years. His hands and legs are so thin they look as brittle sticks peeping out of his kurta and dhoti. He has a bamboo basket full of bananas before him and he is squatting on the corner of the stairs that lead to the art gallery.

“Are you speaking to me?” I ask the man in Hindustani. I know the language.

He nods.

“How do you know my name?” I ask.

He pauses. He takes a long time doing that. As if years, no, no, decades pass before his unseeing eyes.

“Wordsworth- saab, the same eyes, the cleft chin, the dimples around the eyes. How can I mistake that?”

I try to control the surprise from registering on my face.

“You mean you knew my grandfather, William Wordsworth, the principal of Elphinstone College?” I ask pointing to the college around which young students were disporting playfully.

“Yes, the grandson of the big English kavi samrat, emperor of poets, William Wordsworth,” he wheezes.

So he knows about Papa Wordsworth and his grandfather, my great, great grandfather. How does he know?

I am interested. I call Akhil. “Akhil come here, I told you I am discovering old roots. Here, it is. This man knows about Papa Wordsworth.”

Akhil and I squat in front of the old man.

“How do you know my grandfather?”

“When you have seen empires fall before your eyes, a people gain freedom, how difficult is remembering a face? Eh?”

His eyes are defiant, glowing with some vague pride of his people, the great Mahrattas. They ruled India once.

“Even then, I suppose, I could be someone else, an imposter,” I say.

“No. I am sure. You have his eyes, his cleft chin, and his cheekbones. How can I mistake? I was his chokra-boy. I used to work in Elphinstone College then.”

“What’s your name, baba?” Akhil asks him.

“Babubhai Kothare, from district Gandhidham, Gujarat.” His voice is broken from memories churning inside his mind. Like every Indian from rural India he mentions his village’s name after his own.

My grandfather lived in the eighteen-eighties. Therefore this man must be more than a hundred years old, this Babubhai. At least a hundred and twenty years. Yes, he looks that old. Look at his bone structure. Lord, he looks as if he could go on living for another fifty years.

“How old are you, Babubhai?”

He tries to remember. Then he gives up.

“I don’t remember. Who will remember? Do you want some fresh bananas Wordsworth-saab? I must sell this whole bunch today. Or...” his feeble voice trails off.

“Babubhai, tell me your story. I will buy the whole bunch of bananas from you. How much is it anyway?”

“Let me see, there are five dozens here. So, sixty bananas. At fifteen rupees a dozen, seventy-five rupees.”

I give him a hundred rupees, “You can keep the change.”

His eyes light up, he is overjoyed. His whole face crumples into a thousand crinkling laugh lines, a dry laugh, or, was it a cough, escapes his throat.

“I will tell you all about it, Wordsworth-saab. I will tell all about your grandfather. Just a minute, where should I deliver all these bananas? Do you have a bag?”

I don’t have a bag, “You keep all of it. Here I will have one, Akhil you have one too.”

Akhil says, “Thanks, Bennett, I am hungry. I think I will have two, Babubhai.”

We eat bananas squatting before Babubhai, the traffic around us zoom. People walk past to their destinations near and far. I want to hear Babubhai’s story and, may be, just may be, a story, a novel, will take shape.

“Come with me,” Babubhai eventually says after stuffing the money into a cloth purse and putting it inside his kurta.

“Where?” Akhil asks.

“To my house, my home.”

We cross MG Road in a sort of convoy. Babubhai ahead of us, and Akhil and me tagging behind him. The vehicles are noisy and blare their horns. Guess they have some maniacal need to be noticed.

Blimey! I am nearly run over by a taxi that screeches to a halt inches away from me.

Babubhai walks to the far end of the Elphinstone College gate where it intersects with the City Civil Courts. There is a cot made of strung rope leaning against the iron railing. Beside it are several bags, and a tin trunk.

He straightens the cot on the road and sits on the David Sassoon Library Road. Opposite us is the green garden of David Sassoon Library where people sit around and chat lazily. It seems so peaceful here.

“Sit, this here is my home,” Babubhai motions to the cot, and shouts, “Chotu bring tea for my guests. They are big people from foreign country, England, I used to tell you stories about that great country, didn’t I? Wordsworth-saab’s grandson himself.”

I wonder how a man can live on the street and call his cot his home. There are many like him. What would he do when it rains? I want to do something for him.

Chotu brings tea and squats on the road in front of us.

Then Babubhai tells me his story. Well, that is another story, which I intend to shape into a novel, but in short, the gist follows.

He was a chokra-boy who ran errands for my grandfather William Wordsworth, principal of Elphinstone College, grandson of poet William Wordsworth.

“And Wordsworth-saab, he used to be so kind, so humble in spite of his white skin, and so kind. He played a big role in our freedom movement.” Babubhai said looking intently at me.

So, he knew about my grandfather’s role, though meager, in the formation of the Indian National Congress. I felt my chest expanding with pride.

The Indians as well as the British treated him, meaning Papa Wordsworth, with great respect, as he was the grandson of a great poet and bore his eponymous name. Papa Wordsworth sympathized with the aspirations of the Indian people. That’s why when Allen Octavio Hume first established the Indian National Congress; he invited grandfather to be an observer.

Then came the Independence movement and Babubhai had seen all the movements and processions pass down MG Road before his own eyes. Grandfather returned to England and died when I was around twelve. Then Babubhai retired and the college authorities allowed him to live in the college premises. Then he started selling bananas squatting on the pavement, to earn enough to get by.

“Now I will show you something,” he opens a tin trunk, kept beneath the cot. First he extracts a plastic bag and then produces an old and yellowed book handsomely bound in leather.

“Here, take a look,” Babubhai’s trembling hands extend the book, his voice breaking in reverence.

“The Collected Works of William Wordsworth,” I read and exclaim, “Grandpa Wordsworth’s poems!” Then I look at the imprint, “A first edition, too.”

“There’s more,” Babubhai wheezes as he opens the cover.

I hold the book reverently. Inside it is written, “To my grandson, William Wordsworth, who, I hope, will inherit my poetic legacy.” The handwriting has broad cursive strokes, the way English actually should be written.

My great, great grandfather Grandpa Wordsworth’s own writing. My grandfather, Papa Wordsworth, didn’t do much writing, but he did carry on the legacy, I admit. Nevertheless, this work must be worth millions in the international rare books market. I know I am a collector.

I browse through the book. It is full of annotations by my Papa Wordsworth in his own hand.

“Priceless, the book is priceless,” I whisper to Akhil.

“I want you to have it,” Babubhai tells me.

“But Babubhai this book is worth a million, in fact, several millions pounds. I can’t keep it.”

He smiles a wry smile, “Then you can come and buy some more bananas from Babubhai, I will be right there,” he said pointing to Jehangir Art Gallery.

Then I make a quick decision. I know that if such a precious volume were left on the roads of Bombay, it would be lost forever. As it is, it would be of no use to Babubhai. I had to sell it and do something for Babubhai. But what?

“Here take this money for this book,” I give Babubhai all the money I had with me, around five thousand rupees. That would last him till I found a buyer for the book.

“You don’t have to sell bananas anymore.”

“Really?” His eyes are incredulous. I know he can’t take all this excitement on an Englishman’s face, what with the stiff-upper-lip types he was associated with.

“Yes, I will find a buyer for this book. And then I will come back and do something for you,” I knew he couldn’t understand what I meant and as to how a tattered old book could fetch a lot of money, even five thousand rupees.

Yes, I intend to sell the book. The commission will go to fund the novel I am about to write, temporarily titled, “William Wordsworth’s Legacy.” My agent David Darwin would be a very happy man.

Meanwhile, I have started planning for the William Wordsworth-Babubhai Kothare Facility for the Homeless in Mumbai.

THE E-SLAVE

2007-03-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

The instant message she read was terse.

Night-witch: Do you have a soul?

You know what day it is?

Wednesday, no, Friday, no, Saturday? You don't seem to care, do you?

Jenny thought for a while, stumped for an answer. She doesn't know what day it is. She is so disoriented by the night shifts that she stopped caring. The message quickly disappeared without an answer as Night-witch rapidly typed questions after irritating questions on the messenger. Who is this Night-witch?

Jenny's actual name is Janaki. But the call centre where she works changed it to Jenny, which is her e-name, or electronic name. With the electronic name, she also had to fake an American accent, which she was trained to put on while answering calls. She works in a call centre as a voice-based support executive. She works in what they call a technology park. Her office is on the fourth floor of a modern building with central air-conditioning. The park has green lawns and well-paved roads, a rarity in India. But just outside this futuristic city, runnels of dirty sewage spill on the road and small children defecate in the open.

All night she attends to phone calls from far away United States of America for a multinational insurance company. The company she works for – Compucom – got the contract to receive and manage all the insurance company's incoming calls. The calls start coming in every evening when it is morning in the USA and end in the morning when it is evening in the USA. She sleeps during day and in the evening is picked up by the call centre bus and comes to work in a narrow air-conditioned office with rows of tables with 20 of them in a space of about 40 feet by 4 feet.

There are 250 executives like her all working night shifts. One of them is Night-witch. She doesn't know who because she doesn't know all her colleagues. Most of them leave in a month or two and are replaced. So it is difficult knowing everybody's name and faces.

She has only a few friends. She eats with them during the dinner break from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. After that they are supposed to swipe their identity cards and be at their workstations throughout the night. The nights are long and arduous and she feels sleepy. But to take a break she has to log out of the computer first. If she logs out too often the supervisor, one Mr. Sheth, will ask questions.

Mr Sheth sits in a cubicle the size of a toilet. He is a harried and harassed man, always studying his computer screen. His mind is filled with productivity figures like how many calls were attended on a particular day and how much each employee has produced. When there are problems like abusive callers, Jenny summons him, and he sorts out the problem. Like the time a drunken caller was abusive with her a few days ago. “You m***$^& you don't know anything about me. How can you manage my insurance policies?,” he said in his alien accent with which Jenny was now familiar.

No amount of sweet words and training could pacify him. That was when she called Mr. Sheth.

Mr. Sheth came to her table. All the other executives were watching.

“Hey Mister, he said into the phone. You are not in the proper frame of mind. Please come back when you are sober and we will attend to your call.”

“**&&^&*” from the other end.

“Look we have no time for callers like you. Please behave or I will have to report you to the police.”

Report to the police? From India? About a man in the US? He was kidding, of course.

The caller hung up.

“Handle them politely but firmly,” Mr. Sheth said and disappeared into his toilet-sized cubicle.

Pooja is Janaki's friend. Pooja's online name is Pamela. They both share the same birthdates. March seventh, both of them are Pisceans. Both, pacifists and accepters of fate. Pamela is getting married and all she talks about is the lengthy traditional rituals she has to undergo before marriage. She is from Punjab and weddings there are quite elaborate.

She has to make gold jewelry, buy silk saris, another silk ghagra-choli with elaborate gold filigree for the wedding reception and a house and furniture for themselves in Navi Mumbai. Jenny and Pamela get along well. They walk to the transport buses together and sit together and are inseparable.

“Who is this Night-witch, Pamela?” Jenny asked one day, when they were traveling in the bus together. They always called each other by their e-names to tease each other.

“I don't know. Why?”

“She sends me these instant messages and before I can reply, she disappears.”

“Strange.”

“Yes, strange. Most of them are questions that upset me a lot.”

“Girls are vegetables, they get bored and listless in the midnight shift,” one night the instant message read. That night the office was solemn with only the clicking of mouses and key depressions sounding like the chattering of a stream over a rocky bed.

Before Jenny could reply the message had disappeared. That was rude. She should report it. She went to Mr. Sheth.

“Mr. Sheth of late I have been getting some funny messages on my messenger.”

“Does it bother you?”

“No it doesn't but I think it interferes with my work. It disturbs me sometimes. It affects my productivity.”

“Okay I will look into it.”

One day Jenny came to the office and saw the horizontal blinds pulled tightly across the windows.

“They don't want us to even look at the dark sky and the lights anymore,” Pamela said.

“This is not fair.” Jenny said.

“Like everything is fair over here,” Pamela said.

“We are nothing but slaves, friend.”

“We are e-slaves with e-names and pseudo identities.”

When Jenny went back to her workstation a message on the instant messenger popped up.

Night-witch: Do you have a soul?

Jenny: No. My soul has been sold.

Night-witch: They have even sealed the toilet windows. You have no soul, no sleep, e-slave. You don't deserve sleep for selling your soul.

Jenny: Who are you?

Night-witch: It doesn't matter who I am. I also have no soul.

Jenny: What are you?

Night-witch: Do you wish to speak in a phony accent forever?

Jenny: I am getting the creeps!

Night-witch: How do you like to be a creature of the night?

That really got to Jenny. The rest of the night was torture. Her mind was not on the calls she was answering. She became very afraid. The office seemed to close in on her. She couldn't look out of the windows from the fourth floor occasionally and see disconsolate e-slaves like her walking on the street below, going home after finishing shifts that ended in the evening. The whole estate seemed filled with grumpy and sleep-starved, weary eyed people like her. They all had dark circles under eyes, bad skin and hair as if made of some jute fiber. They all looked frazzled. Who was this night-witch? An e-slave like her?

Now she regretted having accepted the job. She had accepted the call centre job without thinking. A job was better than sitting at home and waiting for her parents to find a nice boy to marry her off, she thought then. But this wasn't proving to be the job of her dreams she had imagined.

Some nights there was no water in the rest rooms and it stank. Some days the mosquitoes inside the office restrooms were so thick that she was scared she might get malaria, a disease she dreaded.

“I am scared of getting malaria, working here,” she told Pamela.

“Like the plague?”

“Like the plague.”

“Me, too. I had it more than once. It is terrible. You feel like lying down and dying.”

“Working on the night shift weakens your immune system,” Jenny said.

“By now we might have become immune to malaria, I suppose.”

“It also plays havoc with your digestive system,” Jenny said.

“My digestive system is already a mess,” Pamela said and they both laughed.

Jenny arrived one day and Pamela wasn't on here seat. She started work as usual as the phone at her terminal was ringing with the insistence of a hungry child. Soon she was immersed in the details of people's insurance policies and their troubles with buying security cover for their cars and homes.

She saw Pamela emerge from Mr. Sheth's cubicle. Pamela didn't look at her. Pamela went to her table took her purse and just walked out. Jenny made a note to call Pamela when it was time for the dinner break. She attended 10 calls before dinner each one in a rising scale of tortuousness.

During dinner break Jenny phoned Pamela on her mobile phone from her own sleek mobile handset. That's one advantage of being living on the razor edge of technology. E-slaves had to use technologies to keep up with the world.

“Hello, Pamela what happened?”

“Hi, Jenny, I was sacked!”

“But why? What was the reason?”

“I have been found out.”

“What?”

“You know the night-witch?”

“Yes. The tormentor of my midnight shifts.”

“That was me.”

Jenny's jaws dropped.

“But why did you send those provocative messages?”

“I was bored. That was the only way I could keep myself awake.”

“Come on, you can't be serious.”

“Do you have a soul you e-slave? Do you wish to spend all your life in a narrow workspace answering calls and speaking in a phony accent that makes your mouth ache? Do you want to be a creature of the night forever? Do you wish to be enslaved by people who live thousands of kilometers away, who you will never meet? Do you have a soul?”

That was the last Jenny heard from Pamela.

THANK YOU TEACHER

2007-03-14T10:14:00.000-07:00

He looked at the obituary again, unable to believe it. He read it again and again. The photograph was familiar; the eyes had the same glint, the nose, and the features. Beautiful. A beautiful woman in the full flow of youth. His eyes wandered over the other death announcements, obituaries, and came to rest once again as if drawn to it. 'Shobhana Nair left for her heavenly abode'. How could Shobhana Teacher (they had appended the surrogate surname 'Teacher' to all their teachers) be dead? Surely, there was a mistake somewhere.

Again he looked at the eyes that fixated on them as awkward teenagers not long ago. Yes, they were the same. Just a look was enough to freeze them. When she entered a class a hushed silence would fall over it, in awe of the fragile woman whose beauty and character seemed to radiate through her. In their awkward adolescence, they considered her idealism their only hope against the big, bad world outside. She was a woman who had contributed to her profession and to her students by doing more than what was required from her.

He stared at those luminous eyes disbelieving, his own eyes filled with tears.

He still remembered the day she first came to school. There was excitement all around and curiosity. Soon the buzz spread. Is the new teacher for our class? Is she going to speak to me? I saw her coming down the stairs, oh, what beauty! Was it really her own skin or was she applying make up? Was the bright red bindi she wore very expensive? What sari did she wear today?

They were all children from working class backgrounds. They were students in a school in a remote suburb of Bombay bordered on one side by a silent swamp and on the other by the echoing clatter of rails. He distinctly remembered the school, wall of which were unpainted, the steel reinforcements still sticking out. Inside the classroom, the walls were white washed.

The school couldn't afford fans and in the summer the heat that swept in through the windows was killing. The back yard was thickly overgrown with weeds. These weeds, if he remembered correctly, were never cut but were stomped and flattened by hundreds of feet to play football, volleyball and cricket. Around the back were plantain trees and a few bushes into which they dived chasing colorful butterflies. In those bushes they urinated daily and watched the bushes dry and die, a juvenile revenge for keeping them confined to their classes for long periods. Inside the class it was hot and they perspired freely. Yet it was school, loved and hated, exhilarating and disappointing.

They left it each evening to return the following afternoon, bathed, powdered, tiffin in their bags, note books and text books neatly packed, uniforms washed and ironed. The Hindu girls wore sandal paste on their foreheads. The boys, if they wore sandal paste, were ribbed to no end.

They exchanged comic books during intervals. War comics and Wild West comics. They would read comic books hidden between textbooks in class. Sitting hunched over a single comic book a group of them would eagerly devour the story during the recess. "Read fast, fast na," they would tell the slower readers as they were consumed by the suspense of what would happen next and would fume and fidget.

A boy was suspended for writing obscenities in the toilet. "Aaaaah! What cheek," the girls would exclaim. A girl was suspended for receiving a love letter. "Hey! Fast one!" the boys would shout. This was the kind of news that made it to the headlines in the rather mundane school. The stern Principal, Mukundan Iyer, came with a cane hiding behind him and whacked anyone found playing 'statue' (a game where you had to freeze when two fingers were pointed at you like a gun). The morning assembly and prayer were full of suppressed giggling and whispered comments. All this flashed through his mind like it was yesterday. If it was yesterday, how could Shobhana Teacher be dead?

It was spring outside when she walked into their classroom with the sweet smelling freshness of the jasmine that adorned her hair. She always wore a bunch of stringed jasmines in her hair. She wore a red sari that matched the vermilion in the center of her forehead and in the parting of her hair. None of the other teachers dabbed vermilion in the parting of their hair. That was her uniqueness. She was so different she stood out from the crowd. Vermilion in the parting of her hair was a symbol of piety.

In a society, which resorted to teasing as a means of attracting the opposite sex, nobody would dare tease a woman with vermilion in her hair parting. They would know that she had a husband and that they stood no chance whatsoever. Such was their belief. Not that anyone would dare to tease Shobhana Teacher. She was a woman who held her head high and didn't hang it in shame. She was a woman who could look straight in the eye of injustice and speak the truth. That first day she had stood in front of them like a Hindu goddess, full of confidence, her unafraid eyes surveying the eager faces raised to her.

"Good Afternoon... Teacher..." they had chorused, the 'a-f-t-e-r-n-o-o-n' and 't-e-a-c-h-e-r' bit was long and languid from the afternoon torpor. It was hot.

They listened to her in rapt attention as she spoke in class. Her voice had the sweet affection and admonition of an elder sister or an indulgent aunt, not the sharp, cutting, bullying shriek of the other teachers.

"Thank you... Teacher..." they had chorused when she left class.

She turned around. A smile lit her face.

"No need to thank me... I am only doing my job... It looks as if you are relieved to see me go..."

From that day though the 'Good Afternoons' continued to be sung, nobody sang 'Thank You' when the teacher left. She came well prepared and had all her facts in memory as she stood before them talking about history as if was a story, and was a well-remembered experience in her life. She did not declaim nor was did she badger like the other teachers. She spoke persuasively, giving an example here, a well intentioned but humorous comment to which her students laughed. She held their gaze and they held hers, even the duffers who sat on the last benches were enthralled. She looked at them, compassionately, without arrogance or condescension.

He could vaguely remember an English class in which there was a passage from a lesson that had the exclamation 'bah' in it.

She said a perfect 'bah' with a delicate inflection.

"Bah," he had repeated after her aloud, unknowingly, unwittingly.

The class erupted into laughter.

"Murli, I thought you were a good boy," was all she said turning towards him. That was enough to silence him for the rest of his life.

From that day the mortal fear of being thought a bad boy by Shobhana Teacher would haunt him. No, he shouldn't do that. What if Shobhana Teacher thought him a bad boy? That instant his view of life changed into something that stood for her. With just one sentence she had firmly entrenched him on the side of good as against evil.

Not that he was a bad student. He constantly ranked third in class. But every time his mark sheet arrived on his desk it had the admonition in red ink on it: "Try to achieve the first rank."

He had looked up 'achieve' in the dictionary then. He had a vague idea of its meaning, but wanted to be sure. It was exactly what he had thought it would be. Achieve, achievement, achiever, reach or attain, accomplish. He must reach and achieve and accomplish. And her signature on the mark sheet! A big curved 's' followed by a long line and a few squiggles at the end. Someone who could sign so beautifully had to be beautiful.

Another day, she was teaching an English lesson (it was abridged from a famous book, he couldn't remember which one) that had a character named Sambo in it. Now, Sambo was black and the lesson was unashamedly racist in describing his dark skin and flashing white teeth. When a student read that part everyone snickered looking at a dark-skinned boy, Damodaran, sitting in the extreme left desk in the middle row. Damodaran, too, had smooth, dark, velvety skin and flashing white teeth. When the lesson came to Sambo capturing a crocodile and flashing his teeth, someone said, "Like our Damodaran," from one of the back seats and they all laughed.

The duster descended with a bang on Shobhana Teacher's table. The laughter fluttered and then died on their lips.

"Who said that? Stand up if you have courage," she said between clenched teeth.

The class fell silent. You could even hear the wind howl in the swamp outside.

"What do you think, because you have a bit lighter skin you are superior? 'Do your parents teach you this at home? I will throw you out of this class and have your parents come here begging to take you back."

"What rubbish," she continued after a few moments' silence, which seemed to last till recess. Her eyes were flaming, truly aggrieved and hurt. "At your age have you become so hard and inconsiderate to talk like this? What have you seen so far? Better go and beg in the streets than come here and make such comments."

Everybody shifted uneasily in his or her seat. The prospect of having their parents come to school scared them, as did the prospect of being beggars in the sweltering heat outside their classroom windows.

She stood there glaring at them. She considered it an insult to her not to Damodaran. Damodaran was crying. His soft sobs filled the silence. She went to him put her hands around him and asked him to go and wash his face. Then followed a long discourse on how people perceived each other. She talked of how color was made an invisible weapon to subdue and divide people. How the invaders and colonists thought that ethnic Indians were inferior because of their darker color. How they were sorely mistaken.

Not a single student ever teased Damodaran again.

He could still remember the incident when he had to participate in a debate and he was scared at the prospect. He had to address the entire school and he felt that they would surely murder him with their eyes. The very thought made his knees shake. It was Shobana Teacher, the president of the debating society, who gave him the subject of the debate when he met her on the first floor verandah. The very sight of her made him tremble and stutter. It was then he saw her from up close. Her skin was much more finely toned than he had imagined. It was as if her skin had no pores and required no powder or make up. There was something inexplicably beautiful about it. The red bindi had a character all its own. It sat on her skin like a shining red sun, dominating her face. It really seemed like an invincible third eye looking at him. In the effusion from the bright afternoon sun, she had seemed like a wonderful creature.

"Don't be shy like a girl," she said smiling. As if girls were shy. Not a single girl in his class was shy according to him. Their shyness was only imaginary, a veil, a front, to hide their words and feelings in a society that deprived them of their legitimate rights.

"Can you speak on 'Should India Remain a Democracy'?"

Again he was silent. He wanted to escape and run away. Those eyes looking at him seemed even more intrusive than that of the whole assembly staring at him when he would speak.. What if he was to stumble and forget his lines? What if?

"You need not think about them." She said as if she had read his thoughts. "You have to think your thoughts and express them. Think about what is inside you and what you feel about it. Say what you feel is right. Read and understand your subject. No problem if you are wrong. Speak with conviction. You will improve as you go along."

Suddenly it all became clear. It was as if he was being given an opportunity. He had never had the attention of his friends all to himself. Now this, this unforgettably beautiful woman, was giving him a chance to speak to them about his ideal world, what he wanted it to be when he grew up. That was true courage and he felt courageous standing before that bold and radiant woman. That debate completely changed his outlook towards public speaking.

Then he clearly remembered the school annual day when the play 'Mrs. Addis' was to be performed. Everybody, even her jealous colleagues, admitted that Shobhana Teacher would fit the role. Some clever make up was applied to her face to turn her into an old woman. She wore a caftan that reached to her toes and had small round glasses perched way down on her pert nose. Though her stance was always proud and erect, she stooped her shoulders for the role and said her lines with a slight tremor in her voice. So convincing was she that many parents who attended couldn't recognize her as Shobhana Teacher.

"Teacher, you looked exactly like the real Mrs. Addis," students gushed, though they could never have imagined what a fictional character who lived somewhere in the western world would or should look like.

"Yes, it was a superb performance, just solid and fantastic."

"Teacher, you should have been an actress, you would have given a tough fight to Hema Malini."

Such were the stories woven around her, which ultimately invested her with almost legendary traits, a halo of sorts. Now lost in sweet memories he felt his skin prickle with goose bumps as he imagined the massive crush he, like many others, had on her.

Then he passed his final year in school and entered college. With college came a new life and a freedom and radical idealism of the dopey, rebellious and hippyish seventies. Nobody had prepared him for college, no, not even Shobhana Teacher. She, being from Kerala, was the product of an intellectual ferment altogether different than that prevalent in Bombay then. In the confusion that ensued, school and Shobhana Teacher were forgotten. He never even visited school again except once to collect an award she had announced for 'achieving' the highest mark in her subject. How he had 'achieved' something he had badly wanted! Newer, adolescent crushes were developing in the college campus and his schoolboy crush for her was temporarily forgotten. He felt lost in the thousands of loud-talking boys and girls who considered college a place to flirt, romance and play pranks. The teachers didn't give a damn who attended class and who didn't. Teachers in college never took any interest in their students. They didn't even know their names. Yes, one teacher remembered the number of the table on which he worked in the laboratory when he met her to clear a doubt about Charles Law.

"Table number 21, hope that clears your doubt about “Charles Low”?" This teacher had said as if it was some lowly task she had to perform.

He wanted to learn why things were done a certain way in the laboratory, not mechanically repeat what he was told to do. At the back of his mind must have been the ideal teacher that Shobhana Teacher had been urging him to learn and understand.

"What is the purpose of analyzing these powders and solutions day in and day out? Tell us how it would be useful and what we can do with it."

"You do what you are told to do and fill up your journals," was all “Charles Low” would reply.

Then came the news that Shobhana Teacher was diagnosed as suffering from an incurable disease. Cancer. Why had it to be her? She had to resign. That was the time his father had a fall on the way back from the market and had died after two months in hospital. Things happened so fast, he could not even think of going to the school to meet her. How would he face her after all these years?

Then one day he saw her! He was in a train and she was on the platform of Chembur (a Bombay suburb) railway station. His eyes were drawn to her as if by some magnetic force that existed, unknown to both of them. There she stood proudly erect and dignified. The disease had done nothing to lower her values and her self-esteem. Only the hair had gone gray, a dignified gray, but the eyes were still sharp, focussed as if blazing with an unquenchable fire. It seemed life had chosen her to display how courage could be had when faced with adversity. The train started and was moving away.

He saw her glance in his direction. He raised his hand and waved. Their eyes met briefly, locked, it seemed as if a million words and thought passed between their eyes. Words and thoughts of suffering, pain and disillusionment. For a brief moment her lips parted in a smile. Yes, she had recognized him, after all these years. How their worlds had changed since he had seen her step into their classroom carrying the sweet smell of jasmine? How can she die? She cannot. She still lives in the minds of students like him.

"Thank you, Shobhana Teacher," he folded the paper and whispered reverently to himself.

DON’T CALL ME, I WILL CALL YOU

2007-03-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

“Don't call me, I will call you,” Thomachen said.

This was the fifth time Kuriachen heard those same words. He was sitting on a folding chair by the phone and suddenly he felt like throwing the phone against the wall or banging it down. Instead, he place it gently back and wondered at the callousness of his friend, Thomachen. Nice friend he was indeed.

For days, Kuriachen had been pursuing Thomachen with a proposal for his second daughter, Mercy. Thomachen put him off every time with some excuse or the other. Kuriachen had never thought his friend could be so smooth, treacherous and vile. But he was the father of a girl and it was difficult being that, especially when he had three daughters. It was as if he had depreciated considerably in the eyes of society just because all his children were female. As if they were a burden.

But he had brought up his daughters like gold.

“My daughters, all of them are like gold, all my daughters,” was his constant refrain. “Any boy would be lucky to have my daugther as his wife.”

But as they grew older and the prospect of marriage came up, he discovered an ugly face of the people, even friends around him.

“Aren't you marrying off your daughters?”

“What age are they?”

“What business is it of yours? If you have a proposal tell me. Why do you constantly needle me like this?” Kuriachen had shot back, half playfully.

But the full realization of the reasons behind their teasing was apparent to him. Never had he felt that his daughters were a burden. They were sweet and loving girls. They didn't know the ways of the world. They were never meant to know. All they were encouraged to talk about at home were shorthand and typing speeds and how they were progressing with the diphthongs.

Kuriachen worked at the Atomic Energy Commission office as a stenographer. His wife, Annamma, was an upper division clerk in a central government office. Both were cushy jobs, with lots of benefits of their own. For example, if they wanted they could take leave for months together and nobody would ask them for an explanation. That had happened when his first daughter, Maria was expecting. Annamma had taken leave for almost six months to care for her. If in the middle of the day they felt sick, they could leave the office and not be marked absent or as being on leave. They had facilities like free medical care, free hospitalization, dearness allowance, provident fund, gratuity, bonus and travel allowance. These were some of the privileges they enjoyed as government employees. What more could they ask for? When he got a job in a government office, Kuriachen's joy knew no bounds. And when he married a girl who worked in a government office, he was thrilled beyond words. Together, with both of them working for the government, life would be an interminable succession of joys and happiness. Or so he thought.

The birth of his daughters made him realize that he had to save money. A lot of money. Because giving them away in marriage would not be a joke. He would become a joke if he didn't get proper husbands for them. They had to be tall, fair and with jobs, preferably, in government offices. So when his elder daughter, Maria, was of marriageable age, he set about finding a husband for her. Thomachen's son was first in his list. Georgie was fair, well-built, personable and worked in a bank. He had asked Thomachen several times if he could visit him and talk things over. But Thomachen, shrewd and vile man that he was, kept putting it off. He and Thomachen worked in the same office and they went by the same bus to work and attended the same Mar Thoma church in Chembur.

“Thomacha, why are you avoiding me? Why don't we sit together and discuss things over? After all we are friends and have known each other so long.”

“Kuriacha, the time will come. What's the hurry?”

“I have girls to marry off. Don't you realize?”

“The time will come for them. Let Georgie finish his computer course.”

Georgie's ambition was to go to the United States, and he was learning computer programming for that.

“He can learn computer programming after marriage also. Can't he?”

Kuriachen knew that Thomachen was greedy and he considered his son like a fatted calf to be traded to the highest bidder. He was open to bidding now, and knew that once he committed to Kuriachen, he would be tied down to the proposal by public consensus. So he avoided raising the matter with Kuriachen, and studiedly avoided him.

That was when Maria got a good marriage offer, and everything happened so fast that Thomachen and his son was forgotten.

Matthew was a good match for Maria. He worked in the Port Trust and was tall, handsome and a good husband. Kuriachen considered himself very lucky to get him as a son-in-law. The proposal was from a friend of his wife's. The boy's father accepted whatever Kuriachen offered as dowry because Maria was working in the customs department and had a good salary. Besides, it was a government job and everybody's mouth salivated at the mention of a government job -- a steady and secure income for doing virtually nothing.

“In a government job, nobody can question you. It is nobody's business to question anybody. The government is of the people, so who will question the people?” Kuriachen had said to his wife when talk was going on about the proposal.

Before the marriage, he redecorated his flat in Chembur. They had taken out all their fixed deposits, and decided this was a good time to spend it on re-doing the house. He had a western toilet put in place of a squatting Indian toilet, bathroom tiles in the kitchen and toilet, plaster of Paris and paint in all the rooms and a chandelier-like lamp put up in the front room. He bought cloth for new curtains, cushions and cushion covers matching the wall color. A few framed photographs of his parents and their wedding photograph were all dusted and hung in the front room. All this cost money, but he was sure people who came to the house would be impressed and they would come with proposals for Mercy, his second daughter.

But nothing of that sort happened. Mercy worked in a private company and nobody wanted a girl who worked in a private company. That was when Kuriachen developed high blood pressure. He had initiated talks for many proposals, but everybody said the same thing:

“If the girl had a government job we would have agreed, but she has a private job.”

“Don't call me, I will call you back.”

“Only government serving girls will do for us.”

It was as if, he, Kuriachen, who worked in a prestigious government department had become a pariah dog. He was proud of working in a government office, how could they downgrade him so much because his daughter worked in a private office. Moreover, Mercy was still writing exams and trying to qualify for a job in the Railways or the Income Tax office.

The doctor advised him to take it easy and not to get too upset about anything. But how could he not get upset when he had lost all credibility in their community. He was very careful to invite both Thomachen and Georgie to Maria's wedding. Not to show off, but he still had Georgie in mind for his second daughter, Mercy. He had gone personally to Thomachen's house with the wedding invitation with Annamma. Their words had been cordial and they had talked most amiably about office matters and the coming revision in pay scales. But on the day of Maria's wedding, he kept an eye peeled for Thomachen, his wife and Georgie. But none of them showed up for the wedding.

Was something wrong in the way he invited them? But he had shown them all respect. An invitation with a personal visit by both the bride's father and mother was supposed to be a great honor, and nobody ever turned down such an invitation. Where had he gone wrong? After that when he met Thomachen, he seemed cold, distant and forbidding.

“Thomacha, if I did anything wrong please forgive me. Why didn't you come to the wedding?”

“What? I am not saying you did anything wrong Kuriacha… ”

“Then what is wrong? If Maria is already married then let's talk about Mercy. She is of marriageable age, more beautiful than Maria, only… she works in a private office.”

“No, but I said let Georgie finish his computer course then we can talk of these things. I don't want to disrupt his studies.”

“But then these things… you don't know how it is. Things happen with lightning speed in marriages. I want to cement our friendship and this liaison was in my mind for a long time. Why don't you give me your word?” Kuriachen said, his pressure rising.

“How can I give you my word when I don't know what Georgie has to say about this?”

“Georgie is a nice boy, he will agree if you do.”

“How do I know?”

“Why didn't he come for Maria's wedding? Do you think there was some shortcoming in my invitation?”

“Nothing of that sort, Kuriacha. I had some other engagement on that day.”

“See, we are friends. We are working in the same office. We go to the same church. We know each other's family backgrounds. Do you think you would get a better proposal? If it is a question of money, I am willing to withdraw from my provident fund and pay you.”

Thomachen was evasive as much as Kuriachen was persuasive.

Then Thomachen received this proposal from a rich Indian settled in America. For a while, Thomachen's dream of sending Georgie to the United States seemed a reality. The girl and her father were coming to see the boy shortly. There was excitement in Thomachen's house, and sadness in Kuriachen's. Naturally, the dowry would be a princely amount, no doubt about that. Much more than Kurachen could ever afford.

“That stinking dog, born and living in poverty…” Kuriachen fumed to Annamma.

“Don't get so angry or your pressure will shoot up.”

“What if it shoots up, eh?” asked Kuriachen, as combative and confrontational as ever.

Then Kuriachen had a mild heart attack. It began as a dull pain in the chest and soon radiated to his arms and legs. Annamma rushed him to the free Atomic Energy Staff Hospital where he continued to fume despite being told to relax and take it easy.

“Doctor, how can I relax when someone I trusted like a brother has let me down so badly?”

“You stop thinking about it, or your condition will deteriorate,” the doctor said.

So Kuriachen spent a few weeks in the luxury of the free medical care under the watchful eyes of his wife, daughters, nurses and doctors. His dear daughters, whom he had brought up 'like gold', came and nursed him like the loving daughters they were. In those few days, he realized that he was lucky in having three lovely, well-behaved daughters. They understood him more than any ill-mannered boy like Georgie would ever do. Maria took leave and was by his side all the time and had to be persuaded to go home every night. Mercy brought him food and medicines, and made sure that he took all the prescribed medicines at the proper time. The youngest, Molly, was in school and was too young to understand what sickness meant, and she spent her days in blissful unawareness of her father's condition. Annamma would be with him at night, and would go home only in the morning when Maria came to relieve her. He felt rich and happy in those few days as a result of the love of those three wonderful human beings.

'That Thomachen, let him burn in hell. I don't care', Kurianchen thought.

Soon visitors came bearing the news from their Mar Thoma parish. Secretly they all knew the cause of Kuriachen's affliction. They comforted him. They told him all about Thomachen's greed.

“That girl, she is retarded, ugly… she can't speak two words of Malayalam,” they said to console him.

“Who would want a boy like Georgie? He is a duffer too. Heard that he was not making any progress in computer class.”

Kuriachen recovered and started going to work. He would see Thomachen, but would not speak to him. He could see that Thomachen felt guilty at the turn of events, but made no overtures towards him. Kuriachen gave him a cold glare every time they passed each other. The animosity was mutual now.

Then, as if it was some quirk of fate, news came that the Indian father (who was in America), whose daughter was being considered for Georgie, was being repatriated back to India. It turned out that he was an illegal immigrant who had overstayed, and was detected by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. That broke Thomachen's heart. Georgie was not making any progress in computer programming and his dreams of having him settled in the United States were shattered. What use is an ugly, retarded girl living in India, even if she would bring a big dowry? The engagement was broken. It was Thomachen's turn to have high blood pressure and he had a heart attack too, a major one.

Kuriachen went to visit him in hospital.

“Edo, would it all have come to pass if you had listened to me, eh?”

“Kuriacha, I am very, very sorry, forgive me.”

“You deserve to burn in hell, not forgiveness.”

Thomachen recovered, though slowly. He didn't have loving daughters to care for him. Boys were boys, and Georgie was a boy with his own preoccupations.

Church members now shunned Thomachen, and not Kuriachen.

“Where is your American daughter-in-law?” They teased him openly.

One day on their way to work, they met in a bus.

Kuriachen could see that Thomachen was suffering a lot because of his follies. He was not the smooth talking Thomachen of old. He was downcast, pale and had grown thin.

Kuriachen sat beside Thomachen.

“How are you Thomacha? See, there is nothing to worry about. I have gone through it also. You will make it. But remember, one should be honest and not a hypocrite like you.”

“Kuriacha, I ask your forgiveness…”

“When I had brought my daughter's proposal, you were busy talking with that American, weren't you?”

“That is over… don't trouble me anymore with that… the very thought of it rankles me. Tell me how is your family?”

“They are fine. Mercy has passed her Railways test and interview, and has been selected.”

“Oh! Is that so?”

“Yes,” Kuriachen said proudly.

“That means she is a government servant like us? With provident fund, medical, gratuity and ample leave?”

“Yes… yes… You forgot free travel three times a year to our native state of Kerala.”

That night Thomachen phoned Kuriachen at home. The subject of their discussion: Would they consider Mercy's alliance with Georgie? No, they didn't want any dowry at all. Just a beautiful daughter-in-law with a job in the Railways would do!

“At last he had the decency to phone me back,” said Kuriachen with a triumphant laugh.

THE TENDER COCONUT VENDOR

2007-03-14T10:12:00.000-07:00

He said his life has been like an elevator.

“Up... down... up... down... up... down... all along.”

He sat on D.N. Road under an arch of the building in which I worked. He had before him bunches of tender coconuts, all so tender and green and soft enough to be shredded with a sharp knife that rested on a thick denim cloth. He would raise one leg so that his upper leg was horizontal, spread the thick cloth on his knee and shave off the husk of the tender coconuts with deft motions of his long knife. The knife, sharpened to shiny silver every night, was worn and the blade curved in with constant application. It was sharp enough to slice anything in a deft stroke of Mahmood's hand.

Every afternoon, I would descend in the creaking elevator, which had sliding doors, made of wood. Since Mahmood had likened his life to an elevator, I somehow associated the elevator with him and riding in it was as if I was having a lazy conversation with Mahmood. I have seen sliding doors made of steel on elevators but had never seen sliding doors made of wood. The novelty wore off after I became accustomed to its quaintness. After getting down from the elevator, I would walk a few steps to his stall and have a tender coconut. Since I was also from Kerala, he gave it to me for rupees seven though the going rate was rupees ten. First he would shave the bottom half of the coconut and then cut the hard shell in a neat ring and hand me the open end of the coconut to drink the sweetish liquid inside. Then he would neatly incise the husk and fashion a spoon, and with the spoon, scoop out the tender meat of the coconut for me to eat.

“This is not our Kerala coconut,” I said one day.

“No, these are the ones that come from Karnataka, our neighbouring state.”

“The taste is different.”

“Our coconut water is so tasty. Aaah, I remember the coconuts in our fields. I would climb on top of a coconut tree, sit there and have about four or five before coming down. Mother would scold me. Haahaha...” he reminisced.

Everyday we would share pleasantries like this about our beloved Kerala. We were both homesick for our lush native state, draped in the greenery of evergreen coconut palms.

“Tell me, how did you come to Mumbai?” I asked him one day.

“What to say, except that fate brought me here.”

”Did you run away from home?”

“Yes,” he said with a wide and sincere grin. The grin was typical of Malayalees. Malayalees have their own sense of humour and are a fun-loving people except when they are provoked or when injustice is done to them. He had a handsome face. The hair stood in a neat tuft on his head and receded smoothly and evenly to the back of his head. His eyes were wide-set and had the glint of humour. His face was typically round and broad like that of some ageing Malayalee film star.

“Why did you run away?”

“Those days, I wanted to work. Bappa (father) said I had to study and become a big man...a manager. Now I realise Bappa was right and olu (I) was wrong.”

“So you ran away.”

“Yes, when I failed the fourth standard.”

“Then you came to Mumbai and started the tender coconut business?” I prompted.

“No, it was not so easy. I had to work with a Hajiar shaving tender coconut like this. Then I washed dishes in a hotel and then became a waiter and saved enough money. Then I started this business.”

“So, you have been a tender coconut seller till now.”

“No, saar. This is a good business. In a day, I can make a thousand rupees at three rupees profit per coconut. I sleep here on the pavement. I don't pay any rent.”

“Then, where is all the money?”

“Long story, saar.”

“Tell me, I am interested.”

Vehicles honked and cruised past us. The afternoon was hot. I had to go back, ride the rickety elevator with the sliding doors made of wood to the second floor to my mundane office tasks. But the story that emerged, so slowly, so diffidently from Mahmood's mouth, riveted me to the spot. He was discreet now, whispering confidentially.

“You know George Coleho, the trade union leader? Now he is a big minister.”

“Yes.”

“Well, he and I were friends. We would sleep on the pavement outside the West End Watch Company before he became a big minister.”

“Oh, really!”

“If you meet him, tell him “Mahmood Narielwalla says salaam” to him. He will remember me.”

I wondered where I was going to meet the big Union Government minister who changes parties and loyalties like he changes his kurta and if at all he would remember a tender coconut vendor from the streets of Mumbai.

“How do you think I will meet him?”

“You all are big people going around in taxis and airplanes. You will meet him someday somewhere. Me, poor Mahmood, can never meet him now.”

“Yes, I will make it a point to tell him if I meet with him,” I said winking at him.

“I really prospered in my tender coconut business and he used to come and borrow money from me. He said he would set me up in the hotel business. He did. He got me the permission to start hotel Republic. Do you know hotel Republic? I started that hotel.”

Hotel Republic was a narrow and dingy eating joint and I had feasted in its dark interiors on hot mackerel curry. I nodded.

“I was doing very well then. It was like I was ascending to the topmost floor on my elevator at that time. I had money. I had everything. Then my friend left me to become a big leader. I was left without a godfather in this city. In this big city, you need a godfather for everything. Then the police harassment started. It was like riding the elevator down the floors then.”

“Why did the police harass you? What did you do?”

“They jailed me for a month saying I was running a prostitution racket. A few prostitutes may have come there to eat. How could I refuse them? After all, they are also human beings. They may have talked to a few people inside. That doesn't mean I am in their racket. In the hotel business, you can't deny anyone who is hungry, can you? It is business.”

“Yes, I mean, no.”

“Then I sold the hotel to a friend from my village and I was again down like an elevator to the ground floor.”

I chuckled.

His reference to the elevator was quite funny. He said it with a shake of the head, a wide gesture with the hands and a laugh like a snort. His face crinkled into creases and I too got carried away in the waves of laughter it set off.

“Then I started the tender coconut business again,” he said when we had finished laughing, “It is such a lovely business. I love this business. It breaks my heart to peel these tender green children of mine. After all, which fruit offers water to quench the thirst and food to satiate hunger? Which one? Tell me. Yes, they are my children. I look upon them as my children. I sacrifice my children for the thirsty and hungry. I have nobody in this city. Not even a dog to wag its tail at me.”

I thought for a moment and said, “No. None other than coconut.”

He nodded his handsome head in assent.

The afternoon was warm. The lunchtime crowd had gone up the creaking elevator into their cubby holes to yank at the creaky wheels of commerce. I was hesitant to let him continue. I had work waiting for me upstairs on the second floor. He, too, seemed pensive and distracted.

I walked to the elevator and waited for the taciturn elevator operator to open the sliding doors made of wood. The outdated relic seemed to shudder and falter when he turned a round crank pin made of shiny brass that would start it. It groaned on its way up and the lights that were on each floor cast criss-cross shadows upon us.

In the evening, when I descended the same elevator, the tender coconut seller was nowhere to be seen. The next afternoon also he wasn't there and in his place was a young boy doing his work. I bought a tender coconut from the boy who seemed lost in a world of his own. I didn't ask him who he was or where Mahmood, friend of minister George Coelho, had disappeared.

The next day, I overcame my hesitation and asked the boy where Mahmood was.

“Didn't you hear? He had an accident and was admitted to St. George Hospital.”

“Who are you?”

“I am his nephew. I am looking after his business till he is well again.”

The next day, I took special permission from my office to visit a “relative” in St. George Hospital and made it to the hospital, run by the Mumbai Municipal Corporation. I took the elevator to the fourth floor of the hospital to find Mahmood resting in a largish ward with a roof so high that it could have accommodated three floors of a modern housing flat. The hospital ward hadn't changed since the time it had been built by the British and the cots were all of wrought iron, clearly showing on them the wear of the ages. There, on one of these cots, dwarfed by the tall walls, which tapered into the roof above in huge criss-crossing beams and rafters, lay Mahmood. His face had lost its cheerfulness and looked haggard. A sheet was drawn over him and he was propped up against a single pillow. The sheet was of coarse cotton cloth, which looked pale yellow with much washing and rubbing against the washing stone. Behind him was a small veranda and there were patients on cots in the veranda too. Beyond that, I could see the ships moored in the Mumbai harbour. As I watched, a huge crane was lifting some containers and stacking them on the wharf.

“So Mahmood, what happened? I didn't see you and asked your nephew what happened.”

“Yes, friend. It was a tragic accident. I closed my shop and was crossing the road to go to the Republic toilet to urinate. Suddenly, this taxi came out of nowhere, knocked me down and ran over my hand. I cried for help, but nobody came. Do these people have a heart? I lay there writhing in pain and I said, “Allah, take my life if that is what you want. I don't want to live. Why make me suffer like this? I have seen good times and I have seen bad. Why make me go up and down like an elevator?” Then, my friend Azhar, who has a business selling and repairing cameras, saw me and got me admitted in this wretched hospital. At night, the bugs come out and suck the blood and life out of me. What can I do? I can't even get up. I cry again to Allah, “Take me away, don't let me suffer like this.””

“Mahmood, you will be okay. Don't worry. They will take care of you. If you need any money, I can help.”

“Help? I don't want charity. What will I do without my business?”

He is a proud man, he won't accept charity, I thought.

“What happened to your business? You nephew is taking care of it, isn't he?”

“I will never be able to shave tender coconut again,” he said tearfully. His handsome face distorted into creases of agony and the tears streamed down his unshaven face.

“I will never be able to run my tender coconut business again. Serves me right for hurting all those tender children of mine,” he repeated.

“Why?”

With one hand, he removed the sheet that covered him.

I recoiled at the sight I saw.

I was staring at a stump that was once his hand.

As I descended in the smooth, large elevator that didn't creak like the one at my office building, I wondered if his friend, Honourable Union Minister George Coleho, would ever know or care about what had happened to his old friend Mahmood Narielwalla.

FLIRTING IN SHORT MESSAGES

2007-03-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

“I am coming to the next meeting of Neterati in New Bombay, I will send short messaging texts, for directions,” she had written to me.

I was going to meet Savita Fernandes for the first time. We had met online at a literary community that exchanged messages and networked in the disembodied medium of the Internet. Neterati had grown from a few members to around seven hundred proving that there were writers around India looking to network and wanting support in their quest to be known writers one day.

So writers and would-be writers trooped in to Neterati and poured out their anguish and angst, and their feeling of inadequacy in a world that was increasingly being unkind to writers what with many of their works remaining unpublished. She looked quite pert and pretty in a photograph posted on her profile page and I could imagine an interesting if not intellectual conversation with a kindred literary soul. She liked reading Tolkien and wrote prose, short stories, and poetry.

The success of Neterati proved how aggrieved and alienated writers were in India, pushed into a corner for want of a media that would accept their oeuvres and the need for a forum where writers could express their feeling when writerly dreams went sour. The brainchild of a writer and strategist who called himself 'The Ghost in the Woodworks', this community had decided to marry online disembodiment with person-to-person contact where writers could read their works.

Every meeting of Neterati that met once every month was eagerly looked forward to and avid scribes would listen intently to writers and offer criticism and encouragement.

Savita is a biologist doing research in a government-funded laboratory in Pune and I am a technical writer based in Bombay. I call myself a, 'corporate whore' for I sell my talents to the highest bidder in the burgeoning market for writers in the sweatshops that outsource business from the US. I write content for web sites mostly in the United States and barely would I finish one when the next request would be clamouring to be done.

The next meeting of Neterati was to take place at the residence of poet Manisha Gidwani, poet of repute, a Neterati member who lived in CBD Belapur. Savita had come into Bombay from Pune earlier in the day and was traveling to CBD Belapur where we were to meet and then proceed to the meeting.

I could feel my pulse racing and heart thumping when I boarded a bus to CBD Belapur. Neterati conducted what it called exercises every week. As I sat down in the bus for a long drive my mind skimmed over some of the recent exercises in which Savita and I had participated. An exercise, devised by the imposing talent of the moderator of the board, the one called The Griff, consisted of members writing short blank verses called clerihews about each other and posting it online. I had written about Savita:

Savita Fernandes researcher of plant biology,
She spends quality time on word morphology,
Her writing has a truly distinctive voice,
But she says she is a biologist not a writer by choice!

To which she had replied:

Srinivas Iyer writer of web site content,
Teasing acolyte writers isn't his honest intent,
Front Page and Dreamweaver are his tools,
But his writing is only meant for fools!

So we had exchanged articles, short poems, limericks, clerihews and our friendship had grown.

When a brief lull had occurred in our exchange of smart verses she had sent a personal message, “Why no pomes, jokes, stories for several days?”

To which I had written back a clerihew:

What are Pomes dear Savita?
Are they the teachings of the Gita?
Are these pomes coming from deep within your heart?
With the potential of a million heartaches to start?

When she reached the outskirts of New Bombay she began messaging me for directions. In the morning she had visited her place of birth in Vile Parle where she still had an uncle living in a rundown bungalow in a Catholic locality beside a Catholic Church and school. She could never forget her childhood there and made frequent visits, more to seek continuity with the past, than the love of her uncle and aunt.

Her parents had sold their house in the same locality and moved to Pune, which was then a retirement paradise where accommodation was available cheap.

As she crossed the Thane Creek Bridge she sent a short message on her cell phone. Then the messages just flew between our two cell phones, in a torrent of radio signals through virtual space. We had decided earlier that we would only message full words and wouldn't use the truncated short messaging language that would use the short 'whr r u' for 'where are you'.

“I am nearing Vashi. Where do I get down?” She messaged.

“There is a lot of time. Enjoy the scenery. What do you see?” I messaged back.

“I see a lot of mangroves, feel the cool wind, the sea shimmering.”

“Reminds me of the romantic poets.”

“Which one?”

“Keats.”

“Quote one.”

“Wide sea that one continuous murmur breeds along the pebbled shore of memory!”

“You have a good memory.”

“For pomes, yes.”

“Hahahaha!”

Then the messages stopped. She fell silent.

“Where am I?”

“What do you see?”

“A flyover and a lot of chimneys spewing black smoke.”

“You are nearing CBD Belapur. What do you see inside the bus?”

“Why? A pot-bellied conductor, with a dour expression and the look as if he is anal retentive.”

“Hahahaha! You are funny. What else?”

“There is this balding man sitting in front of me, his hair is fifty per cent gone.”

There was a balding man sitting in front of me too.

“Oh! Do be careful.”

“Why?”

“Balding men can be dangerous.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Hormone imbalance causes premature balding, what is he wearing?”

“A tee-shirt, frayed collars, I can see his stubbly cheeks.”

“What is he doing?”

“He is reading a novel. Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings', and he is messaging somebody.”

“Who?”

“How do I know? He is looking very intently at his cell phone.”

“How do you rate him on a scale of one to ten?”

“He would be four, I guess.”

“Oh! I thought you would be kinder to him.”

“Why? You haven't seen him, so, how can you say I should be kinder to him?”

“Because he is reading Tolkien, you like Tolkien don't you?”

“Yes, that doesn't mean I should rate him any higher than I did. He is not my type. Besides, he is older.”

“I see!”

“Why, 'I see!'”

“Nothing. Where are you now?”

“There is a nasty, penetrating smell,” she messaged looking out of the window at a tall building with a huge vat-like structure on top.

“That's the beer company Bombay Pilsner. What are you wearing?”

“Guess. We had the exercise on colors. What color did I write about?”

“Pink. You wrote about your 'Pink Obsession'. You are wearing a pink top and denim jeans.”

“And....”

“You are wearing one of those earrings that dangle like a chain.”

“And....”

“You have a Ray-ban Predator model, perched on your hair.”

“How do you know all this? We never met!”

“Just guess work.”

“But how?”

“Because you like pink you will wear pink on a weekend. Because you are on a short journey, you will wear jeans. The earrings were just a guess. The glasses, naturally, you will wear glasses in this heat.”

“What else Sherlock Holmes?”

“You are carrying a blue duffel bag.”

“Wait a minute, you are not the man sitting in front of me. Oh!” she sounded disappointed.

“Who? The balding man with dandruff in his hair?”

“How do you know he has dandruff? I didn't mention it.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“Look at the seat across the aisle.”

She turned her head, her eyes met mine, and a brilliant smile lit her face.

“It's you, you liar,” she messaged for the last time.

We both laughed at the same time and gestured at each other.

The balding man in the front row looked back, shrugged, shook his head, and went back to his book and short messaging texts.

“Crazy adrenaline-pumping youngsters,” he punched into his cell phone to whoever was receiving his messages.

I got up, crossed the aisle, and sat down beside Savita Fernandes. We had a lot of catching up to do.

Christmas with Cheriachen

2007-01-03T01:07:00.000-08:00

The afternoon is a wintry cool, not too hot, not too cold, the plants in Cheriachen’s balcony dance in a complicated rhythm weaving patterns on the roof of his plaster-of-paris roof where Christmas baubles and streamers hang forlornly.

“There is no future in India. You know something? You should have gone abroad long ago,” he says morosely, “there is no happiness, no future here. Only sadness.”

“Then why didn’t you go?”

“See I could have gone. My brother is in the US, my daughter is in the US, a daughter is a nurse in Ireland, I can go and live with them even now, but I am comfortable in my life here, though I am not happy, I am not very unhappy here,” he says chastened.
“The same with me. I have learned to adjust. But I read there are guns in schools, violence, and racism, in fact, color discrimination, ten times that we have here.”

“What color discrimination? What are you talking? My daughters are as white as milk, put them next to the white Saiyips, you can’t tell the difference,” I forgot that Cheriachen and his children, though they were a darker shade of beige, considered themselves white, as white as an Occidental.

He pauses as his wife enters and offers me a cool glass of some colored water and Christmas cakes.

“How are you?” she asks me perfunctorily to which I give the standard answer. There is great tiredness and deliberation in her voice, as if she is not feeling too well.

“We were corporate employees. Our lives are gone. We get a pension, which is enough to make ends meet. Our children are enjoying the fruits of our labor.”

I remember, Cheriachen and his wife would walk the three kilometers from home to railway station every day, and not waste money on rickshaws. They would scrimp to the point of starving themselves, but they would save every extra Rupee. They taught their three daughters the value of thrift, and the children all grew to be responsible adults who knew the value of money, and, most importantly, how it is retained and not frittered away.

I know his routine nowadays as I live nearby. He goes for a walk in the morning, comes back exhausted, looks at an animated picture of a waterfall with sound effects, birds chirping, water falling on rocks, which the company he worked for gave him as a retirement gift. That’s all the nature he can afford in the concrete building in which he lives. The building is part of a complex named “Sahyadri,” in Vashi, New Bombay. Then he sleeps the whole day before he goes for an evening walk for purchasing groceries.

The phone rings insistently.

“Lillykutty, pick up the phone, it may be Jessy,” he says from where he sits. He has arthritis and a lot of other illnesses of old age, and is slumped in his chair, his chest collapsed into himself, his stomach protruding, and his face sagging with tissues that were once taut and healthy. His eyes have large circles under them due to sleeplessness, or, due to extra sleep. He sleeps all the time.

“It was difficult,” he reminisces, “bringing up my girls, the work was hard, I was a storekeeper you see, and if something is missing you have to take the rap. I slaved all these years.”

“Jessy is on the phone,” his wife Lillykutty says, “she wants to wish you.”

He gets up heavily from the chair and waddles to the phone re-tying his loose loin cloth around his waist. It had slipped.

“Haaaan, happy Christmas,” he cackles, “how is Shinymol? Fine? How is Joji? Fine?”

Static and an excited metallic voice at the other end.

Yes, he is happy for some time. But the happiness doesn’t last. His face droops again, his eyes again take a haunted look, he sinks into the chair.

“There, I mean in the US, they work only five days. And they don’t have to work like the company has bought our souls. They do their work and then go home. On weekends they go to beach resorts or holiday homes. If you don’t have a job the company pays you five hundred dollars a month, imagine. Around Rupees Twenty Thousand for doing nothing, just sitting at home. It’s not like here.”

It seems he is very upset and disgruntled, “Is that so?” I prompt.
“My other daughter, Jomi, who got married recently to a doctor, she is luckier,” he says pompously, “she is in Ireland and only works three days in a week and rests for four days, and draws a handsome salary, unlike here, you work six days and… all the harassment…,” he groans and shakes his head.

“And free healthcare, do they have free healthcare?”

“Yes, everything is free, absolutely free. Even education. I remember the difficulty I went through to get my daughters admitted to nursing school. I had to pay the hospital fifty thousand rupees. Then the fees, and after passing the miserly stipend they get for two years. Then for the passport, I had to bribe the officials. Yeverywhere corruption. God, it was so awful, but now they are enjoying a good life. God bless them,” Cheriachen says.

“Jomi took her doctor husband to Ireland, and he has a job in the same hospital where she works,” Lillykutty says from the kitchen. She sounds morose and depressed, too, two unhappy people in an empty two-bedroom flat. She is preparing our Christmas lunch. The smell of mutton and assorted curries fill the flat in Sahyadri housing society.

“Jessy’s daughter Shinymol studies for free. You should see her photographs,” he fishes out some photographs from the bottom of a pile of newspapers on the teapoy, “she is so fair, chubby, and fat, anyone would want to take her in hands and kiss her.”

“I guess it is the food they eat there. I read it is full of fat.”

“No. Not that. They don’t have to exert themselves, no? All they walk is inside their houses, from this room to that. To go anywhere they sit in a car, to go to school they sit in a car, to go to church they sit in a car. Not like we used to do. When I was a boy, I would walk five miles to our school, in Kerala.”

So that’s it. The number of empty, wasted miles spent walking is making Cheriachen a bitter man. He should have been in another country, sitting in a car, I think.

The phone rings insistently again.

“Lillykutty, it must be Jomi from Ireland,” Cheriachen says from his chair. He doesn’t make an effort to get up. He can’t.

Lillykutty comes into the room. Picks up the phone and says the usual “Merry Christmas.” She sounds happy.

Then she say “What?” into the phone and listens for a while. I can see her face fall, her body sag. Then she says, “Why do you want to do that? God, help us! God help us!”

Some static from the other end, a distraught voice. She motions towards Cheriachen.

Cheriachen comes to the phone, smiles joyfully, says, “Merry Christmas,” his sagging face muscles stretch, up, up, as he listens. He is imagining in his mind the heaven from which his daughter is calling him, free of worries, free healthcare, in fact, free everything. He is about to cackle when the whole muscles and integument of his face drop like a stone dropped from a height.
“What?” he says and looks at Lillykutty. Their eyes meet. There are tears in Lillykutty’s eyes. She sobs. Cheriachen puts down the phone. His eyes glaze with tears.

“Now, why would she want to do that? She has everything, works only three days a week, has around two lakhs salary per month, a good-looking husband, has everything virtually free, everything free….”

“We found the best husband for her, imagine, a doctor, handsome, too. We arranged the best wedding for her in the community. Now she says she wants to leave him, and she can’t get along with him,” Lillykutty says.

I look away. The rest of Christmas with Cheriachen was a torture, for me, at least.

My Latest Short Story

2006-12-28T01:35:00.000-08:00

Here's the link to my latest short story, on Christmas, this time (Link to "Christmas with Cheriachen" page). Please read and comment here or on the Caferati board.

The story is about a lonely couple who spend Christmas away from their daughters, who are in ersatz heavens (according to protagonist Cheriachen) - US and Ireland - where there is much joy and everything is free, free, free. They are in for a rude shock.

Do You Believe It?

2006-12-15T05:29:00.000-08:00

“Three in one, three in one. Three movies for the price of one.”

He looks tired, his hair has not been dyed for a long time, white strands show under the black color that has been washed away. His voice grates. The evening is hot. The junction is clamoring with vehicles.

Pakya spits, drinks the glass of water in the smudged tumbler, gargles. Sweat beads, and drips inside his shirt.

“Which picture?”

“Loot Gayee Laila, Don, and Unkahee Chahat.”

“What?”

“It’s a hit. Laila’s honor has been looted. Genuine movie, what acting, just like real.”

“How much?” Pakya asked.

“Rupees fifteen for three movies, aree, baap, no sisterfucking theater will show you three movies. This Javed Kanya guarantees.”

There’s a poster of Amitabh Bachhan and Zeenat Aman, stars of Don, and a lurid poster of Loot Gayee Laila. Laila shows a lot of smooth, chubby thighs, and a heavy bosom. It is dark and Pakya can’t see too well. The tea stall is clamoring with people sipping tea. A stove hisses below a steaming vessel, the stall-owner adds to the cacophony by banging his ladle loudly on it.

Should he go in? The so-called theatre is in a slum, there is a dark room that opens through what can be called a door, some seedy looking characters lounge near the door, suspiciously looking like murderers or rapists or both.

Pakya takes the glass of tea and sips it, downing it with the slow deliberation that wants to make the sweetness last.

The night is young and Pakya badly wants something to happen. That would include a visit to the dance bar, which is expensive, or this dingy, ugly little room in a slum that shows X-rated movies for Rs fifteen on a big LCD screen.

But he doesn’t like the look of Javed Kanya, who is dressed in white shirt and trousers, which were white once. That was long ago. Now it is a shade of brown. He is one-eyed, he squints. His long-sleeved shirt isn’t buttoned. The shirt front is open and the sleeves flaps about as he moves. His mouth is masticating betel nut, and when he speak the red juice runs down the corners of his mouth.

“Don, we are showing the old Don, starring Amitabh Bachhan, not the new Don, starring Sharukh Khan, baap,” he wipes his mouth with his hand, and afterwards scoops his private parts with the same hands and kneads them, balls and all. He shifts his hands and legs around a lot, in a sort of filmy style.

“What’s the difference between that Don and this Don?” Pakya asks.

“Old Don, Amitabh Bachhan, new Don, Sharukh Khan. What is Amitabh? What is Sharukh?” He ends his sentence with a derogatory lowering of his jaw.

********

Pakya looks at the inviting posters and imagines the bliss of seeing it all. At least the mystery of Laila’s taut thighs and bosom would be solved when he sees her on screen. Pakya drools. The sensation of lust passes down his head to his toes, pausing at his crotch. He craves some entertainment, the crasser the better. His works in an automobile spare parts shop doesn’t offer him any satisfaction. He is constantly fetching parts for his corpulent boss who sits, and sits the whole day smoking, and ordering him around. The work frustrates him so much that he needs to escape every evening.

“Make up your mind fast, fast. What? Or, you won’t even get a ticket for Rupees Thirty. This Don is the best movie every produced. I can dare anyone to contradict me. Even our real-life Don grew up on this movie.”

“Which real-life Don?”

“Arree, what Don, you don’t know. He grew up here. Have you ever heard of Chota Chetan?”

“Arre, that Don? Who doesn’t? What, you know him?” Pakya is amazed. Chota Chetan is the country most wanted man.

“Know him? We played cricket together, he and I. We sold tickets in black market together. We were close buddies once.”

“And you?”

“Fate. He makes movies now. He controls a criminal empire. I am still a hustler of movie tickets. He sits abroad, I am here.”

So sad. But he could be lying.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe it or not, it’s your choice. Tell me do you want tickets, kali fokat, don’t be too smart, what?”

He turns away to hustle some more.

“Hey Kanya, I will buy your ticket, huhn? But tell me your story. I mean, your story and Chota Chetan’s,” Pakya beckons.

*******

Pakya hands him the money. Kanya wets his fingers with spit, tears a ticket and gives it. There’s a long time for the show to start. The evening is getting warmer. It must be hot inside the theatre.

“Then listen. First buy me half a glass of cutting tea.”

Pakya looks at his face, a million finely etched wrinkles crowd it like spider webs. He has only a few teeth left in his mouth, his speech is rough, disjointed.

“He and I were friends,” he says blowing into his tea, “why, we are friends even now. If he came here we would have a drink. He is from these parts, we grew up together, played cricket together.”

“Really?” Pakya is incredulous. His mouth hangs open. He had only read about Chota Chetan’s exploits from newspapers and television channels. That this ruin of a man knows, or knew, the real Don, the real real Don, not the Don of the films, fascinates him.

“Yes. And we sold tickets of the old movie Don together at the local theatre.”

“What does he look like?”

Javed Kanya tries to remember, but his memory isn’t that sharp. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve and leaves a long stain on it.

“Short, long hair just like you. He always used to toss it off his eyes. And yes he used to walk very fast, his rubber slippers flopping after him.”

“How did he become so big a Don and you are left in this dump?” Pakya asks motioning towards the dilapidated theatre made of tin sheets. Some Hindi music plays inside. It seems odd, but life can be odd.

“I can make a picture with that story. Tell you a secret? Chota Chetan was inspired by this movie Don, the old Amitabh Bachhan movie, I mean.”

“How? You mean the movie Don created a Don in real life? You mean he became a gangster because of this movie? Tell me how.” Pakya asks incredulously, his jaws dropping further.

“Listen, words have power, they are sharper than any knife, can penetrate you more than any bullet. Javed Kanya knows.”

“You think I am a chootiya, a fool to believe you?”

“Abey, don’t call me Chootiya, what?”

Then Pakya remembers he is a friend of the real Don, and shuts himself up and listens.

“Those days… what a life we had. We were only small children, innocent of the ways of the world. We thought selling tickets in black was fun. Chota Cheta was a youngster like you. We did it for want of something to do. Just like that. It would fetch some money to buy clothes, a bike, and we could see movies for free.”

He is silent for a long time. The clamor of traffic around the junction is getting louder. More people are anxiously gathering around the theatre. Javed Kanya seems too engrossed in his story to care.

“We used to sit in the back rows and whistle and clap as Amitabh came on screen. Chetan would be too engrossed in the movie. His eyes would light up, he would jump on his seat, clap, whistle, and throw money at his hero. He was a bit too involved. Remember I told you words have power. ”

Finally, Kanya drank what was left of the tea and spat on the road.

“You know this dialogue, ‘Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahi namumkin hai’? To catch the Don is not only difficult, it is impossible.”

“Yes. That’s my favorite dialogue.”

“His favorite dialogue too. Those words… that snatch of movie dialog… they have such power… it was written by fire in his soul. He has been on the run for so long and believes nobody can catch him, not his enemies, not the police. I doubt if they ever will. I know him.”

“Aree, your mother’s! What are you talking?”

“Yes. Only he believed in those words so strongly, so strongly, they have tried everything, the police, his enemies, the Interpol, the spy rings, they still can’t arrest him.”

“What? I can’t believe it. A mere dialog of a movie can’t turn a middle-class boy into one of the country’s biggest criminals.”

“Believe it or not, it’s up to you. But this is his story. He believed. I didn’t believe in anything. That’s why I am here, and he is where he is. Now I have to go, got to sell more tickets.”

He ambled away, a broken, decrepit aging man, his hair like wisps of candy floss.

******

After the movie Pakya looked around for Javed Kanya. He was there lolling against the makeshift table that had a cash box and a bossy-looking man sitting in a plastic chair.

“Do you believe me now?” Kanya asked.

“No, I still can’t,” Pakya says shaking his head. He could never believe that a mere movie - floating pictures and dialogues on a screen - can create a real life criminal as powerful as Chota Chetan.

But who knows? He is one of the disbelievers like Javed Kanya here who don’t believe in anything, and drift aimlessly as a leaf in the monsoon wind.

“Disbelief cannot alter the truth,” Kanya says wistfully. The night is hot as Pakya walks home. He fervently hopes he isn’t inspired too much by the movie to become a criminal.

The Complete Man

2006-12-14T01:07:00.000-08:00

“Georgie, you should eat your medicines.”

“Yes, you must,” they all agree.

His brothers Luke and Sam are here to make him take his anti-depression medicines regularly. So are his former classmates and childhood friends, Ravindran, Sanjayan and Gopi.

Georgie is acting strange. He is depressed. He won’t go to work. He lies all day in bed and reads strange, spiritual books. He knocks on people’s doors and says weird things. Things like:

“They are coming for us. Don’t open the doors.”

“There is a riot going to happen. Close all doors.”

“The Americans are going to bomb us. George Bush is coming. Take shelter. Go to the maidan and lie flat on the ground.”

He imagines things and thinks they are for real. He wasn’t like this, his brothers Luke and Sam agree. In fact, Georgie was the most brilliant of the three. A good student, a good sportsman, a good marksman, a good speaker, a good… in fact… good at everything he did. He would score maximum runs for the Red House he led in school, win hundreds of marbles in games, win the elocution and memory competitions, come first in the art and writing competitions, and still stand first in class.

Everybody was jealous. Jealous that he was so talented and they weren’t.

“He was good in everything?” Ravindran, an artist who now has a cult following in the advertising profession reminisced. He is content with the way life has treated him, with a lot of money and fame. For him Georgie is now the past, though he felt sympathetic. He remembered the time they would spend together in the school compound chasing butterflies, and Georgie laughing his good natured laugh. He doesn’t deserve this, he thought. Secretly Ravindran was jealous of Georgie in school . He always tried to outdo him in drawing and painting and each time he failed.

*****

The school term was about to end. Ravindran, captain of the Yellow house, was worried about his house’s performance. They would add up the scores in the art and writing competitions and his house would be last in the list of honors. His main rival was Georgie, captain of the Red House, and nobody could beat him in drawing, painting and writing.

Slyly he made a plan. He tackled Georgie rather roughly from behind during the afternoon football game prior to chasing butterflies. George fell and his hand was sprained and had to be cast. But he came back for the art and writing competitions with his hand in a cast. He scored well and took Red House far ahead of Yellow House. Ravindran had lost face.

*****

“Georgie, you should eat your medicines. You shouldn’t worry about what America or George Bush does. It’s their worry,” Sanjayan said. Sanjayan is now a chief executive of a newspaper group, and is widely traveled. Around him there is the smell of success, which is actually the smell of the various expensive colognes he buys when he is abroad.

“No. It’s my worry, no? My children are growing up. I have to support them, no?”

“But first you got to go to work and earn, to make your children secure, like this you have no security only,” Luke the elder brother says impatiently. He seems an impatient man.

*****

Back in school Sanjayan was the goal keeper of the Blue House and he was also a part of the humungous jealousy that Georgie generated in students of AFAC School (students of a rival school expanded this to “After Farting Attending Classes.”) He couldn’t understand how Georgie could do everything he did with complete dedication and seriousness. If he sets himself upon scoring a goal, he did it with an intensity that was frightening.

He was terrorized by Georgie’s appearance anywhere near his goal post. Georgie’s marksmanship was unerring and he could maneuver himself from any angle to score a goal. No goalkeeper was safe with Georgie around. Jealousy rose like a tide inside Sanjayan.

So when Georgie came menacingly towards him during a friendly football match, he saw his chance. He dived, collected the ball and gave it a kick in Georgie’s direction, aiming it at his face. The aim was accurate. The ball hit his face, and Georgie fell down. The kick of the ball had taken him by surprise. His nose bled and he had to be carried away to the school office before Luke came to escort him home.

******

“He was so brilliant, I was scared of his brilliance,” Gopi says. Gopi heads a knowledge process outsourcing project. He has a fetish for expensive shoes and casual wear.

“Yes, I, too,” Ravindran says.

“But he is still intelligent. He needs your sympathy and he would be all right,” Sam says. Sam is the younger brother, a softer version of Georgie. All brother look alike.

“That’s why we are here,” Gopi says, “I thought he would be someone very big some day. Not like this.”

“What do you mean?” Georgie asks indignantly. He thinks the people gathered in the room are a bunch of hypocrites, and knows what they have done to him. How dare they talk about him this way, as if he was some object, a dog that wouldn’t obey its master?

Georgie prefers not to say anything. He keeps to himself. He listens and listens to everyone’s opinion of him, and grows more and more estranged. Why do they talk about me thus? He wonders. This loneliness had turned into self-absorption, and then into seeking solace in drinks. When the world cut him out, he wanted to cut them out, as simple as that.

But a hypocrite such as Gopi seems to be provoking him too much today.

“He was so quiet and so dedicated to his work,” Sanjayan says, “He would solve algebra sums in no time, and I used to take my doubts to him.”

“This one here is the biggest hypocrite of all,” Georgie thinks. Gracy, his wife makes an entry, balancing a tray in both hands. She puts the tray down on the teapoy and with her slender arms passes tea around the room.

“You all tell him, no? I say to him take medicine, take medicine, all the time. He won’t listen to me, only.”

“You shut up, don’t talk,” Georgie tells her.

“I won’t shut up. You shut up. What?”

“If you don’t shut up, I will shut you up,” George’s face darkens with rage.

“People, imagine how I live with a man who talks this way,” Gracy says to everyone, “I don’t want to live with him. I will go to the police.”

For a moment Georgie looks like he would throw something at Gracy, but he doesn’t. He has a sweet nature, everyone knows.

Instead he says, “Does anyone know what that means?” He points to an elaborately framed picture on the wall. The picture shows a man and a woman, standing close together with an intimacy that could only mean they are lovers.

Everyone present shakes their head.

“The complete man. I wanted to be a complete man, once, perfect in everything I did,” his voice is inaudible.

There is a moment’s silence, as the meaning sinks in. His friends and his brothers look at each other and then at the brilliant man, now the antithesis of his own perfection.

“But, look at you, what complete? You are hardly a man,” Gracy’s harsh voice cuts in and then she ambles towards the kitchen.

*********

Gopi was the boy with writing abilities in school. He fancied himself as a future writer. But competition was stiff from Georgie. A love for literature and fine writing bound them. They used to exchange classic novels in comic format that they would borrow from the lending library paying Rs 1.50 each. Thus they would get to read two classic comics for the price of one.

One day Georgie had exchanged the comic version of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe with Rajendran’s Superman comic without informing Gopi. He came to know of this. Georgie confessed it was his fault. But, jealousy was a big thing, eating into their little personas, especially when they were children just forming the iron-cast personalities of their future lives.

Gopi stopped talking to Georgie. He thought that was the best way to punish him. He didn’t know what harm he had done. Georgie is hurt so easily, he has a tender mind, a tender soul. His soul cried for his friendship with Gopi. It was years later that they started talking.

Now as Gopi sat before him everyone wondered how he had succeeded when Georgie had failed. Gopi owned a car, a large flat, and wore expensive dress shoes. But Georgie’s house was barren, the paint was peeling and he wore dusty slippers.

*********

“Georgie you must eat your medicines,” Gopi says.

Georgie can’t take it anymore.

“See this jealous hypocrite. See what he is saying. Have you all no shame, where were you when I was really in need?” Georgie couldn’t control his words, he has lost touch with reality.

His friends and his siblings sit with mouths agape. Shock: disbelief: incomprehension.

The room falls silent. They do not talk for a long while. They realize they are all guilty of what happened to their brilliant friend/brother Georgie. If only they were a bit kinder to him forty years ago, in school, at home. They are all comfortable in their jobs and careers they have selfishly carved for themselves over the years, but they never even thought of the cruelty they had inflicted. Georgie was like the punching bag in the school gymnasium. Now that it’s too late, they realize that their words echo with hypocrisy, and their attempts at helping Georgie seems like a big sham.

The tea grows cold, the steam stops rising from the rims of the cups. They all rise to leave and Georgie escorts them to the door.

“Anyway, thank you for coming, so kind of you,” he says at the door.

Laughing Gas

2006-12-12T21:39:00.000-08:00

Adrenaline pumps. Nitrous oxide, or, laughing gas releases into his scrotal region, dilating the blood vessels, so that more blood pumps into his sexual organs. He had read in medical school that the reason for an erection is quite simply, nitrous oxide, or, laughing gas. Ha... ha... ha....

He remembers the texts he had read in physiology. "Mechanically erection can be compared to an electromechanically controlled hydraulic system. The most important roles in the phase of erection are played by nitrous oxide and vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP)." So the sexual process is nothing but a release of laughing gas, the physician concludes. He as a doctor knows.

He... he... he....

But the exquisiteness of the human being in front of him is what he cannot understand though he has closely examined many of them in the hospital. But then there he is a physician, but here? What's wrong with him? Has he forgotten medical ethics?

He feels an urge to talk to her, but she doesn't look at anyone. She is inhabiting a world presided by the deity Eros, lost in some sweet memory of someone. A man? A woman? That someone is very lucky to at least know her. Of course, she would like to meet and talk to a post-graduate physician such as him.

Model? No. Airhostess? No. Office worker? Could be.

He was sure the work in the mundane and drab office in some congested lane in Andheri would grind to a halt today. Everyone would be staring lustily at her buns, her slow lilting walk, her silky black hair. Could he talk to her.

From what he could see from behind, as he slowly inches forward on the Kurla railway bridge is a soft cheek, and a bit of down around the ear. The slow-moving crowd has come to the end of the bridge and is slowly descending the steps to the west of Kurla. He is careful to keep right behind her, and it's easy because on both sides are slowly inching office goers clutch their rexine bags.

May be, at the exit when there is some more space he can walk ahead and introduce himself with a killer pick-up line. Something like, "Hey beautiful, it's a sunny day, can we make it funny?" No, that won't do. It has to be a lot better than that.

The crowd has moved glacially to the end of the stairs and is dispersing now. The slow crawl has come to an end. Now is his chance. he walks ahead. His heart thudding he prepares to turn around, he does.

"Hi! Darling! Goodu Maarrniinnggguu!"

He could have killed that man, the boor! He feels rage. Some men are so crude. This Road Romeo is dressed in cheap jeans, has his cowlick falling over his eyes, and has a hundred bursting pimples on his scarred face.

He walks ahead, glances back at her one last time. He freezes.

She has earplugs on! She is listening to music. There's no way she could have heard either him or the Road Romeo. He heaves a sigh, then groans, and then laughs ha... ha... ha.... After all, it's only laughing gas.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri - A Review

2006-11-20T04:41:00.000-08:00

I have just finished wading through “The Namesake” written by Jhumpa Lahiri. “Wading” is the word I use because, though Lahiri is an engaging writer, she fills her novel with too many details, over which I stumble, ponder, wonder (hmm, now why would she have had to say that?), genuflect, and then straighten myself. Her paragraphs are uniformly half a page and in that, too, these inconsequential details of everyday life, some cultural vestiges lie around like stumbling blocks.

I am constrained to mention this here because the flow is hampered, I lose track, and finishing the book was a great effort. I don’t like to be exhausted reading a book; I like to be entertained. I guess this applies to most writers of the Diaspora and, our own homegrown variety. We are so much anxious to impress with our knowledge and our articulation that we overdo it, consistently, constantly.

Now, I may be veering into the rant mode but this is something Lahiri does through this excellent novel. If you are through the first hundred pages, it becomes a little better. You can safely ignore the details and go ahead, come what may. But getting over the first hundred pages is the toughest part. When Lahiri describes each item in a house, or, a rented hotel room, you have no alternative but to sit up and cry, “Whoa! She is so perceptive, she gives me a complex.” Yes, she does, to all pretenders, such as I, who think they can write. But one also thinks, “There she goes, why would she include all that? Is it significant, a leit motif, for the rest of the story?” But disappointingly it isn’t.

It’s the story of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli. Ashoke is told to leave the country by a man he meets during a train journey. The train in which he is traveling is derailed in the night and the compartments are smashed and thrown off the rails. Ashoke is injured in the accident but has a providential escape because he happens to be clutching a novel written by Nikolai Gogol which he was reading at the time of the mishap. So, obviously, Nikolai Gogol has a prominent part to play in Ashoke’s survival and he names his first-born Gogol, probably to record his thanks to the Russian story teller.

He immigrates to the United States with Ashima, gets a job raises a family of two. Gogol and Sonia are the two children he raises the Indian, sorry, Bengali way, protectively, always apprehensive, always paranoid about security. The children are happy-go-lucky American kids and they do not know from where their parents’ fear comes from. (They do not know that the fear originates from India where anything left untended is summarily snatched away, or vandalized.)

But Gogol resents being named thus, and is not flattered by his Russian name, that too of a writer thought to be a maniacal genius. He militates against his father’s choice of nomenclature. He has his name changed to Nikhil but the original name sticks to him like a ghost from the past, and haunts him. The teaching of Gogol’s writings in school is a big embarrassment to him, and he cowers from any association with Gogol, the writer.

Ashoke and Ashima does a heroic job of raising a family, protecting a culture in an alien land, in which they are recently emigrated strangers. They have a very close-knit community of Bengali friends in the US and their interaction is restricted to this group who meet for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and other social dos. The urge is very strong among migrants to maintain their cultural identity when they are in an alien land, and Ashoke and Ashima would like to pass on their Indian-ness to their children.

But the children are drawn towards the mainstream White culture. Gogol has affairs with white girls/women and nearly marries one much against the wishes of his parents. The Indian girl he marries eventually, through the persuasion of his mother Ashima jilts him for a Russian. Sonia marries a white man, and therefore Ashoke’s and Ashima’s dream of propagating the culture they have so assiduously cultivated in an alien land collapses. So, in that sense, the emigrant’s strict phobias seems trivial and unfounded.

The most poignant part of the novel is the sudden and unannounced death of Ashoke. Now, this is the best part of the novel. It is narrated in such deadpan prose that it rings so true, so authentic and life-like. Death is the most unexpected of visitors. The reader is shocked beyond disbelief, and can understand the emotional turmoil that Ashima, and her children Gogol and Sonia go through at this juncture. It is to Lahiri’s credit that she has handled this evolving drama pretty well.

Gogol falls in love with Moushumi, the girl his mother has picked for him, and who is trying to get over a broken engagement with her White boyfriend. They marry, and for sometime all is hunky dory. This section of the novel is well handled and the reader is shocked that Moushumi would go off with another man, a Russian professor, leaving poor Gogol. But that is life, and that is literature, so authentic as to be stupefying. Lahiri handles these passages really well, one is awed how naturally it happens, and how her story lends the incident so much life-like uncertainty. This is Lahiri at her best, delivering a deadly punch in the narrative when the reader least expects it. This is as shocking, or, was as shocking to me, as was Ashoke’s death.

The novel is a chiaroscuro of images, experiences, some sad, some elevating, all written in the author’s perspicacious style, with much detailing. Much as I had enjoyed “The Interpreter of Maladies” I relished this one that promises to be a watermark in the annals of literature produced by the Diaspora.

Notes of a Nag and a Roisterer

2006-11-17T02:33:00.000-08:00

Came across this NY Times article about Germaine Greer's The Madwoman's Underclothes from Annie's blog.

Quote

ermaine Greer has never truly been a writer. Her spirit has illuminated her written word as if the very act of expressing herself were but a brief, rushed gathering-up of her living. She is, perhaps, one of the marvelous letter writers of an age that no longer trifles with them much. Her essays, columns and books - transcripts as they are of a heroic heart and intellect - seem to have been dashed off in the fire and dispatched to her many sisters. Feminism as a literary family.

Unquote

To read more click here: Notes of a Nag and a Roisterer (NY Times needs registration)

Writing For The Purpose of Reading -Tyner Blain

2006-11-16T23:37:00.000-08:00

Interesting article this. I found this useful. Do read, all ye who have anything to do with writing for technology companies: Link to Writing For The Purpose of Reading -Tyner Blain

The First Day of Winter

2006-11-15T05:48:00.000-08:00

Today I felt the first chill of winter. Am trying to write a poem about it. The hills of Artist Village (where I live) are blue, the hazy blue that makes me want to go somewhere where it is very cold. Didn't go to work today, as I got up groggy from a stomach ailment that made me wish for the comfort of my bed all the way from office.

Afternoon was so pleasant, neither hot nor cold, the sun on my eyes so mild that I could look at the hills without shielding my eyes. I noticed several thing. One that the gulmohurs that fringe Artist Village (they were planted after I came to live here) have grown so high that it forms a canopy around the entrance to the village and the dappled sun falls on the road, making little patches of sun.

Two, the sights that I miss when I am away working, there are children waiting to go to school, and I remember when Ronnie was that age and was taken to school by an autorickshaw. He is in engineering college now.

Three, that the cobbler is taking a long time stitching a rent in my leather bag, and that I can't blame him, he sits here on this crossroad all day. But, then I am enjoying the view, the promise of blissfulness.

I guess that's all for today!

Sonnet for a Stolen Mobile Phone

2006-11-11T21:51:00.000-08:00

Sonnet for a Stolen Mobile Phone

You were cuddlesome and oh! so cute,

Full of lively chatter and, sometimes mute,

Hours I would spend waiting for you to ring,

You were a universe in the joys you bring.

You spoke to me in several lingos,

Mallu, Hindi, English, Bambaiya patois,

Yet you departed so abruptly, without feelings,

Nary elations, greetings, or glad tidings.

Then one evening, I know not,

Who stole you from me, my Camelot,

Are your rings dead, are you still alive?

Has he de-SIM-ed you, do you still survive?

Please come back to me, I miss you,

Without you, I am not me, nor would you be you!

Johnwriter's Raves & Rants!: A Column by a Busybee Called Behram

2006-10-27T04:48:00.000-07:00

Johnwriter's Raves & Rants!: A Column by a Busybee Called Behram

Kiran Desai Reads from the Booker Prize Winner "The Inheritance of Loss"

2006-10-21T00:48:00.000-07:00

To hear Kiran Desai read from her Booker Winning novel "The Inheritance of Loss" click here (sorry, the link on Johnwriter's Literary Show on the right panel doesn't work. I am working towards redeeming this, mucho gracias). Also here is the article by Pankaj Mishra that accompanied the reading in New York Times an excerpt from which appears below:

"This leaves most people in the postcolonial world with only the promise of a shabby modernity — modernity, as Desai puts it, "in its meanest form, brand-new one day, in ruin the next." Not surprisingly, half-educated, uprooted men like Gyan gravitate to the first available political cause in their search for a better way. He joins what sounds like an ethnic nationalist movement largely as an opportunity to vent his rage and frustration. "Old hatreds are endlessly retrievable," Desai reminds us, and they are "purer . . . because the grief of the past was gone. Just the fury remained, distilled, liberating.""

My grouse with diasporic writers is that they tend to denigrate, or, patronize India by writing long passages about the exotic India where Indian live in an antique world full of superstitions, mangoes, pickles, run down neighbourhoods without actually learning about the hearts and minds of the people who inhabit them. They try to exoticise without really understanding the undercurrents of Indian society. What Desai calls "shabby modernity" is also what is turning out brilliant programming code that runs most of the world today. Thus Jhumpa Labiri's "Namesake" which I am reading now, is full of India though it is set in the US, about customs of a Bengali family, and a lot of visuals that would be a treat for people who say they like India.

Technorati tags: Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, Pankaj Mishra, New York Times, Namesake, Inheritance of Loss

Rushdie Sells His Personal Papers

2006-10-07T20:50:00.000-07:00

Here's a story for all ye committed, die-hard, whatever, Rushdie fans. Brenda Goodman reports in this article that Rushdie has sold his personal papers to Emory University, Atlanta. Now author's papers command great value since his journals, notes, manuscripts, handwritten notes, and even signatures [no matter if they are on bills or cleaning tissue] carry great value. I have preserved two letters written me by two wonderful women writers Arundhati Roy and Shobha De (; guess they would be of great literary value when I and the said writers grow old;).

"Mr. Rushdie, 59, will also join the faculty in 2007 for five years as a distinguished writer in residence. Stephen C. Enniss, director of Emory’s Manuscript, Archives and Rare Books Library, said the collection contained original manuscripts of all of Mr. Rushdie’s books, including two early, unpublished novels, as well as journals that he said Mr. Rushdie kept “compulsively” for 36 years. The journals he has written since 1989 — when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa authorizing his murder because of the irreverent portrayal of Muhammad in his book “The Satanic Verses” — will remain closed “for a period,” Mr. Enniss said; Mr. Rushdie plans to use the material to write an autobiography. “I would like to have first go at this story; after that, everyone else can do as they please with the material,” Mr. Rushdie confirmed in an e-mail message. "

Technorati tags: Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Shobha De, Emory University, Atlanta, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran

We are like this only! Pushing, pushing, chalo, chalo!

2006-10-03T02:36:00.000-07:00

The man at the back of me says, "Chalo, Chalo, Chalo," while prodding me gently somewhere in my dorsal region, around where my kidneys would normally be. Normally, because now I am tightly wedged between the man at the back, whose face I can't see, and a man with sweaty armpits in front.

"What's the hurry," I say, "the train ends its journey here, in CBD Belapur. It will be here for another ten minutes."

"But I won't get a window seat, na? I want that particular seat. My friends from other stations look at that seat. Besides, I have to read the holy book, and throw flowers into the sea when it crosses the Vashi Bridge."

So I let the man pass ahead of me. Minutes later, he and I are getting down at Kurla station and he is again prodding me, this time around the solar plexus, and, "Chalo, chalo, chalo," he says.

I have seen this in stations, municipal offices, banks, in fact, anywhere a bunch of Indian could possibly be, even airports. No sooner the aircraft comes to a stop than there is pushing and jostling, swearing, and "Chalo, Chalo, Chalo," this time a bit more subtly considering that "firangi [foreign] madams and hawai sundaris [flying beauties]" are around.

But go anywhere, we will be pushing, dhakafying, shoving, cursing, women molesting, because, "We are like this only, no?"
Tags: Push, shove, chalo, Vashi, Kurla, CBD Belapur

The Future of Books As We Know It. Sony Reader is here.

2006-10-01T06:04:00.000-07:00

Got this from friend, fellow blogger and crime writer John Baker's blog.

The Sony Reader is the future of books as we know it. What's more is that it can hold, not one, but 80 electronic books or hundreds more with a removable memory card. The manufacturer claims that it is easy to carry as a slim paper back. So want to read Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, and Vikram Chandra on your vacation to Goa? Go straight ahead. Download these ebooks from ereader to your Sony Reader and then, as you slowly recline under your beach umbrella, scroll down (don't have to fold the book front to back) and enjoy!
Tags: John Baker, Sony Reader, Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra, Goa

Congratulations and Celebrations! to me, me, me!

2006-09-30T01:13:00.000-07:00

Today is a happy day. Yesterday at Fab India (where I buy my kurtas and ethnic clothes), I heard a girl say, "This is a happy, happy, happy, happy color, will suit you just fine." I liked that, huh, though, what she meant by "happy" raised to the power of four flummoxed me.

What do I see first thing when I open my blog? Google has upgraded my page rank of my main blog to 4 on 10 from 3 on 10 (zigzackly has 6 on 10!). Some promotion this. Yippeeee! Check it out. Out with the bubblies, no, an extra cup of coffee towards evening, perhaps, if wifey permits.

I have also staked my claim to be the most consistent solo blog and the longest running solo blog at the same URL at the Limca Book of (Blog) Records (the Indian equivalent of Guiness Book of World Records). Isn't that a reason to smile?

Thanks visitors! Do please, please visit me daily (;and give me those hits I deserve;) as I write in this space every day.
Tags: Limca Book of (Blog) Records, Most Consistent Solo Blog, Longest Running Solo Blog, Guiness Book of World Records

The Amitava Kumar - Salman Rushdie Controversy

2006-09-24T23:46:00.000-07:00

Read this article on Amitava Kumar's Blog. Can't say that I agree with him totally, being a die-hard fan of Rushdie. But, it now turns out that Rusdie has, some how, read Kumar's blog articles (some excerpts follow) and has threatened to cancel a lecture at Vassar College if he was introduced by Amitava. This may have the potential of blooming into a full-fledged literary controversy, me thinks.

"What Rushdie did was not exactly new in Indian writing in other languages or even in Indian drama, but its intensity and range was novel in the tradition of English writing that had been inaugurated by the likes of R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao, and Mulk Raj Anand. In a land allegedly in thrall to babu English, here was someone who was having fun with the English language. Reading him was a bit like coming across a giant ad for Amul butter on an Indian street—except that Rushdie was in command and kept doing it for five hundred pages."

"The trouble is that despite all his invention and exuberance Rushdie remains to a remarkable extent an academic writer. He is academic in that abstractions rule over his narratives. They determine the outlines of his characters, their faces, and their voices. Rushdie is also academic in the sense that his rebellions and his critiques are all securely progressive ones, advancing the causes that the intelligentsia, especially the left-liberal Western intelligentsia, holds close to its breast. This is not a bad thing, but it should qualify one's admiration for Rushdie's daring."

"There can be no doubt that the threats that Rushdie faced and also the book-burnings and other protests were shameful and unacceptable. But I do not for a moment support Norman Mailer's assessment (Norman Mailer wrote Rusdie after the Fatwa "Many of us begin writing with the inner temerity that if we keep searching for the most dangerous of our voices, why then, sooner or later we will outrage something very fundamental in the world, and our lives will be in danger. That is what I thought when I started out, and so have many others, but you, however, are the only one of us who gave proof that this intimation is not ungrounded."). I don't believe that Rushdie has even found his most dangerous voice. In fact, I don't believe that Rushdie's is the most dangerous voice writing today. His is no doubt a powerful voice; often, it has been an oppositional voice; but it is a voice of a celebrity promoting commendable causes; more seriously, in some fundamental way, it is the voice of a metaphorical outsider, and therefore incapable of revealing to ourselves, in an intimate way, our complicities, our contradictions, and our own inescapable horror. I don't deny that it is a voice that can engage and delight and of course annoy, and yet it is very important to make a distinction: what Rushdie writes can easily provoke, but it is rarely able to disturb."

Kumar's grouse seems to be that Rusdie is being used as a milestone in Indian English literature as when we say "he writes like Rushdie" and "he doesn't write like Rushdie." But Rusdie opened the gates to the flood (or is it a trickle?) that followed, didn't he? Admittedly Rusdie criticized and parodied Indian life for a western audience, but he did it with considerable charm and wit and even we tend to nod our heads and smile when we read what Kumar calls "academic" writing. Here's what Rushdie says about migration, as quoted by Kumar, "To migrate is certainly to lose language and home, to be defined by others, to become invisible or, even worse, a target; it is to experience deep changes and wrenches in the soul. But the migrant is not simply transformed by his act; he also transforms his new world. Migrants may well become mutants, but it is out of such hybridization that newness can emerge."

I have underlined "invisible" because in "Midnight's Children" he calls the people who live beyond posh Neapean Sea Road area in Bombay as "Invisible People," or the migrant people. This is something I can identify with as I am of second generation migrant stock, living as invisible people in an extended suburb of Bombay. Here's a poem I wrote in my blog about how indigenous people hate migrants.
Tags: Amitava Kumar, Salman Rushdie, controversy, R K Narayan, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, Norman Mailer, Neapean Sea Road, Invisible People

Reality Show to Sell a Book? Quite possible!

2006-09-22T23:05:00.000-07:00

Saw the James McGreevey interview with Larry King on CNN. Now, for those who came in late, James is the former governor of New Jersey who has made a public admission to having a homosexual affair and to having cheated on his wife, as a consequence of which he had to give up his office. He has also come up with a book on the affair titled "The Confession" and may, me thinks, have been desperate to get publicity for the book. The confession includes trysts in anonymous truck stops, crawling into bed with his wife after escapades with his boy friend, etc.

What I found unusual was the handsome McGreevey was squirming in his seat while answering King's pointed and, rather, blunt questions. Several times he fumbled for answers, and on occasions he seemed as if he wasn't telling the truth, at least, fudging some. Larry King asked him if he had sexual encounters before his marriage, and he said, "yes," the next question was, "was it pleasurable?" What does he mean by asking if a sexual encounter was pleasurable? Why would he go for an encounter if it wasn't pleasurable. Come, come, now, Larry King!

To make matters worse there were also interviews with his cheated wife, and his boyfriend (no, he says, life partner), whom he kissed on the show. Yes, kissed on the mouth! All through the interview I was conscious of a brave show being put up, all that was wrong with such displays became quite obvious. I mean, the reality television kind of programs showing people embarassed, crying, shouting, and kissing.

I felt that this was the movie trailer to goad people to buy the book in millions to delve into the secret life of the handsome governor. Also, who knows, movie rights, and may be, a movie role (seeing as to how handsome he is!). Oh, the pits to which people can descend!

I may be terribly old fashioned (my blog says so), not to talk of getting old, but couldn't these emotions be handled a bit more discreetly? All through the show the interlocutor Larry King had a cynical set to his mouth, and conducted the interview with great detachment, as is his wont. But all this drama to sell a book? If this genre of publishing is so desperate to sell their books, then why don't they call themselves "The Celebrity Business" and not publishing at all.
Tags: James McGreevey, Larry King, The Confession, Reality Television, Homosexuality

Sportsmen or Showmen?

2006-09-20T01:24:00.000-07:00

Why do we, the whole one billion of us, rank so low in sports? Looking at our films and ads filled with those well-toned, and muscle-rippling youth one would think we are a nation of athletic young men, and women who shouldn't do so dismally when it comes to wielding a stick or a bat.

We rank 136^th in 204 football playing nations, 11^th in 12 hockey playing nations, and about cricket I don't know (though, I play cricket I am not so crazy about following it as I get upset watching our country lose, and so badly at that), may be, in the bottom of the heap. Every four years, one billion people wait with bated breath for an odd silver or bronze medal in the Olympics, while a country like Cameroon wins two golds and a bronze. A collective hanging of heads is, perhaps, advisable here.

I don't accept the argument that there is a lack of talent. No. I have seen talented cricket players giving up their fight. Ravi Kulkarni was a talented player from my locality and he vanished without a trace and so did Abey Kuruvilla. Their careers were rather short.

Or, is it that we are a nation of pretenders, who build up their bulges to be "macho-looking" for the cameras and not for what these muscles are meant, i.e., put it to grueling tests on the sports field, the real tests of brawn these days. Don't believe me? Watch those gladiators battling each other on the football field. There are fans screaming, singing, hooting, waving little, long balloons, even painting themselves for their teams. And their heroes deliver.

My grouse with our cricketers is that they aren't sportsmen (except a few), and more of showmen. Hmm, that may also be the reason they fail so dismally on the field. Watch their carefully groomed attitudes, watch their camera consciousness. "Yaar, mein kaisa lag raha tha teevee par?" (Friend, how did I look on television?)

I really wonder if they do it for the sake of the sport or for getting the advertisement endorsement opportunities, trophy girlfriends, and may be later get on television wearing a tie, to say glib things like, "It is a batting pitch, there is a little grass, and a lot of moisture on the grass, what do you say Sunny?"
Tags: Cricket, Football, Ravi Kulkarni, Abey Kuruvilla, Television, Hockey, Movies

My Poem on Beirut

2006-09-18T05:41:00.000-07:00

Read my poem on Beirut here

Beirut was once known as the Paris of the East. No more. Now, militaries of Israel, Syria and Jordan enter and leave it at their whim. Its streets are full of bombed buildings and its citizens live in fear of being killed. This is a poem to its brave inhabitants. "Cedars of Lebanon" is a reference to a passage in the Bible.
Tags: Beirut, Paris of the East, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Bible

Stephanie Klein to tie the knot? Pity the Guy!

2006-09-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

Seems Stephanie Klein, she of the kiss and tell blog is getting married. To those who might say, Stephanie who? She is the one who told all in her blog about her love life with boldness and irreverence and landed a book contract. "She lets readers view, with her clear-eyed hindsight, what a liar, cheat and coward her husband turned out to be. It's not pretty, but it is fascinating," says USA Today.

All I feel is pity for the guy. How would you like the woman you are getting married to report your intimate conversations, even everyday fights and tantrums to the world?

Some of her posts have 239 comments! I go, "Wow, what's that?" When I get a measly twenty visitors on my blog everyday, and perhaps get one to comment per week, she gets 239 comments on one blog post. I suspect women have had it good, even with blogging. I mean they can kiss a man and then tell. As for a man, if he kisses and tells, his friends would ask, "You mean you just kissed?"

Look at Monica Levinsky, she sold some copies of her book didn't she? Or, closer home, hmm, who comes to mind? Preeti Jain? No, never mind. Meanwhile, have a look at this blog by Jess that hints that she has something to kiss and tell, but somehow she can't get the words out. Tongue tied?
Tags: Kiss and Tell, Monica Levinsky, USA Today, Stephanie Klein, Blogging

A Day in the Life of Me, Myself!

2006-09-16T00:21:00.000-07:00

This is a scenario I wrote today, just common events from my life. I might use this in a short story or novel, in future. So do not discount its literary value. Ahem!

Today is Saturday and I am thinking of finishing some work. I thought it was romantic, working in my pajamas and round neck tee-shirt working when you feel like, that is, until this morning.

Then they had to spoil it all. My neighbor is getting his house re-constructed. Re-construction is a harmless word when he is breaking it down with sledge hammers, and most of the debris is falling on my house with thuds the equivalent of minor bomb explosions, or, earthquakes. The houses in Artist Village, are independent dacha-type houses, which were constructed by a government housing scheme, and are packed too close for comfort.

Now something like a war is going on with frequent unannounced masonry falling on my house. "Oh, God," I say and run out and shout at the workers, who, are, huh, workers. For some time the earthquakes stop. They do what they are told to do. And my neighbor is nowhere in sight. See, he has moved to safe environs already. Good!

And then they resume all over again. Then I again run out and shout. Then they commiserate. And this goes on for some time, till the power goes off. I sit fretting in the dark with the debris of my despondency falling over me, darkly maligning. No, I won't ask, "Why does this happen to me? How can I get my work done?" No, that would be taking it badly.

Then I go to get some bank work done. The day is sunny and hot and sweltering, and I put on my dark, "cooling" glasses. The bank is crowded, and there's another bank I have to visit nearby to finish my transaction – actually I am making a draft to pay my son's yearly college fees. The deposit in this bank isn't enough to cover the transaction. So I have to withdraw money from another bank account across the street and come back. I didn't know that I hadn't eaten and suddenly hunger pangs strike.

I walk into a South Indian restaurant and am served by a nondescript uniformed waiter who reels off a variety of dosas from memory. I decide to have a Masala Dosa, which, I think, would be filling. Then I turn around and there is a family of beggars, the type who appeal to your religiosity to make a living, sitting next to me and eating rather boisterously. Food is spooned into wide open jaws, and the mastication is done in between loud talking. I find this particularly nauseating, eat my dosa, and leave.

At the other bank, a sales spiel keeps me engrossed. They have a unit-linked plan that would give me a pension for life, provided I invest around Rs 1.5 million now. Imagine having that kind of liquid cash lying around, I smirk, while coolly watching the earnest salesman making his pitch. Then I say I will consider his offer, and leave.

Then I take a rickshaw to the other bank with all the money for my son's fees and a helpful girl who hardly glances at me makes the draft. That done, I decide to visit an old church acquaintance who is indisposed and has been ordered rest. He and I have worked in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and we talk about old times. I guess company would keep him engaged.

And then it begins to pour, and pour. "Thulavarsham," he says listening to the rolling thunder. "Yes," I say, "It is thulavarsham, the rain that falls around the month of "Thulam." We speak of human foibles, church politics, and a priest who isn't as holy as I had considered him. Who is?

On the journey back, I am totally drenched by the downpour and my umbrella offers no solace. The sunny afternoon has transformed into a dark, menacing, darkly forbidding rainy evening. There are gangs of youngsters, college kids, at the bus stop. They talk and laugh loudly, wearing their unwashed jeans that have these ugly pockets, bulging out at the most unimaginable of places. I am wearing cargo trousers, but, it has pockets at the logical locations on both sides. I notice that they all have long hair, and acne on their faces. I too have long hair!

End of scenario.

The Booker Short List is Up!

2006-09-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

The booker short list is up. Kiran Desai made it for "The Inheritance of Loss." Those who made it:

"The six books shortlisted by a panel of judges are: "In the Country of Men," Hisham Matar's semi-autobiographical first novel about childhood in Moammar Gadhafi's Libya; "The Secret River," Kate Grenville's tale of life in an Australian penal colony; "The Night Watch," British writer Sarah Waters' novel about characters whose fates intertwine during World War II; "The Inheritance of Loss," Indian writer Kiran Desai's cross-continental saga set in New York and India; "Carry Me Down," the story of an unusual boy, by Irish-Australian novelist M.J. Hyland; and "Mother's Milk," a portrait of a rich but dysfunctional family by English writer Edward St. Aubyn."

Those who didn't make it:

"Some of the biggest names on the 19-book longlist did not make the cut, including David Mitchell, whose "Black Swan Green" had been a favorite, and Australia's Peter Carey, a two-time Booker winner longlisted for "Theft: A Love Story." Andrew O'Hagan's "Be Near Me," another critical favorite, also was omitted."
Tags: Hisham Matar, Kate Grenville, Sarah Waters, Kiran Desai, M.J. Hyland, Edward St. Aubyn, Man Booker Prize, short list

The Booker Short List is Up!

2006-09-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

:: future :: :: Teen parenting - the road to understanding :: August :: 2006

2006-09-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

Stumbled across this article. Well looks interesting to me. :: future :: :: Teen parenting - the road to understanding :: August :: 2006 While on the subject of teens there is this cell phone agreement for teens and parents developed by a father of teens which would help teens who are going through that interesting phase in their lives use their cell phones responsibly. I, as a parent would recommend “Off the Hook,” a free cell phone agreement developed for teens and their parents. Using this agreement parents can work hand-in-hand with their teen to find a suitable cell phone plan and then to make sure they understand the responsibility (and the costs) that go along with cell phone ownership.

Johnwriter's Raves & Rants!: Masters or slaves?

2006-09-13T21:14:00.000-07:00

Johnwriter's Raves & Rants!: Masters or slaves? A valid point I think.

One of my blog articles has appeared in DNA

2006-09-13T00:34:00.000-07:00

My blog post on "Untalenting Talent" has appeared in DNA (Daily News and Analysis, is a newspaper published from Bombay). Read it here.
Tags: Daily News & Analysis, Untalenting Talent, Bombay

Masters or slaves?

2006-09-12T02:59:00.000-07:00

It is disconcerting how technology gives us the "bum's rush" sometimes. It's like this. I have important work to do, most of it online, and most of the morning the power fails, I sit there fidgeting, reading a novel (Evelyn Waugh's "The Loved Ones"), not knowing what to do. Then the power comes on, I switch on the computer, and, and, the net is so slow, it's almost impossible to surf.

Ever faced this problem? I am sure you have. During the deluge in Bombay cell phones didn't work, during the bomb blasts emergency services went on a blink, etc. Now coming to think about it, can you imagine how much we are dependent on our little chargers for our cell phones, our digital cameras, our laptops, and our PDAs. Are we the masters of all these technology, or are we slaves still?
Tags: Evelyn Waugh, Cell Phones, Digital Cameras, Laptops, PDAs

"Untalenting Talent"

2006-09-06T00:12:00.000-07:00

Read this interesting article by Joel on Joelonsoftware. Got me thinking. In India we are doing our best to "un-talent talent," yes, I am coining a phrase here, which I hope to develop into, erm, a cliche on this blog, by telling our talented youth that there aren't seats in medical, engineering and management institutions. In America, as Joel's article states, they are willing to take pains to absorb students as interns and nurture them as future employees.

Well, honestly, India is "untalenting talent" by asking for huge donations - I hear it is Rs 5 million for a medical seat, around half a million for an engineering seat, and about that much for a management seat - with the result that what comes out of our high profile institutions are rote-learned, uncreative, disillusioned, unmotivated engineers, doctors and managers. The best and brightest of them go to the US where they can get scholarships, jobs on campus, or, can be picked up by a corporation that is interested in employing them.

Hm, well, who is the loser and who is the gainer? While our colleges of higher learning are becoming richer, the US is getting a steady stream of talented programmers, doctors and managers because of the short-sighted policies of our country. Look at the roster of developers in any software development company in the US and you will find a lot of "Sridhars, Shuklas, Samuels, Samants, Ramakrishnans, etc." in their list. Whereas in India a government that believes in e-governance do not have talented programmers to maintain their own sites. Visit any government sites and see if they are regularly updated. I needn't give the answer here, for obvious reasons.

And our reservation policy has contributed its mite to "untalenting talent." According to the policy, I am a bit dark here, but, will plod on, half the seats (50 per cent) are decided by the management (that means whoever pays more gets a seat) and half are decided by the government (that means around 40 per cent of the half is reserved for students who do not have the talents, but have been born in the right caste). These two chunks add up to 90 per cent and there are only 10 per cent seats available for students who have any merit, and who are genuinely interested in studying. For all I know, I am being quite cynical here, the 90 per cent who have a seat reserved for them becuase of their money power or their birthright may not be repeat may not be interested in studying at all, and may disrupt the studies of the honest and talented students. Here again "untalenting talent" takes a heavy toll.

Who gains, who loses?
Tags: India, talent, US, Universities, Untalenting Talent

Nokia's 6800, your best bet for short messaging

2006-09-05T08:19:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite phones is Nokia 6800. It enables sending and receiving of messages with its QWERTY touch pad. And since I message quite a bit, this is the phone I am going to watch out, to me at least. Even my son, a teenager, who likes to send jokes on his cell phone, likes it and he says nothing can beat it for performance and easy transmitting of short message on this cell phone. Mostly we prefer messaging each other than calling as it is cheaper.

However, one drawback is that downloading ring tones, games and graphics are not
yet available for the Nokia 6800 phone. Nokia also has a compact and light travel charger that is small and has a convenient cable management with the cord wrapping up inside the charger.
Tags: Cell phone, Nokia, 6800, charger

Khali pili, khali fokat ka boma bom!

2006-09-01T11:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I made that journey to South Bombay after the forced absence of a year working for a BPO unit in New Bombay. Now this unit, no malice intended, considers that once an employee joins them, s/he does not have the right to a life of his/her own. I believe work is worship, but work shouldn't be forced worship. So I quit.

And, lo and behold, South Bombay held some pleasant surprises, nay, some shocking surprises. First of all, I look around for the familiar sights around Victoria Terminus. Where is all the noise and shouting gone? You know the types who shout, "Whole lot, whole lot mein, raste ka mal saste mein." God, I miss those hawkers, where are they? And, yes, they are still around, slinking, chin on chest, defiantly eyeing everyone.

Guess they are hanging around in the hope that the ban on hawkers would be lifted, as everything in "Gormint" is lifted after a while. Poor sods, they don't realize that the "Gormint" has demarcated "hawking" and "non-hawking" zones and their chances of erecting a stall is equivalent to Sakti Kapoor winning the Filmfare award for best actor.

A lot less noisy, and a lot cleaner, a lot less "jhan jhat," as a Bombayite would say. And those hawkers, "khali pili, khali fokat ka, boma bom Martha tha." Meaning those hawkers used to shout for no purpose. Now I can navigate the streets better.
Tags: BPO, New Bombay, Bombay, South Bombay, Hawkers, Filmfare, Sakti Kapoor

Sprint PCS Phone LX350 by LG Fact Sheet – Great Technology, Great Quality

2006-08-30T00:40:00.000-07:00

Hiya, Heard the latest? There’s great quality and technology in Sprint cell phone!

Heard the buzz? Now you can access and web and download various web-based applications with Sprint PCS Phone LX350. What’s more, you can access SMS test and voice messages, and Sprint PCS mail too. Isn’t that great?

Hold on. There’s more to come. LX 350 comes with a 1.3 megapixel camera, which provides a digital picture in full color. You can click and send them to your friends and family members instantly, by using Sprint PCS picture mail technology. This phone also has a built-in speakerphone.

Heard a lot about Bluetooth technology? Sure, you have! This technology allows you to connect your LX 350 phone wirelessly to other compatible devices, including Bluetooth-compatible hand-held ones. This enables dial-up networking, with your phone acting as a wireless modem. This technology also offers an advanced speech recognition facility.

To top it all, it is light in weight, convenient, and highly secure. What with the LG wireless backup technology, you can manage your contact list and even transfer it to some other compatible devices that feature the same technology.
Tags: Sprint PCS Phone LX350

Verizon Wireless FuelFinder: Just Click and Save

2006-08-29T03:56:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered cell phone in hand where the cheapest fuel was available? Ever had to drive around town trying to compare prices and burnt a lot of fuel that you were trying to save? Now you can do it with just a click on your Verizon Wireless FuelFinder and save money. A specialized mapping service developed by MobileGates, a leader in providing location-based services, FuelFinder provides most inexpensive fuel options exclusively to Verizon Wireless Mobile Web 2.0SM customers.

Tags: Verizon Wireless FuelFinder

Now you can find the cheapest fuel on your cell phone!

2006-08-28T01:25:00.000-07:00

Tags: Verizon, Verizon Wireless FuelFinder

The kindness of strangers!

2006-08-16T00:09:00.000-07:00

It’s raining outside. May be a repeat of the July 26, 2005. Today, getting to office was a miracle. A real miracle. Actually I am wearing short to office because it is an Indian holiday (Gokulashtami, or the birthday of Krishna, on which day, people form human pyramids to break an earthen pot full of curds). I had to wait a long time for a rickshaw to appear. None of them seemed to be around. It was pouring and mercifully, my shorts saved me the trouble of being drenched and cold. Then I tried to hitch a ride. Most of them didn’t stop. Ultimately, dejected, I was about to go back. No point in venturing out in this rain, I thought.

Then a Chevrolet Tavera stopped for me. Imagine, a luxury sports utility vehicle like Chevrolet Tavera stopping for a drenched-looking man in shorts, wind cheater and umbrella. Imagine the kindness of the man when he knows I would drip water on the seat and floor of his expensive vehicle. That’s kindness for you, the kindness of strangers. I got inside and he, the owner, sitting beside the driver, asked me where I wanted to go. I told him. He dropped me at the Bombay-Pune highway from where I board a bus to the office.

People in the office see the shorts and smile. I say, “Can’t help it, can’t you see the rains.” Colleagues say, “Yeah, I am going to wear shorts too.” Poonam suggested the Lungi. But Karthik (Poonam is the girl on extreme left in the picture in the bottom and Karthik is the seated guy in the picture above) says, “The lungi will be on the floor when you get into a Bombay bus.” All laugh. This is because nobody wears shorts to the office except the big boss. I guess wearing shorts on holidays and weekends should be allowed. Anyway, I am daring when it comes to clothes and that’s it.
Tags: Gokulashtami, Krishna, Chevrolet Tavera, Rickshaw, Lungi, Bombay, Rain, Miracle

May latest poem, explores loneliness!

2006-08-13T06:54:00.000-07:00

Read my latest poem about loneliness on my poetry blog. The poem celebrates how we should celebrate each moment, as we exist in the present moment, and let loneliness be a part of us, and thus internalize the loneliness.
Tags: Loneliness, Poem, Indian English Poem, Poetry

Loneliness

2006-08-13T05:45:00.000-07:00

I pause midway in the in the whirl,
Of deadlines, things undone,
And averaged the sadness and joys -
There remains only loneliness,
Of which I see no cure,
No bitter palliatives, no anodyne.

We remain in life’s journey,
Like loners sitting depressed,
On solitary park benches, or,
Staring at people from balconies,
Loneliness gnawing at our minds,
As hungry ants at a grain of food.

Often in life’s vicious lanes,
In lonesome moments,
It’s our failures we ponder,
Not the joys and victories; both,
We have given and earned;
Not others’ courage, but faults.

When in each passing lonely moment,
I count the millions of seconds,
I was alive to witness this world, and,
Mimetic thoughts that pass into eternity,
My loneliness vanishes, I shout,
“I live; I am alive this lonely moment.”
(c) John, August 2006
Tags: Loneliness, poetry

Of T*ts and D**ks!

2006-08-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

Oh, the Indian arty-farty crowd is embroiled in another controversy. This time it is an exhibition of paintings, poems and sculptures called, “Tits, clits and Elephant Dicks.” Not, joking, this time that is the title, honest. I did a search of the Internet and came up with 8,40,000 results. I am amazed. Are we so sick in the mind? Someone said that this mirrors the state of our society. Yes, it does. And the very words, American slang, no less. Why not Bombay slang like c****h, and l**d, etc, which tumble out every other second from a Bombayman’s tongue?

Frankly I am amazed, no, dazed, no, amused. After suppressing a chortle or two I can go into the dissection of this. Apparently it features poems, too, “In Search Of The Best Fuck Of His Life” and “My First Piss In The Morning.” Is Indian art so depraved that it has to hunt for crude vulgarisms of American Slang to describe women’s body parts? Again, why “Piss” why not “Urine?” It’s the puerile use of these slang words that offends me the most. Or, is it a way of currying favor from the firangs? This is the sort of writing you get on toilet walls, not in prestigious art gallery of Bombay. If I walk into the gallery with my wife and son I would naturally be offended.

For your information the exhibition, sort of shortcut to fame for its artists Sanjeev Khandekar and Vaishali Narkar who put up statues with gigantic phalluses on show. But should it have been such a drastic short cut? Society has a responsibility to protect its vulnerable sections in which I include women and children. But the exhibition was open to all even children. What impressions would they carry out of the gallery? No wonder Pushpa Vijule was offended and lodged a police complaint. The police asked the artists to take away the exhibits, and I think they are right to do that. If it offends the

And the literati have come out in defense of freedom of expression and all that bullshit. Among them a prominent film director and poet, who rants against the police’s high-handedness. Oh, come on, (I am not saying “Aw, c’on) drill some sense into your brains. Don’t know where this straining at the leash of prurience comes from. But aren’t we a society where mothers and sisters are respected and even worshipped?
Tags: Bombayman, American Slang, Sanjeev Khandekar, Vaishali Narkar, Pushpa Vijule, art, exhibition, India, Indian art, Indian sculpture

2006-07-31T07:34:00.000-07:00

This me reading from Penguin’s “India Smiles” collection of short stories. “India Smiles” started as a global short story contest for humorous fiction organized by Sulekha. The contest received five thousand entries and my short story “Flirting in Short Messages” was one among the twenty-eight that were published.

Picture shows me reading my above story from “India Smiles” at Caferati’s second anniversary meet at Chembur, the suburb of Bombay where I spent my childhood. The other picture shows a view of the gathering. Visit my website for more of my writing.
Tags: Caferati, India Smiles, Sulekha, Flirting in Short Messages, Chembur, Bombay

"India Smiles" is just out from Penguin India!

2006-07-25T23:27:00.000-07:00

Penguin has just published "India Smiles" the result of the "India Smiles" global short story contest run by Sulekha. Out of the thousands of entries received sixty were short-listed and this volume contains the top twenty six stories that made it right to the top. My short story "Flirting in Short Messages" is one of them. So, nose thumbs to my critics who say "Johnwriter can't write" and "John P Matthew can't write." It's not too late to eat your words! Watch this space or my website for more.

The book is in stores and costs Rs 195 only. Please, please, buy, buy, buy, buy, so as to avoid potential starvation by this starving blogger, sorry, writer!
Tags: Penguin India, India Smiles, Johnwriter, John P Matthew, Flirting in short Messages, Sulekha, blogger

Johnwriter's Raves & Rants!

2006-06-02T22:27:00.000-07:00

Johnwriter's Raves & Rants!

I moderated the May 2006 readmeet of Caferati, a network of writers. This is my report.