A Crooked World

Product of his times…? Part of a subculture...? Those are easy phrases for a difficult subject.

Till the mid-to-late eighties, there were mainly three categories of films. The first was obscure and experimental, trying so obviously to be intellectual. The second dealt with social drama and mostly tear-jerkers, shamelessly melodramatic. The third category included action, soft-porn and other trash. Humour was absent in the first and the other two types of movies grudgingly used it as a filler, with specialized comic-artistes resorting to the slapstick variety. So serious were the circumstances for the irreverent masses that their grim physiognomy reflected the prevalent culture and their lives slowly crumbled under that gloomy weight.

Then, there was a paradigm shift in local cinema. There came along a new breed of movies in which even the hero was expected to be a joker and society and life itself was treated as a joke. The joke still seemed slapstick and hardly subtle or nuanced but it was told seriously and the audience kept their emotions in check because they were not too sure if they should curse or cry or laugh. This uncertainty or deviation appealed to the masses. They had had enough of straight-forward scenes with obvious emotions. Some incorporated this in various forms in their own philosophy of life. I think that is the best way to understand Shekhar.

With Shekhar, the simple or straight-forward were alien concepts, answers seemed irrelevant and the shortest route between points had to be a crooked path.

We were childhood friends and neighbours then. On his old tetanus-infested rickety cycle, we explored the lanes and by-lanes for lasses unfairly kept locked and secure behind closed doors. As a pillion rider, I was supposed to observe, navigate and also apply sufficient resistance since his cycle had no brakes. On those rare occasions when we did manage to spot a prize-catch, his brakeless cycle would zoom past our quarry before we could exercise our charms. In our late teens, he laid that cycle to rest and inherited his father’s old Vespa. My role as a pillion rider was still quite essential. The scooter worked well as long as our journey was downhill. But to go uphill, the scooter had to go downhill first before it started and then turned back towards the uphill destination. And, of course, on a flat road the situation was more arduous. First, we had to find a hill, go uphill, then come downhill, get the scooter started and then proceed on our merry journey.

This convoluted approach started to influence his games and speech. In football, instead of simply going forward with a ball passed to him, he would turn around, move towards his team’s goal post, then flip the ball in the air and execute a bicycle kick to send the ball back towards the opponents’ side. He was more frustrating when it infected his speech. Once I asked him for directions to his father’s office and he replied,

‘Do you know the ice-cream joint in front of Water Works?’

‘Yes, the one next to the temple, right?’

‘Exactly…don’t go there. A kilometer from there, there is this tall building next to the Electricity Board, right?’

‘Yeah…’

‘On the fourteenth floor, there is an office. From outside, you can see that it is the only office in that building with A/c. Ok?’

‘Is that your father’s office?’

‘No. His office is in the small building behind Water Works.’

At times, his approach was life-threatening. A taxi with a dangerously pregnant lady once screeched to a halt next to us and the brusque driver demanded directions to a particular maternity clinic. Shekhar looked suspiciously helpful,

‘When you go straight, you will reach a junction after the next traffic light. If you go to the right from there, you will reach Medical College. If you go left, you will be on your way to the General Hospital. But, if you go straight, you will reach a road that goes past the MLA quarters. Then, you will reach a dead-end. Most people turn back and come back right here.’

‘And…the Clinic…?’

‘How should I know?’

Later, after we escaped from the scene, he apologized to me for being malicious to that rude driver. I asked him,

‘Did you forget about the pregnant lady?’

‘Come on, she has waited for more than nine months…a few more minutes would only make the child seem more adorable…’

 His ways often made him seem undependable. But when it mattered, I found him to be the most dependable friend. Maybe, the only one I ever knew. When my father was admitted in hospital with a prolonged illness, he was a source of great help to me and my family. Then, for the weddings in my house, mine and my sisters’, he worked as hard as I did. Ironically, it was this dependability that ended our friendship. He expected the same in return. When his mother was in hospital, for treatment of breast cancer, I could not help him much. Maybe, I could have. But, I had pressing problems in office. Anyway, after that, we rarely met.

A few years back, a mutual acquaintance I met during one of my official trips told me about Shekhar’s crooked ways in getting a really good bride, from a family way beyond his station. The girl’s lot was impressed with his advertisement. It was vague and gave the impression of a successful man working ‘outside’ (rather than abroad) - reasonably tall, comparatively fair and not at all bad looking. And, after they met him the girl’s father felt that there was no need to investigate his case thoroughly. Shekhar’s prospective father-in-law had asked him the usual,

‘What do you do?’

Shekhar replied, ‘I guess you know Krish…Krishnakumar? No? You don’t know him…? He is a close friend of Rat…Rat who? Ratan Tata, of course…I think he used to manage the tea business before shifting his attention to more global matters…’

The girl had entered the scene then. Shekhar had to stop his discourse to make the customary appraisal. The girl’s father was already enamored with this company connected so favourably, it seemed, to the aforementioned Krish and Rat. 

My acquaintance also told me that Shekhar had to mend his ways after marriage. And, I realized that as soon as I met him yesterday, quite by chance, on the Inter-city train towards Trivandrum.

I was really glad to find him in the same compartment. He was polite and courteous. I pounded him with questions.

‘How are you, man?’

‘Fine.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Trivandrum.’

‘Business or pleasure…?’

‘Home.’

He had changed a lot. A tinge of disappointment on losing that old friend, the crooked one, came over me. I felt rather lost without his convoluted replies that never gave an answer. His direct responses in monosyllables left me speechless.

 When the train stopped at Ernakulam, we sat silently, looking out. I watched a young lady race down the steps from the overhead bridge. She was also waving and smiling at a young man on the platform. The young man turned towards her. At the bottom of the steps, she spread her arms wide, still waving them, smiling broadly and approached the young man fast. The young man was also smiling broadly by then and he hesitantly raised his arms as if to receive her hug. I looked at Shekhar. He was watching the same scene and like me, probably waiting to see the rare public display of intimacy and affection. 

I watched as the young lady raced past the young man, then towards the door of our compartment and entering the same. I looked at the young man. I saw confusion on his face quickly change to anger and then he looked around quickly to check out the size of the audience and then, quickly left the scene, head down with embarrassment. When the young lady deposited herself on the seat next to mine, I wanted to ask her if that had been a boyfriend or at least a friend. I looked at Shekhar. He had a glint in his eyes.

She remained aloof till the tea vendor came along and I requested Shekhar and the young lady to join me for a cuppa. I asked her,

‘Where are you going?’

‘Trivandrum.’

‘Going home?’

‘College.’

My curiosity got the better of me and I had to ask her, ‘Was that your friend on the platform?’

She gave a dubious shrug. Then she gave me a sweet smile. It is the kind of sweet smile that young ladies give middle-aged men which says, ‘If you mollycoddle me any further, I will sock you in the balls.’

From then, we maintained silence till the arrival of the ticket examiner. When the young lady gave her ticket, the official remarked,

‘This is for the general and not for this reserved a/c compartment.’

‘Exactly,’ she replied and continued, ‘That is what I told him when I bought the ticket. Do you know Mr. Vinay Kumar…I think he is some big shot in Southern Railways? The one whose uncle is a movie star...this uncle used to be in real estate business. And my father is in the prawn business, you see…anyway, I told him my doubts about the ticket but he said it would be ok and that he will do the needful…ah, what a bother…do you want me to call him? I hope the mobile network has range…’

By then, the ticket examiner was satisfied with her ticket. Like before, I was curious to know if the ‘him’ in the account and that ‘Mr. Vinay Kumar’ were one and the same. When I looked at her, she gave me that sweet smile once again and I kept my silence and distance.

Shekhar and the young lady then started talking to each other. From their discussion, I learned that Shekhar would get down at Trivandrum, go further south to Nagercoil, then proceed north to Madurai and then take the scenic route via Pollachi back to Ernakulam and move northwards. The purpose of his trip seemed irrelevant and he had been partially true. He did plan to get home, eventually, though I did not catch the exact location of his home either.

From what the young lady told Shekhar, quite excitedly, I learned that she was going even further south, up to Kanyakumari. Then, she planned to go via the east coast to Chennai and from there to Pondicherry. I guessed that her college would be on the west coast, probably even where she started, and to her this route seemed to be the best and only way to get there.

  After a while, I dozed off. I knew that I had no place in their crooked world.