My Unfunny Valentine

‘You look like Al Pacino.’

My uncle Hosappan said that to me when I was a lean mean angry young man. I took his compliment with a pinch of salt because he refers to his wife as ‘my Marilyn Monroe’. I have tried various angles and in all she resembles Idi Amin. Anyway, I am not one to let a compliment go lightly. Al and I do look alike. We are of the same height. Besides, I have always been a movie-man. My life can be divided into phases each a tribute to a great star of the silver screen. As Al, I went through my turbulent twenties impersonating Michael Corleone. I gave that up when couple of bosses offered themselves as suitable brothers to drown. I was really tempted but I knew that I had other roles to don.

Recently, I became Al yet again, as in Scent of a Woman. I joined a dance class three months back to learn how to tango. For years, I have felt the real romantic within me trying hard to find a way out of the straightjacket my life had become. Hoo-ah! Tango showed me the way out. 

The first month had nothing to do with romance. It was all about getting ready for it. The dance teacher surveyed my body from head to toe, quickly decided that my lean mean years were way back in the past and she put me on a crash course of cardiovascular exercises, painful stretching and, gradual resistance and endurance training.

Even the second month had nothing to do with romance. I was put in a batch consisting of only men. We realized soon that only a few amongst us were born with two feet when it came to dancing, and that most of us had, at best, two left feet. The teacher had another reason for segregating us. We were also supposed to realize in that one month whether we wanted a male or female partner.

Thus, in the third month, I entered the co-ed class all ready for romance and with my hormones as vicious as a half-starved pit bull. The teacher gave me a knowing smile which seemed to imply that that is the only way to tango. The Al in me was ready.

So were the other guys. And before I could say ‘Hoo-ah’ most of the women were taken. I was left with a choice of two women as my partner. I know that that is two more than my usual normal but still, I could not help present a dejected scowling sulking look at my teacher. She gave me a knowing smile which seemed to say, ‘tough luck, buster…’

Of the two, the choice was simple. I took the curvy buxom one with a lovely crooked smile. Life is full of simple choices and disastrous consequences, I realized fast. I am not fond of silent women. They scare me. Well, she was at the other end of the spectrum. That scared me, too. It must have been the local accent (Malayalee genes!) plus a Bengali influence (upbringing?) and an overpowering Yankee twang (marriage and a brief stay abroad!!!). And her bonhomie was grating. She insisted on frequent platonic dates at a nearby coffee shop and she used these to give an update about her many routine activities: yoga or gym (morning), ayurveda massage (mid-morning), writing and book clubs (early afternoon and night), dance (evening), pets, kids, housework and husband (in that order, she insisted, rest of the time). Listening to her, I felt exhausted. I lasted two weeks with her.

In the third week of that third month, I was lucky to make a swap. I got the one I had not chosen out of the two available to me initially. Life is like that often, a multiple-choice question. You think you know the answer and without a prayer, you choose that answer. Then, careful thought and calculation make you return to that question and the right answer turns out to be the other and this time, you accept the answer with a prayer.  

I did pray. She reminded me of a Science teacher I had in school. Strict, mirthless, calculated even speech, steady hand and steadier legs than mine. If I was Al, she was Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo, I could not decide which. She was definitely not Scarlett Johansson. Yesterday, I heard the tragic news of a kid who stabbed his teacher to death. My generation dealt with strict teachers rather differently. We pictured them letting loose that tight bun of hair, transformed from straight walk to ramp walk, sashaying towards us, a black widow eyeing its willing and ready prey. Well, that’s how I planned to survive the dance classes with my partner. In our first dance, I fumbled a lot with the steps. My second left foot had reemerged. I apologized profusely to her. She looked at me straight in the eye and said those famous words in Scent of a Woman,

‘No mistakes in the tango, darling. Not like life, simple, that's what makes the tango so great. If you make a mistake, get all tangled up, you just tango on.’ She had me from that moment on.

Near New Year’s Eve, on that day when the city got flooded, I offered to drop her at her place after the dance class. We were silent in the car and Carmina Burana was playing on the stereo. It was dark outside. The roads were flooded. My car trudged forward slowly. The tension between us was palpable. I was sweating and she was as cool as a cucumber. I stopped in front of her apartment block. I recognized it.

‘I have been here before…’ I tried to recollect.

‘Is that so?’ Her voice sounded a lot like Norman Bates’ in Psycho.  

‘A friend used to live here…’

‘Really…?’

‘Tragic case actually...he tried to help a neighbour…she slashed him with a knife quite badly…that bitch claimed to the police that he had tried to rape her…do you know the people involved?’

‘I was that bitch.’

‘What…?’ I quickly recovered. ‘What a bastard!’

‘Do you believe me?’ Her voice was flat and expressionless.

‘Of course…’ I replied.

‘I think I must have one of those faces you can't help believing.’ She said it exactly like Norman Bates.

‘Would you like to come up…till the rain is over?’ she asked.

‘Oh no…next time…’ I stuttered. The first rule in dating - always say no the first time, whatever the reason might be.

I did not go for the dance class for a week. I imagined her silhouette each time I took a shower. I felt feverish.

When I returned, she was still my partner.

January went by, we tangoed well and the teacher gave me a knowing smile which I could not interpret. Later that day, I got to know the meaning. She wanted the next quarter’s fees in advance.

I was really fitting well into Al’s role. Then came February, love was in the air and I had the desperate need to have someone with me on the 14^th. But, it is tough to tell a partner that you need her just for that day. I made an attempt a few days in advance.

On February 9^th, I decided to broach the topic but with tact and in a circumlocutory fashion. I had driven her home once again. We were in the car outside her apartment and it loomed darkly over us like Bates’ house, pregnant with its horrors and secrets.

‘What do you think of the Porngate scandal?’ I asked innocently.

‘Poor chaps…nobody is interested in the real culprits…’ She replied in her matter-of-fact-school-teacher way which I have begun to love.

‘Real culprits…?’ I was lost. I tried to be the clever, ‘Ah! You mean the people involved in making that porn clip…?’

‘Of course not…the media…who gives them the right to telecast what’s on in another’s mobile?’

‘Ah…’ I took that in like a good school kid. ‘Well, there is one good aspect to the affair.’ I tried to get back on track.

‘Really…?’ Her voice turned cold, her face hardened, her eyes unblinking and dark like that of a school-teacher facing a kid trying to be smarter than her. I think Dracula had the same tone when a victim tried to advise him about his unhealthy bloodthirsty ways.

‘Those Ministers won’t be able to block Valentine’s Day celebrations.’ I proudly delivered my punch-line.

She smiled, her face softened a little. I waited for her to let loose that tight bun of hair. She did not do so.

‘I hope you are not against Valentine’s Day…’ I probed.

‘Yes.’

‘You are against…?’ My heart sank.

‘Yes.’ Her monosyllables came out in staccato fashion shattering my dreams.

‘But why…?’ I gave a plaintive cry begging her to see reason.

‘Why what…?’

‘Why are you against love on that day?’

‘I am against love on that day alone.’

I think she must have heard my sigh of relief. She gave me a small smile. I held out my hand. She gave me a firm handshake.

‘Will you come up this time?’ From her, that seemed like a rhetorical question. She did not wait for an answer.

On our way inside, she received a call on her mobile. I heard her say, ‘Mother, I can’t do it tonight…I’m having an old friend for dinner.’ She delivered those last words exactly like Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs and she even smiled like Anthony Hopkins in that last scene.

I prepared this report while she laid the table. That is how I reached the table of my Valentine, a bit rare, a little under-prepared but bloody ready for my love.

Note: This is an antidote to Swapna's story for this Valentine’s Day. [For Swapna’s entry this year, go to: http://gatheredthoughts-swapna.blogspot.in/2012/02/my-funny-valentine.html]