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.

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]

Alone At The Meeting Place

Each time I stand on this balcony, it feels like that first time twenty six years back. The details are different, I know. Today, my folks have chosen to stay at the posh hotel near the lake rather than at this Government guest house on the cliff. The man at the front desk says that this suite is never let out. ‘It is not right,’ he tells any listener. That suits me fine. I am a bit possessive about this room. Within, the air is musty and reeks of decay. But here, on the balcony, it is still the same. Clouds hang below, masking the depths and the valley. Then, we had stood together facing that void, hand in hand. She is not here now. But I can still feel her hand in mine.

I was fourteen. It was a tough year for my father and for months there was talk of canceling our annual vacation. But we managed this modest trip – to get away from home, to forget that place and the people there for a few days. The Guest House was run-down even then, with ageing staff, rickety furniture and chipped cutlery. We got this suite which has two bedrooms (for my parents and two sisters) and I got a camp-bed in the drawing-room. I was left on my own a lot. I did not fancy following my folks to the shops or to inane tourist grounds. I walked around town with the energy of the young that expects life to change with every step or scribbled honest doggerel in a notebook under the shade of trees or stood on this balcony with romantic daydreams of being a hero faced with the simple dilemma, to live or to die for love.

I saw her on the first day itself but that mature young woman in her late twenties on the balcony next to ours hardly caught my attention. I was busy with other characters in my head, enacting weird and complex drama, and she did not suit any of those roles. On the second day, I was lying on the rattan armchair when I saw her again. She had climbed onto the railing at the edge of her balcony and one of her legs was stretched out into the vast void. I looked at her expressionless face and it appeared as if it mattered little to her whichever way she stepped out.

‘Excuse me,’ I said without budging from my reclined position.

She turned around a bit startled and looked at me.

‘You are not thinking of anything silly, are you?’ I asked her.

She stepped down from the railing and I let out a sigh of relief. She raised an eyebrow at me.

‘That’s better. It would have been troublesome for me, otherwise…’ I offered an explanation with a shrug.

‘A bit too mature for your age, aren’t you?’

‘A bit lazy, I admit…why, what did you expect from my age?’

‘Romantic chivalry should not die so young…’ she said with a smile.

‘Ah yes, I have been thinking about that…’

‘It rarely goes well with thought…’

That’s how we met and the nature of our conversation hardly changed in the days that followed. I might have fantasized about having a torrid affair with this older mature woman but I can’t recall much of that. It must have paled into insignificance compared with the rest that followed. We talked about books, our folks, the people that mattered to us and the places we have seen or wished to see. I can’t remember any of that either. But I remember the discussion about the banshee on the rock in the river.

That place is roughly half-way down the hills to the plains. Two branches of the river meet at a large rock in the river and from there the rapids churn and merge before spending its fury in a short but broad waterfall. Tourists and locals throng the picturesque waterfall but give a wide berth to the upstream area near the rock. In those parts one can hear the wailing of a banshee, says folklore. There are tales of young men who have met a watery end out there, lured by a bewitching beautiful woman.  

When I told my new companion about the tales I had heard, she asked me,

‘Don’t you know the original tale?’

She told me that the beautiful woman on that rock lures men to fall in love with her rather than leads them to the watery end. The men are then totally besotted with this bewitching ghost and try to be with her forever by ending their lives, hoping to return as ghosts. That ghostly loving beauty begs them not to enter those treacherous waters. It is her cry of sorrow that people mistake as the wailing of a banshee.

‘Are they joined with her as ghosts?’ I asked.

‘No, those true ones can never be ghosts. Only the ones that listen to her and stay away from those waters…they remain as ghosts…’

‘With her…?’

‘No…how can they be with her once they let her down…when they do not do enough for their love?’

‘Geez…that’s crazy…then, nobody can be with her…if they listen, they become ghosts who gave up on their love and if they don’t listen, they are separated forever…’

‘Hmm…that’s the curse she carries with her…’

I remember that I had her hand in mine then, standing on adjacent balconies, sharing that moment together before we let go. Since then, I have been here year after year but I have never seen her again.

My folks will make a trip to that rock today. They wanted to do it last year, on the twenty-fifth anniversary, but it was another bad year and they had postponed the trip. There, they will place a few flowers and probably say a prayer. I guess they won’t cry now about what I did out there twenty six years back.