The Bird

Sunday morning was lovely–blue sky, birds chirping and breakfast on time–till our neighbour rang the bell. From the look on his face, I could make out that he did not think much of the morning.

I got to the point. “What happened?”

“Where’s your son?” he barked.

“Which one…?” I asked.

“Which one…?” he repeated bemused.

I have only one son. I thought a bit of humour would reduce the tension. It did not.

“The one taking photos of my daughter,” he snarled.

I was about to say “Which one…?” when my wife came to my side and intervened with “Ah!”

She called my son’s name.

My son came from his room upstairs, looking disgruntled, hardly apologetic and carrying his camera. I shook my head when I saw that.

“Why are you taking photos of his daughter?” my wife asked.

“Why would I take photos of his daughter?” my son asked.

“Don’t be cheeky, lad.” The neighbour and I sang that chorus.

“I was taking photos of a red-backed eagle,” my son said. He turned to his mother and complained, “You called when I had the perfect shot.”

“Let me see your photos,” the neighbour demanded.

We crowded around the digital camera. The photos were ambiguous. The leaves were in focus. The bird was a fuzzy patch of reddish brown and white. There was a hazy patch behind the bird, that too of reddish brown and white, which could be a lady.

“See, that’s my daughter,” the neighbour cried triumphantly.

“That’s not your daughter,” I said.

“My daughter is my daughter,” the neighbour stamped his foot.

“That is your wife,” I said calmly.

“My wife is not my daughter.” He was nearing a nervous breakdown.

“Your wife is wearing the nightdress with reddish brown back and white front, not your daughter,” I said.

“How do you know?” The neighbour, my wife and my son sang that chorus.

Refinance

The week before payday is usually bad. That is when they come en masse. One or two I can manage. More than that, it gets tricky to get funds to pay back.

Sally, that saintly accountant, how she looks at me when I approach someone in office for a small loan. As if I am selling myself. I have never asked her.

The Director is the best. He does not even expect me to return his money. But I do not ask him too often. It is creepy when he stands close, advises like a dear old grandfather, lets his hand slip from my shoulder to my waist. That way, his assistant is a darling. He expects some of it back. He is so apologetic when he reminds me. Last time, he slipped me a note with the cash, ‘My wife suspects.’ I nearly laughed. 

Comrade Lonappan and the Writers' Corner

Comrade Lonappan was born a comrade. His parents’ photo is still dusted and displayed by the party on Martyrs’ Day.

‘I was conceived in hiding,’ Lonappan says.

His essay on that (‘Can martyrs copulate while fighting for a cause?’), written when he was in school, made the party notice him. They bought all the printed copies and the essay never reached the public. The party wanted to admonish him for not seeking their approval but they could not. A warning can be given only to a true comrade. Whether Lonappan belongs to that category is a persisting doubt.

He has never claimed to be a comrade, nor has he indicated he is not. A section of the party thinks that that is a quality of a true comrade. He disagrees with the party’s views and that too in public forum. The party cannot fault him till he agrees with someone. His camaraderie cannot even be ascertained by the book of funds, as it is with most. The annual membership fees are waived for those congenitally inflicted with party membership. His looks do not help either. His usual costume of cotton shirt, dark trousers, umbrella and sneakers fits well. His relationship with the party is not mutually beneficial but that is the case with most comrades. He uses his parents’ names when that helps to oil creaking official machinery. Every party member listens to him; they think someone in the party listens to him. It is true that the party does not want him, but that must be the case with all true comrades. If and when the party finds a true one, they will have reason to warn and discourage. He does not want the party either. Strong lasting bonds have been forged with such mutual disregard.

His past, after the essay on conception, is rather vague. After school, Lonappan followed the crowd and left the state. He returned, many decades later, comfortably well-off. Some claim he became a slave to capitalist imperialist firms. Others opine he reached the highest levels of Academia and fell from grace. Many portray him as a misanthropist. A rumour casts him as a survivor of many failed marriages.

After the incident with the essay, Lonappan next caused a blip on the party’s radar when he turned up at the Writers’ Corner shortly after his return from foreign lands. That was the day the party organized, at the Writers’ Corner, a campaign against the testing of nuclear weapons. Writers of every hue turned up. The left side of the auditorium was with the party. The right side was vociferously against. Lonappan sat at the back. (That farthest loneliest point became his regular seat.) Lonappan caught everyone’s attention during question hour. He riled the right side with, ‘Only idiots will support the test of nuclear bombs.’ His next remark vexed the party on the left. ‘Is this a campaign against nuclear weapons or is it a campaign of a party by a party for a party? Only idiots will mix the two.’

Lonappan attends every Saturday meeting at the Writers’ Corner, irrespective of the group in action. The essay no one has read made everyone there regard him as a writer. That status, like his comradeship, is dubious. It is not known if he still writes. His questions and remarks sound like that of a writer. The smoky spectacled seriousness definitely fits the stereotype. ‘Who is not a writer?’ Lonappan asked at one session. If people knew the answer to that, Lonappan might not be a writer. ‘That is surely a rhetorical question,’ writers dismissed him, not wishing to rock their boat by finding an answer. No one, not even the clique of backbenchers that has formed around him, wants him there. That is partly due to the discomfort he causes during question hour and partly a result of his guarded aloofness. Even then, no one ignores him because everyone thinks someone considers him important.

He has not exhibited any affinity to the place or to any group of writers. It is possible he turns up at the Writers’ Corner because the city has few other distractions. There are no decent libraries. The last good one decided to teach people how to read instead of providing reading material. Education is more profitable than its application. The expensive theatres show movies that should be freely downloadable. There are clubs but none for those who do not like clubs. Eating joints try to copy what they are not, to attract those with a fetish for the overpriced. There is religion, plenty of it. Technology tried to be different, for a brief period. For types averse to organized idiocy and smartphones, there is little in the city. In that milieu, the Writers’ Corner has a peculiar charm.

Its central location, close to the Zoo, and the free admission suits Lonappan.  The half an acre plot remains green with old trees and minimal concrete. Tweets, chirps, honks and curses, from within and without, accompany the thoughts and words of the writers. Ugly flats surround the place. Those residents tried to usurp the writers’ meeting ground for their kids but failed. They continue to protest by displaying variegated innerwear on balconies. Some go to the extent of dumping their garbage in the Corner. None of that bothers the writers. They wear worse within, referred to as their fifty shades of grey; and, after the closure of the city’s waste-treatment plant many years back, no place in the city feels like home without refuse.

The Corner is fashioned like an ancient Greek theatre, though not so barren or regular thanks to the trees and natural landscaping. The stage is in a depression in the middle. The audience rests on the upward sloping ground around. There is space to be alone, even to smoke without offering passive comfort. The acoustics is good too. No speaker can escape Lonappan’s deep gravelly voice from the farthest corner.

 The accomplished writers often reminisce about the heydays of the Writers’ Corner in the seventies and the eighties. There were great writers then, they claim. Proximity to greatness and a great deal of schmoozing contributed largely to their accomplishment, they admit.

Lonappan likes to take on the accomplished. When they praise each other about form, structure, minimalism and poetic wording, he butts in with the disruptive, ‘What’s new?’ or when he is more expansive, ‘What new thought have you contributed in that hundred odd pages of trivial verbiage?’ That usually leads to literary filibustering from the proficient writer, till the meeting is declared closed and everyone races off for free tea and biscuits.

The party holds its literary meetings there. These are ‘to encourage the talent of the disenfranchised’, targeting the large vote-bank without enough great people in its ranks to encourage accomplished sycophants. During the question hour of those sessions, Lonappan makes one wonder if he would be safer trying to grab meat from an attack dog’s mouth. How else can one view questions like, ‘Is it insecurity or mercenary need that makes you put your writing under the banner of some caste/religion/gender?’ He receives the vicious pillorying that ensues with admirable equanimity.  When refreshments are served, he even mingles with that mob itching for his lynching.

He never asks questions during the meetings of the right-wing groups. A party member mistook his silence for affiliation. When confronted, Lonappan clarified, ‘What can I ask a group allergic to imagination and freedom?’

The women-writers’ meetings also leave him speechless. That could be because of a woman named Rajamma who dominates the question hour and attempts to commit hara-kiri, quite like Lonappan during the party’s literary sessions. She asks the women-writers questions like, ‘Isn’t it a bore if all of you sound angry all the time?’

Little is known about her. She must be of the same age as Lonappan. Her costumes have more variety. It is not always jeans, top and sandals; she wears cotton churidaar and sandals too. She is elegant, careless, petite, tough and, according to most, ‘a bloody nuisance’. She too has a regular seat, diagonally opposite to that of Lonappan, a few rows from the front. She too refuses to ask questions during the sessions of the right-wingers.

After one Saturday meeting, she walked towards Lonappan’s seat. He watched her, eyes squinted against the evening light, smoke curling from his cigarette, reminding many of the Clint Eastwood in spaghetti westerns. She smiled at him from far. He sat up, then looking like a kid at an ice-cream stall. She walked past him and took a roundabout route to the exit. People heard him mutter, ‘Fuck.’

The next Saturday, she approached him once again. He ignored her till she said, ‘Aren’t you Comrade Lonappan? I am Woman Rajamma.’

Both kept a straight face.

She came to the point quickly, ‘You treat women like right-wing goons.’

‘What makes you think so?’ he asked.

‘Your silence speaks,’ she replied.

‘They are similar, aren’t they?’ he taunted. He continued, ‘I am scared of angry types. Haven’t you yourself protested about the anger of women?’

‘I was not protesting about their anger,’ she said, ‘they have reason to be angry. I was protesting about the anger in their writing.’

‘As if there is any difference,’ he said.

‘Nuance is not your strong point, is it?’ she retorted and left.

Their subsequent meetings retained the same character, brief and quick to the point of discord. ‘Birds of the same feather flock together,’ the unimaginative said. The romantics wondered about, ‘the passion in their hearts.’ The writers said, ‘Now, we have two. What bloody fucking luck.’

It is not as if they ever teamed up. They prefer to attack from different flanks. They were quite cruel with a liberal writer who spoke, with a queer Oxonian accent, about reparations from old colonial powers.

Rajamma asked the twit, ‘Do you really believe what you say or do you just want to sound good?’

Lonappan asked that shaken toff, ‘Are you also for reparations from the privileged sections of society to the less privileged? Surely your family must have screwed the lower classes and castes for centuries to give you that accent.’

Those two nearly agreed once.

After a right-wingers’ meeting, Rajamma was depressed, ‘When these goons talk about being secular, it feels like I swallowed rusty blades.’

Lonappan said, ‘I feel like Edward II, ‘rectally impaled on a red hot poker’, quoting The Economist. But, you have got to admit it, they are secular.’

Rajamma turned to him, eyes red and all-over hot, ‘How you sound like them!’

Lonappan replied, ‘Look at all these idiots who carry their religion on their sleeves, idiots of different gods. They are actually happy with each other. Do you think they prefer the company of heathens like you?’

Rajamma said, ‘And, you think that is being secular. Lonappan, you are an idiot.’

‘Rajamma, have you thought of joining the party?’

‘Oh yes, posthumously.’

Do they meet outside the Writers’ Corner? No one knows. Nearly all hope that they will marry each other and live disagreeably ever after.

Mental Evaluation

‘Tell me about a traumatic incident in your life,’ the psychologist said.

‘I was in college. A girl wanted to meet me. We used to talk on the phone, that’s all. She was getting married. I don’t know why she wanted to meet me.’ I paused.

‘Go on.’

‘I told a friend to pick me up after ten minutes. I didn’t want to be with her for more than ten minutes. She getting married and all that, you know.’

‘Uh-huh…’

‘She came with a friend, a beautiful girl. It was love at first sight.’

‘What happened?’

‘My friend came to pick me up after ten minutes, on the dot, what else.’

‘Ah!’

The psychologist placed a Rorschach inkblot in front of me.

‘What do you see?’ he asked.

‘A ballet dancer leaning against an exercise bar, one leg raised and looking at her reflection in a mirror,’ I replied without hesitation.

‘You see a ballet dancer?’ the psychologist seemed surprised. He turned the inkblot and studied it. ‘Hmm, quite true, quite true…’

‘Bit heavy on top for a ballet dancer, isn’t she?’

‘Quite true, quite true…’ 

‘Reminds me of that girl, you know.’

‘Which one: the one who wanted to meet you or her friend?’

‘Oh no, the friend who came to pick me up...’

‘Ah, so, you did leave with a girl then. You should look at the bright side,’ the psychologist urged.

‘Who said she left with me? She went off with those two girls, didn’t she?’

‘Ah, so, it was traumatic after all,’ the psychologist sounded relieved. He continued studying the inkblot. ‘Amazing, I did not see the ballet dancer in this till today.’

‘Only because you reminded me of that trauma…’

‘Quite true, quite true…’

The Woman

‘Every man, even Sherlock Holmes, has a woman he calls the woman,’ Uncle Jose (Hosappan to us) admitted bitterly. That was a year back when I met his ‘woman’.

We were at a wedding reception, bored and irritated, through with comparing the dosa and kebab counters, the old and the new girls, the wealth and the intellect.

‘hHhossey,’ came a perfectly enunciated cry of delight from behind us, the first ‘h’ from deep down the throat, the main ‘H’ from the tonsils and the last ‘h’ lingering on the tongue.

Hosappan stood ramrod stiff, pale, lips quivering. He later confided that that voice always has the effect of an electric prod probing the gluteus maximus.

I turned around to find a graceful and charming lady. She reminded me of an old love’s mother, an old love I loved hoping she would turn out to be like her mother but instead the law of bad genes ruled and she took after her father.

Hosappan took his time to face her. By then, he was red in the face.

A few words about Hosappan’s nature might help to understand the situation better. He can be vain. He thinks he has the best of Al Pacino and De Niro. He feels that his intellect is being abused when his company cannot match Simone and Sartre. But there is a chink in that armour of vanity. He is fine as long as those ideas of grandeur are from within the realm of his own senses, and not from without, say from a friend or even a lover. Shower him with praise, and watch Hosappan squirm to escape from the scene like a tortoise flipped over and tickled pink.

No one seems to know that better than his ‘woman’. How she poked the dagger of attention at his Achilles heel, and liberally sprinkled the salt of affection on that open wound!

‘Ah, hHhossey, you look so smart.’ She had brought a crowd with her, a husband, couple of kids and mutual acquaintances. They circled around Hosappan. She started on her soliloquy, ‘He used to be such a heartbreaker, no? On stage or on the field, how we girls loved him! And so brilliant! Has the school ever seen a student like him since?’ She went on and on. The crowd swallowed her eulogy without a pinch of salt. Hosappan’s visage reminded me of an old fresco with scenes from Torquemada’s inquisition.

I observed her closely that evening. She is not pea-brained or garrulous.  She is, in fact, a very serious woman; that is, in all matters that does not involve Hosappan, of course. With others, her actions and words were precise and well-thought-out. That probably explains why she has maximum impact on Hosappan.

‘Wow, she is certainly into you,’ I said, at his place, after the party.

‘Bah,’ Hosappan retorted.

‘Come on, you don’t doubt her, do you?’ I asked.

‘The day I fall for her act, you can name your dog Jose.’

‘His name is already Jose,’ I joked. I refused to let go of the topic, ‘Aw, come on, tell me, were you two an item?’

‘An item…? Bah! In school, we were not even on speaking terms. We avoided each other right from the start. You know how decent I am, right?’ He did not wait for me to express my doubts. ‘I tried talking to her once. She sent word, through my best friend, that she does not like talking to riff-raff. Riff-raff…! My foot!’ he thundered.

‘Was she a stunner even in school?’ I asked.

‘No, actually, quite the plain Jane,’ he said.

‘When did this start?’ I asked.

‘Ah, this,’ he spat that ‘this’ with disgust, ‘this started much later, after our undergraduate years.’

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘We were at a party, must have been one of those dreadful school reunions. In a moment of weakness, I approached this, what’s your word, stunner. Riff-raff, am I not? Well, she had actually become quite a stunner. Bloomed, flowered to be deflowered, what-not. But in more ways than one had she bloomed, I soon found out.’

‘Why, what did she do?’

‘It was a full-frontal attack, worse than today. God, she put on such a show of drooling over me, that devious one. It was simply awful,’ he flinched, probably after refreshing his memory.

‘Is it the same each time?’

‘More or less; worst part is, people think she is sincere. They just can’t get it that she is a pulling a fast one on me. Even you fell for it, right?’ He sounded hurt. I shrugged. I am no expert in the ways of the birds and the bees. Hosappan continued, ‘I try to avoid meetings where our paths could cross,’ he paused, ‘I thought it would end when she got married. Did you notice her husband? Bet they are in cahoots.’

I nodded. Her husband seemed to be a close cousin of Jeeves and Count Dracula – a product of some aristocratic stable, bespoke-fitted with sangfroid and stiff upper lip, and definitely not riff-raff. It takes generations of good breeding to produce a man who quietly allows his wife to skewer, or go into an adulation overdrive over, another man.

It took a while for Hosappan to recover from that day’s attack. On one visit, I found him seated on his rattan armchair, lost in thought, muttering incoherently, convulsing involuntarily.

A year went by without another encounter with ‘the woman’.

Yesterday morning, I was at Hosappan’s place. I took a phone-call around eleven. It was her husband. Politely and succinctly, he informed that his wife wanted Hosappan by her side. He told me the name of a hospital.

I gently broke the news to Hosappan. He did not say a word then or in the car. I drove as fast as I could. I thought of all the clichéd endings in movies, people racing to the hospital or railway station or airport, the good ones always reaching too late.

At the hospital, we were told that she was under observation in the ICU. We joined her husband, kids, friends and relatives in the waiting room. The husband shook hands with Hosappan. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said.

Hosappan found a desolate corner. He refused to join me for lunch at the canteen. He remained there till evening, when she was shifted to a room.

We stood outside the room. The husband was allowed within. We watched him talk to the doctor. The nurses stood to the side, looking busy and efficient. All of them looked terribly serious. The doctor came out. A nurse informed the crowd that only one more guest could go in then, and that she had requested that it be Hosappan.

Hosappan sheepishly shrugged at me, the kids and the rest before going in. 

The husband stood to her right. Hosappan took the left flank. The husband spoke softly. I was quite surprised to see Hosappan shed a manly tear or two. The scene seemed very familiar; Rick, Ilsa and Laszlo, of ‘Casablanca’, in another attempt at a ménage a trois. Hosappan approached her. Oh ho, another clichéd ending coming, I thought. He smiled sadly, affectionately tucked a stray strand of hair, bent forward and kissed her on the forehead. She did not bat an eyelid, neither did her aristocratic partner. There were gasps from the audience outside the room. Hosappan whispered something to her. Then, he turned and left. Was he giving it back to her in her own currency?

On our way home, I asked, ‘Well?’

‘Just a scare, nothing serious,’ he replied.

‘And what was all that in there?’ I asked.

‘Ah, just her usual show,’ his cryptic reply.

I nodded, tried aristocratic silence and controlled my plebeian curiosity, for five seconds.

‘What did you say to her?’ I asked.

‘I told her not to do this to me ever again.’

That hardly explained anything. Which ‘this’ was he referring to, I wondered. Scaring him with her illness or teasing him with care, feigned or not?

But then, isn’t uncertainty that make the woman from a woman?

Abattoir

The guards looked like astronauts in their white protective body suits and face-masks. They held their guns pointed at the dark still mass in the boat.

An edgy guard shouted, ‘Don’t move. I will shoot.’ He waved his gun, ‘Don’t you understand? Bam! Bam! I will shoot.’

‘What do they want?’ another asked. ‘Water…?’

‘This one wants Band-Aid.’

‘Why would they need plaster?’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘How are they going to sort this lot?’

‘Who knows? I can’t even make out male and female.’

‘Maybe, they will sort by age.’

‘They will probably keep only the healthy ones.’

‘What’s the delay?’

‘Some machine problem in the abattoir.’

‘Damn those white staring eyes!’

The Madman

To outsiders, the small park near the City Bus Terminus might not seem like a park. There are half a dozen concrete seats in a circle, an open-air stage in the middle, a small sandy space to stretch and walk, and some plants and trees around the border. In that congested part of town – with the chaotic bus terminus, two popular temples, an ancient ghetto, the city’s main market and three movie-halls, along with nightmarish traffic snarls, roads under constant repair and a sewage canal ready to overflow with a careless pee – that is a park for the natives and a grand one. There is even a police-booth in that retreat. It is usually Constable Sivarajan in that cubbyhole, a friendly man with a large pot belly, the smiling Buddha for that park. He ventures out during peak hours, and tries to look strict about litter and irritants.

The peak hours are the moderately cool hours, early morning and late evening. Various clubs jostle for space in the morning. The Laughter Club somehow manages to grab the stage every day. From five in the evening, the professionals who need an audience – poets, politicians and social workers –gather there. The workers of the night are allowed only after midnight and they have to scoot before five when the cleaners make their rounds.

There is a lull, in relative terms, around mid-afternoon. Then, tourists saunter within to rest after doing the rounds in the famous temple, the one with the huge treasure. Street-hawkers stretch out in the shade to catch forty winks. Ladies pause and breathe, after a morning in the market or after collecting their little ones from nursery. College kids who missed the matinee show while away time in a quiet corner. The madman takes to the stage then.

His first act is always the same. In a corner of the stage, he removes his slippers, pants and shirt. He places these in a neat pile. Only once did he go nude, Constable Sivarajan appeared on the spot with a jute sack. The madman does his show in a thin, faded but clean cotton shorts. He moves to the front, places a small cardboard box near the edge of the stage. People put coins and notes into that box. Some use it for target practice, with pebbles and even sweet-wrappers. He does not mind. He lives in a poor home and he gives them the box at the end of the day. They take the money, if any, and give him two meals and a place to sleep.

That stage can get hot in the peak of summer. He was, literally, like a cat on a hot tin roof one summer afternoon. He got eleven rupees and eighty five paisa that day. Someone threw a few five, ten and twenty five paisa coins, those that are not in circulation.

Another day, he stood on his hands, legs straight up, and loudly shouted the names of politicians. The selection seemed random, in government and in the opposition, alive and dead, some long forgotten. That attracted the attention of some students. They gathered near the stage, in groups of various political hues. They shouted along with the madman, hooting and booing too. Constable Sivarajan frowned at this activity but did not poke his head in. That show ended without any untoward incident. The madman did not get any money that day.

The constable had to intervene another day when the madman took out old toys from his box – a car without wheels, soldiers without limbs, a doll without dress, pieces of Lego, a broken plastic ball. He played with the toys, in some elaborate game, and it was a jolly show till the mothers and their offspring joined in. He lost three toys. He got five rupees that afternoon, from a sad lady without kids.

He rarely speaks at length. But, when he does, it is always about love. Not the love of humanity or society or anything abstract like that. In a low voice, without drama or emotion, he talks about two lovers there in that same grand park. Was it a fragment of memory, some better time? But it is not the same lovers each time. Did he witness it? The tales sound familiar. That show attracts a fair crowd to the stage, the hawkers, the ladies and the loafers, the students, the tourists too even though they can understand him only when he shifts to English. His lovers can be married or single. They can be rich or poor, most are like the people before the stage. They have troubles, of course; who likes lovers without troubles. His lovers do not escape to a happier place, or live happily ever after. They pine for the other’s company, to rest, to sleep, with the other, without fear or worry, that’s all. They do not kiss; as if there is a public place in this town where lovers can kiss. They move close, not too close. They slip a finger into the other’s hand, just for a brief moment. The crowd likes that, that’s all they want. They listen and then move away, deep in thought. The madman does not make much on those days.   

Not Really Surreal

The man tried to kill his wife. The wife tried to kill her lover. The lover tried to kill the husband. A robber inadvertently intervened in the ménage a trois. In the ensuing chase, he skipped a step and lay dead at the bottom of the staircase.

‘Surreal?’ Inspector Shokie’s assistant asked.

‘Not really,’ Shokie said.

The Grand Prize

Raj was not one bit delighted when he wrote to the Creative Writers Society (Canary Wharf), ‘I am absolutely delighted to win the prize.’

In that missive, he dedicated a paragraph to how the Society changes the world. He clarified, ‘the world of writers like him’. Only after sending the mail did he wonder if the Society would misunderstand his sarcasm, and take it well. After all, even that was not a small world.

His disappointment was not unreasonable. The Society needlessly mentioned in its congratulatory note that the number of entries had been abysmally low for that month’s competition. They continued to twist the dagger in the soft sensitive areas by informing him that the eminent writer who was supposed to judge the competition had pulled out at the last moment ‘citing pecuniary differences’. They added, ‘The Society chairman had to carry the cross.’ As if that was not enough negativity, the very convenient recession was given as the reason for changing the prize from cash to coupons. Raj thought of protesting, ‘Why are you holding an international competition and offering a prize that can be redeemed in some store in East London?’ He withheld his protest only because the competition was without entry fee. It seemed wrong to criticize them when he could not figure out what they gained from the whole exercise.

He decided to send the coupons to a distant cousin in London. He was not sure if the cousin would pay, even with a discount, but the alternative was a friend who, without any reasonable doubt, would take it as a gift. Blood tends to be thicker when laced with hope.

As for the comment about the prize changing his world, he was not off the mark. Later, he would curse his foresight.

The change precipitated on the internet (where else?).

A disgruntled loser in the same competition spewed venom on a blog, and attacked ‘the winning entry that got the grand prize of fifty pounds’. Sarcasm, once again, faced the danger of being misinterpreted by the literally-minded.

That blog caught the attention of a junior correspondent of a local newspaper. Somewhere in the trip from that flunky’s browser to the editor’s desk, that metamorphosed into front page news about Raj and his ‘fifty grand prize’. The headline read, ‘Small town wins global prize’.

The first day brought with it calm dignity. At the milk-booth and the tea-stall, acquaintances congratulated him. A mother at the school bus-stop asked him, ‘Which book or coaching class should my kids attend?’

Raj’s friend Sunil turned up and demanded a booze-session.

Raj tried to reason, ‘Oye, I haven’t got any money.’

Sunil understood, ‘As if you would give otherwise, Scrooge.’ He tried to make that Scrooge rhyme with Raj.

Trouble started by the end of the day. Two nonagenarian writers in the vernacular who shared between them every award given in the state sounded miffed on a TV news-channel. The old man barked, ‘Bah! We should not accept alms from old colonial lords.’ The old lady was more cantankerous, ‘This is an assault on the vernacular. Now, every kid will write in English to get a pound. Mind you, with this pound, this award is taking our dignity, our freedom, our culture, our heritage, our national pride.’ She would have added more ‘ours’ if that had not left her breathless.

The popular newsreader called up Raj for his response. At nine pm, it was ‘live breaking news’. Raj tried befuddled incomprehension at first. When the reporter started putting words into his mouth, he decided for the shortest way out, ‘I agree totally with Shree Masterji and Shreemati Teacherji. I will use part of the funds to publicize their works.’ The nonagenarians, who were still on TV, well past their bedtime, seemed placated and they retired for the night after amiably blessing Raj.

The reporter was not pleased with that hot news losing steam so quickly. The next day he stirred the dirt in the shallow pool. The breaking news read, ‘Writer reveals all.’ The reporter used everything in his repertoire to express outrage, from constipated frustration to smug condescension. The message was clear to all. Raj had used all of them in his stories; without permission; worse, without compensation.

Some tried to read his stories on his blog-space. That was too arduous a task. Raj’s relatives, who had contacted him directly on the first day when they heard about the cash prize, got in touch with his parents, ‘What has he written about me?’ Even his siblings were worried.

The mother at the school bus-stop confronted him, ‘I do not abuse my kids.’ She wept loudly and cursed him. 

The owners of the tea-stall and the milk-booth were curious, ‘How did you know he was sleeping with my wife?’

Raj did not know what to say. What could he say when they seemed to be protesting about stories he had never thought of? He noted it down, however, for future use, after the dust settles.

Sunil turned up once again. He was not bothered if he was there in the stories or not. In fact, he hoped he was there in those stories, thinly disguised as serial rapist or lecherous alcoholic. Raj wondered if his friend had actually read his stories because he had used Sunil in similar nefarious roles. To his friend, he denied, of course. He was quite sure Sunil would ask for more than a pound of flesh.

Sunil’s attention shifted, ‘Hey, I met your old love, Anjana.’

Anjana was Raj’s first love, terribly unrequited and horribly embarrassing.

Sunil continued, ‘She is really livid with rage.’

‘Why so?’ Raj was surprised.

‘She did not like her role in your story ‘First Night’. Well, all that sex and fumbling, quite realistic, I say, but…’ Sunil reported.

‘But, she is not the one in ‘First Night’,’ Raj protested. ‘Who gave her that idea?’

‘I did,’ Sunil looked pleased, ‘Come on, you must have thought of all that, with her.’

‘Of course not, it was platonic,’ Raj said.

‘What crap, how many times did you cry on my shoulder about you and your bloody love for Anjana?’ Sunil asked.

‘But, I never thought of sex with her,’ Raj said.

‘Bloody hell, how could you love without sex?’ Sunil exclaimed.

Raj fidgeted for a while. ‘She has got a nasty husband.’

‘Hmmm… she told me that she would be telling him,’ Sunil paused, ‘they have a loving and trusting relationship, she claimed… holy crap, I felt like puking!’

‘Why did you tell her, you fool?’ Raj cried.

‘Well, she asked me if she was there in your stories. Narcissism, I guess,’ Sunil said, ‘And, I have read only one story of yours. The others don’t have sex, right?’

‘This goddamn prize…!’

Chaperon

The day after our engagement, I took my fiancée to a coffee-shop in the only five-star hotel in town. Her chaperon was an aunt named Mena (with a single e, the lady insisted), a spinster of five hundred moons. Uncle Jose (Hosappan to us) was mine. He was not necessary. ‘I am sufficient,’ he claimed.

The maître d’ took us to a bright table near the French window facing the pool. Hosappan asked for a discreet space.

‘Discreet, sir?’ the maître d’ asked.

‘Privacy, young man,’ Hosappan slipped in a wink, a nudge and a hundred rupees.

Aunt Mena cleared her throat. Hosappan ignored her.

We got a table in a dark and cosy corner, within Amazonian foliage and behind strategically placed screens. How did he know of this? My fiancée slipped into the curved booth-seat from the right. I got in next to her. Aunt Mena tried to get in before me. Hosappan blocked and guided her to the other side. My fiancée and I held hands beneath the table and practised footie. During time-outs, we listened to our chaperons.

‘Is Mena short for something?’ Hosappan asked.

‘No,’ Aunt Mena replied tersely. She blundered, ‘Short for what?’

‘Phelo-or-pheno-mena,’ he hesitated, I could guess the next, ‘Mena-pause.’

She was not amused.

‘What do you do?’ she asked.

‘Are you asking me how much I earn?’ he asked.

‘No, what do you do?’

‘That usually means the other, in a round-about polite way, of course.’

There was silence.

‘So, how much do you earn?’ he asked.

‘A gentleman is not supposed to ask that,’ she said.

‘He is not supposed to ask a lady’s age but he can ask how much she charges,’ Hosappan argued.

‘Don’t be crude,’ she objected.

‘God, you have a one-track mind, my love.’ He used the vernacular for that, ‘chakkarey’, meaning sugar or jaggery. I could feel static around the table.

‘Ok, don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ he paused, ‘what do you do?’

She mentioned some high-flying job in Europe.

Hosappan shifted to another gear.

He talked about Paris like it was his backyard; they raced through the museums, the monuments and the graveyards; they cooed about the theatre; they shifted to German and I guessed they were exchanging notes about nightlife with gruff guttural grunts. He had his second scotch. She shifted from tea to gin-n-tonic. They pretended not to notice when we switched to cocktails after the fresh juices.

They raised a toast to us at the end, both flushed and rather breathless.

We wanted to raise a toast to them too.

‘Did you get her number?’ I asked him later.

‘Never get the number of the good ones, lad.’

‘By the way, when did you go to all those places?’ I asked.

‘Lonely planet…’

‘Surely, you did not pick German from that?’

‘German…?’

‘Wasn’t it German?’

‘Ah, you lovebirds will learn about mating sounds soon,’ Hosappan refused to say more.