The Frayed Ends of Sanity

                                                                                         4^th August, 07 

                                                                                               Mumbai

 

I still remember that rainy afternoon in college, when the whole bloody world seemed to be soaked in rain, sopping wet and from the third floor people looked like frogs hopping to evade one puddle after the other.

 It was my second year, results were out and I had passed. Free from the clutches of twelve years of rigorous and pointless schooling and forced pressure to perform, I felt like a wild deer, frolicking in the wilderness, which had to only make sure that he was faster than the slowest deer, survival was never easier. As we stood there chatting inanely, we saw ‘Ashkeen bhai’ swaggering towards us. He was broad and gaunt, tall enough to escape the stout tag. He believed in wearing tight clothes, tight like that instrument the doctor wraps around your arm to measure your blood pressure. His crotch uncomfortably jutted out of his jeans and his arms, a disproportionate blob of flab and muscle, burst out of that T-shirt. He was the kind of guy itch-guard guys would dream about. There was nothing good or bad about his face, apart from the fact that he always managed to wear a 3-day stubble, a billboard for ruggedness. Ashkeen bhai was friendly and good humoured. He was a veteran of a thousand street brawls and feared and respected for his fighting prowess. We really looked up to him, treasuring his friendship; it was more like an insurance against any future skirmishes. He was nice to talk to in spite of him being a complete dunce. His stories, a concoction of fact and hopeless imagination were entertaining, though none of us really believed in what he had to say. His favourite was about the cheap whores and sluts of Delhi, he had enough material to write a research paper in sociology titled ‘The Moods of Whores in Delhi’.

 He once told us that those girls who stood in front of Miranda College for a decent stretch of time holding a particular shade of green umbrella in the rain were college-student whores. “But how are we to know when it’s not raining” I protested, Ashkeen Bhai was not amused, but said nothing.  “Brilliant stuff”, he used to say in his crude lingo, followed by “smooth as butter”, drawing breath and then sucking his cheeks in. Anybody else doing it would have looked like a pervert but never Ashkeen bhai. I once spotted one such pretty thing under a similar shade of umbrella he had described but could never gather enough courage to ask her, believing Ashkeen bhai was always a risky proposition. I can go on about Ashkeen bhai but he was quite a famous character and that title of ‘bhai’ was nobly won.

 We were a pack of four adolescent and distracted boys, infatuated with all that we hadn’t tried in our lives. Varun was the most studious of the lot (this most studious bit is entirely a comparative measure, and as with all comparative measures, it can be quite misleading). He was secretly afraid of the unknown and was confident of things that he had dealt with before, the rest he tried to shy away from with utter lack of grace. Manu, hyper-intelligent and a complete waste, was involved with everything but was never quite there, there was nothing that was not his domain and nothing that could really count as his own. The third, Toron Sen, a witty sarcastic arsehole was really my battering ram to knock down those dreary gates of boredom in those long hot afternoons we spent bunking classes and fooling around.

 “So”, said Ashkeen bhai, his arms over his head scratching the back of his head in all his languid elegance, “let’s do something today?”, though it was a question he never asked it, he simply proclaimed it. “G B Road”, he blurted, a smile flitted across his face, as if blushing at the prospect. I liked the idea instantly, I respect whores, I believe they do a great service to Mankind. Manu liked the idea too, his eyes behind those rimless glasses lit up. Varun maintained his confused, guilty and dignified silence while Toron gave us some shit about integrity and he reminded us that he had a girlfriend back in Asansol ( which sounded like arsehole) and that he was not like us, unleashed, spineless animals. He was shit scared of a raid or something and his scare transformed into fury, it was quite plain. Varun scuttled off with Toron on some pretext and never looked back as I walked with Manu and Ashkeen bhai towards his car, reluctant yet eager.

 Toron had never scowled so viciously before, or got so upset over anything, he was the coolest of the characters I knew, probably he was feverish that day, I shrugged off the thought. But it still appeared weird, as if I was shamelessly violating morality, as if visiting sluts was defying codes of propriety laid down by society, I felt like revolting even if it was only for the sake of a revolt. Well, I was visiting a whorehouse because I wanted to see what it felt like, not just the humping, but the surroundings, the people, the heritage. A profession that had existed with pre-historic societies and had refused to die down with time had to have a lot of meaning, even if that meaning was only pure carnal pleasure, it was still romantic, it had rhythm and continuity. The institution of prostitution throbbed with life even after being shunned by the society, the same society which helped it to exist. The ugly underbelly of a seemingly perfect society sounded fascinating. It was a place where hypocrisy met necessity, where the black and the white melted into hues of grey. Adjoining G B Road is Kamala Market and Chandni Chowk, one of the oldest trading hubs in Delhi and therefore the facility.

In all my infant infatuation I got a funny feeling now, I had romanticised this slut business beyond reason. Ashkeen Bhai pulled out a sweaty wallet from a tight, damp pocket of his jeans and distributed condoms dutifully. He explained that those girls there take advantage of our haste and sell condoms at an unreasonably high price. Then he advised us to only keep 100 bucks to ourselves, “its never safe there” in that elder-brother-concern look on his face. He also knew the ‘economics of whoring’; I was all the more impressed. And then began the journey. Ashkeen bhai played some loud bhangra pop on his broken system, foot-tapping numbers thundered from the speakers, stirring up the neglected interiors of the car. Vibrations rocked my already guilty conscience, confused and besotted. Majority of the audience of such music don’t follow a word of what’s being sung and those who do, don’t care. Anyway, imagine Punjabi pop being regarded for its lyrical richness, I smiled to myself, Ashkeen bhai thought that I was really excited and smiled back.

I stared at the trail of images passing by the window, half-awake I imagined what would happen if things went wrong. What if there was police raid and I was arrested, I wouldn’t be able to face my parents, more than that I would hurt them without really wanting to. It was a depressing thought, giving your parents needless trouble, especially my mother; she wouldn’t deserve any of this nonsense that I was experimenting with. Before I could arrive at a conclusion, Ashkeen bhai violently parked the car, recklessly and without care, jerking me out of my reverie; it never occurred to him that he could apply the brakes gradually and come to a smooth halt.

We walked down the miserable looking lane dumped with refuse and decaying garbage. We were going to Kotha no. 64, which all goons frequenting G.B Road would swear by. It’s got the best stock of women and is relatively elite. Half-naked urchins running by and the disorderly street continued. Women stuck their heads out of windows to call out to prospective customers, it was scary. Bright red lipstick glinted as they spoke, brash and commercial, the complete opposite of what you would want women to be, shy and horny.

Finally we arrived at our destination, the building stood grim and quiet, it felt like the calm before an impending doom and as we slowly climbed the dark dank stairs of the building, the pounding of my heart became more pronounced and painful; apprehension can at times take the life out of you and all efforts to calm your mind seem to add to the apprehension. On the third floor, Ashkeen bhai led us to a balcony trough a narrow passage, the back of my neck hurt after all the stooping I had to do to get there.

The narrow passage opened to a terrace, large, spacious and uncluttered with some potted flowering plants for decoration. The flooring was of cheap marble, smooth and domestic. On the other side of the terrace were some rooms. After climbing those claustrophobic stairs, which seemed like a secret escape route of a fort which you could gain access to only after opening the trap door, I had not expected such a spacious setting. A girl, Nepalese in all probability, sat on the surrounding walls of the terrace and nibbled at a bunch of black grapes. She had a flimsy maroon coloured see-through dupatta material cloth strategically draped around her bod. A closer inspection might have revealed more but I maintained my indifferent glance. She peeked at us through those slitty eyes and continued to suck those succulent grapes till those poor things would hang precariously from the stalk and then she would devour them. I prayed that there were some effective medicines against chronic acidity. I wondered how many such kilos of sweet and sour black grapes she had to suck and eat every day in her quest to woo customers. Talk about overhead expenses. Other girls stood in groups chatting and smoking. They wore salwaar-kameez and night-gowns and kept reapplying their lipstick between their drags as if that lipstick would magically transform their appearance.

Ashkeen bhai in the meanwhile had promptly disappeared into one of those rooms and came back with a pimp, obscenely fat and irritatingly unctuous. She told us about the friendship she had shared with Ashkeen bhai for years now and about various irrelevant incidents, maintaining that needless smile that showed her teeth that was reddened in patches with the lipstick that now seemed a trademark of their profession. Her belly folded in huge tyres like the undulating waves of a stormy sea. She was one huge lump of adipose tissue with a painted smile. Manu and I extended our hundred rupee notes to her and she kept on mumbling that it wasn’t required as she tucked it into her tight white bra and kept gleaming. Ashkeen bhai it seemed qualified as a privileged customer, and therefore got this fuck free, he had gathered enough mileage points or it was prearranged to show his effortless flair.

Ashkeen bhai then winked at dark slut, the one that was built like a tank and loudly slapped her buttocks while leading her inside, I glanced to find out where Manu was but it seemed he had drifted somewhere as well and I found myself surrounded by cheap sluts smoking, giggling and mocking at me or so it seemed. I swear I felt like kicking each one of them for their cheap show, but I knew they were one hard bunch to insult, the insult was all mine. Then the pimp came closer to me feigning affection and uttering tch tch sounds. My temple hurt with extreme agitation and fury, at my helplessness, at my experimentation. Then she came along saying that I needed somebody nice, ‘comfortable’ and delicate and then added with a wink “we have variety”. Then from that group emerged a girl, who seemed so different from the lot that it was unbelievable.

I was appalled. I saw a girl, who couldn’t have been more than 15; I could easily imagine her as a school-girl, going for tuitions wearing green slacks and a yellow striped tee with a flimsy bag slung across her shoulders, speaking to friend intently in diarrhoeal English, anxious about her first initial periods of her life. In front of me, I saw a sad picture, that of a half-bored, half-hurried kid with puckered lips, with downcast eyes not out of shame but generally avoiding eye-contact. I am the last person on earth to feel sorry for whores, but there I felt weird. She wore a worn out and a hopelessly tight salwaar-kameez clinging to her frail frame, faded in patches, or that could easily have been the printed design and kept shifting her feet in impatience. I had gone there imagining a voluptuous slut, brown and big-breasted, ravenous in her sexual appetite, ready to engulf whatever came her way. And here I had an under-age kid whom I could only pat gently on the head with affection unless I was a disgusting paedophile. It was a numbing experience, a complete antithesis of the picture that I had conjured all the way there. It was crazy. I just couldn’t do this.

The rest were worse, nothing feminine about them apart from their sex, it was maddening, infernal. I had my moments of attention, and then more guys came in and the usual crowding continued, I was relegated to a corner where I leaned against the wall, passively watching the surroundings. That smile plastered on that pimp’s face passed on from one customer to another, the hanging fat of her arms wobbling like jelly as she gesticulated. That chink under the violet cloth kept nibbling at her grapes conscious of eyes following her slow deliberate tongue movements, her nipples visible now from side angle, pinkish brown heaving as she drew her breath exaggeratedly, greenish veins leading up to the summit, but I was still not aroused, it all seemed too disgusting now.

Time slows down when you least want it to, when you want to run away from it all, it mockingly slows down, as if deriving pleasure in seeing you impatient. The Delhi dusk, dry and damp in monsoon, whiff of sand in the wind, patches of water reflecting the golden sun, the lull when you head feels heavy. After some aeons had passed, I saw Manu and Ashkeen Bhai looking around for me, to my utter relief, Manu was not laughing and sniggering, he looked pretty contemplative. We didn’t speak and walked down the road silently, two eighteen year olds with a goon. Ashkeen bhai did try to make conversation and Manu did reply but not in his trademark carefree, know-all style, he was subdued and preoccupied. Nobody asked me what I did or whom I did.

I scampered on to a passing blue-line bus swinging as it turned and waved to them, freedom, I had never felt this free before, unburdened and light. Well it’s been six years since that incident and I never have indulged in any such whoring activity since, the buried past knocks more sense into you than any well-meaning advice ever can.

                                                                          ***

Calcutta Chronicles 3

I write this back in Delhi not just because I wanted to finish the Calcutta Chronicle series but because I wanted to pen down every thought that crossed my mind, in the order they crossed my mind, during my stay in Calcutta.

Yesterday was the last day of my stay there in Calcutta and I visited the Dakhineshwara Temple. Earlier, every year during our visit, we made it a point to go there and since this trip was more about reliving the past, I wanted to go there just the way we used to as a family. But going to Dakhineshwara entailed getting up early in the morning and with my low degree of volition, that was always going to be a daunting task. The night before didubhai asked with her tone hardened with sarcasm whether I really wanted to go to the temple or not. Incidentally, I told her every night that I would be going to the temple by six and then woke up everyday at somewhere around ten. Her sarcasm was not totally unjustified.

I woke up early at around five yesterday and took a local train to Dakhineshwara from Dumdum at around five-thirty. Local trains, a huge mass of metal and machine, are a lifeline for petty traders and commuters alike. People did look at me with ample curiosity as I hobbled around in cotton shorts, a loose T-shirt and a weathered pair of sandals, this would be the last place on earth where I wanted to look like a jock. I must have looked completely lost there as this gentleman politely asked me whether I needed help. Every square inch of the platform where people could find shade was already occupied and even that early in the morning the sun was quite relentless. I shifted from one spot to the other partly because of my inherent restlessness and partly because of the burning sensation I felt on my skin. People did all conceivable activities one can do to kill time on a platform. It was quite a society there, people drank tea and chatted in quite a content fashion, some of them ate those hideous dried bread pieces dipping them in their tea with care. Urine had seeped through the walls of the nearby urinal and presented itself with a perpetual stink. Not that it seemed to bother anyone though. Further away, there were book-stalls with flimsy paperbacks kept on the glass walls for display. Ripe women lay in fake pools of blood as they pouted, their bosoms blackened out by the owners probably fearing moral policemen. But what interested me more was that this book titled ‘English Memsahib for Desi Men’ with a nude blonde on a swing kept alongside another paperback with Ram Krishna Paramhansa and Swami Vivekananda on its cover, the books overlapping each other. All this probably provided insights as to how important sex as well as religion was important for people, each having its own place. Fine, it seemed, as long as they were kept mutually exclusive. Finally the train arrived, verdant green with yellow sides, shaking the whole platform and stirring the whole society into action.

The temple is usually more crowded on Tuesdays and Fridays and on holidays. I had made a mistake; yesterday was 1st May, a holiday and a Tuesday. I usually stay away from crowded places, very punctilious about my space. Here, people poured into the temple from all directions. I was asphyxiated with rancid breath and sweat flavoured body odours inside the train and now had to jostle alongside the never-ending human tide. It’s a ten minute walk to the temple from the station and I felt sick already, I had seen a crowd of this magnitude after a long time; it was a weird sight, I could see black heads everywhere and people of different shapes and sizes. I briefly walked around the temple complex and then quickly came out. The temple is built on the banks of the river Hoogly and I walked along the river to a spot which seemed unaffected by the spoils of humanity. I sat down close enough to the river so as to get the wafting damp clay smell under a shade on a cemented embankment. Water bodies have always had a great influence on my thought process and it again started now thick and unhindered as I stared at the murky grey waters and small eddies and a lot of trash floating, bobbing up and down.

During my boyhood days, I remembered tagging with my father as he read the inscriptions on the walls of the Dakhineshwara temple…Sanskrit written in Bengali text which plainly translated into ‘The Goddess who is present in all beings in the form of power, we bow to thee’ and then the same shloka would continue but instead of ‘power’ it would be ‘faith’, ‘peace’ and so on. Those days of boyhood, when I was a scatterbrained child, hated by my teachers and the whole lot, ran away from my studies and in fact everything that I was supposed to do. My Std. VII class teacher, Flavia D’ Souza once complained to my mother that I could easily put ‘Dennis the Menace’ to shame, my mom didn’t know who the character was; I feigned ignorance and looked the other way. To this day I maintain that was a hopeless exaggeration. All this when my father had refused to go to those parent-teacher meetings, he was tired of complaints against me. Dad forced me to learn to play the tabla, I didn’t want to, never had it in me, realised it soon enough, so did my teacher, only my dad refused to. Four years of tyranny, I felt sorry for sir, he felt sorry for me, dad felt sorry for none. Mills of education rolled on, but in my case the summation of it all was close to zero, even negative because all my elements of education were not additive, most cancelled each other out. I understood all this business about culture and education back then too, its just that I felt it more now.

This degradation of Calcutta hurt me now. Sometime back while going to salt lake, I sat near the window of a bus and could hear the blaring loudspeaker. A Trinomool Congress speaker had organised a rally and she spoke passionately. “ 2000 Litres of water is consumed in the manufacturing of one car” she wailed, the loudspeaker bursting with the volume, “ we are gasping in this ordinary heat”, she said making gasping sounds, “we’ll all die if we left to the whims of Budhadev’s CPI(M), die of thirst in those cars” followed by a roar of applause. She was obviously referring to the land given to TATA Motors amid a lot of unrest. West Bengal had gone through this communism phase inspired from USSR and China, USSR ultimately collapsed and China’s communism was unique in its own way, they liberalised their economy and catapulted into the growth trajectory in 1978, 13 years before we were forced to. Then the naxalite revolution ravaged this land, which started off as a humble plea for agricultural land reforms, converted into a revolution to vandalise the rich in the name of social equality. History has shown that there is no such thing as social equality, its just a pipedream, USSR realised it the hard way. The best we can do is to provide favourable conditions for all. CPI (M) after years of rigging elections and labour union raj have finally started to get the drift. They are looking to attract FDI and private investment in Bengal, which is probably our only way out. The only roadblock they have hit is they are sanctioning fertile arable land to factories. But people have lost their faith in CPI (M), and rightly so. So, Nandigram burns and CPI (M) goons fight them, its turning into another social revolution. If this time the CPI(M) rigging is not effective and all that anti-incumbency jazz works against CPI(M) and Trinomool gains power, looking at their attitude towards attracting private investment, the development process can easily be pushed years back. I know, it sounds simplistic but its not, and people are highly opinionated here and rather vociferous about their opinion.

A lot of native Bengalis have left West Bengal for opportunities outside. A place retains its character through its people, the existence of the past depends on the present for its survival, and if people leave the city for good then what remains of the city is what remains of Calcutta. Even as late as 1965, Calcutta was one of the richest cities in Asia, today I don’t think it can be counted as rich even here in India. Education and activities like music, dance, theatre, literature etc. was our mainstay, our pride, which was thinning down now, trampled underfoot primal needs like hunger and security. I was being carried away and I might have been wrong, I hoped I was.

Didubhai had given me three plastic bottles and asked me to fill them with water from the sacred Ganges. The water was thick with miscellaneous bits of refuse, especially on the banks. Hoogly moved sluggishly, sweeping broad curves, meandering its way with a majestic flourish, silvery grey under a steel bridge. I stooped down and dunked the bottles in the river, water tickling my knees, it bubbled its way into the bottles. One of the caps was cracked and the water leaked through the polythene leaving a trail behind as I walked. The main compound inside the temple was packed, sizzling with the unbearable heat and humidity, the floor was so hot that my feet hurt, but people waited there with their cheap red and green plastic bottles hanging from their necks, children fighting, adults chatting, in those serpentine queues, just to get a glimpse of the Deity, so much faith they have in Her. I hope for their sake, She responds.

Finally, it was time to leave and I hugged Didubhai and with uncanny timing a ghastly thought entered my mind, was I seeing her for the last time? The thought was baseless, silly and totally uninvited, but there it was when I wanted it the least. I looked at her intently; she looked herself, just the way she always looked. Her head came till my chest and the hug wasn’t wholesome but I managed to pat her back. As soon as I entered the airport the sky grew overcast and then it rained, rained with vengeance as if to add that bit of drama to my departure. I felt sick, I felt the pain you get from losing an argument, that pain you suffer when you have been punched and you couldn’t strike back, not just the physical pain, but more so the humiliation. As the jet flexed its powerful wings over the tarmac and strained to gain altitude, shuddering with the effort, I looked at the glistening, steaming city that lay below me, that Calcutta that I somewhat belonged to, that Calcutta that I never was a part of, that Calcutta which I hoped would regain its former glory.

Calcutta Chronicles 2

I didn’t know when I would be able to come to the city next; it seemed improbable over the next couple of years. I didn’t know where my work would take me and moreover, my parents would be in Delhi, so clearly, there was not much incentive for me to come back here. All this added to this state of confused nostalgia in me. I remembered myself as a child who used to come here every summer vacations ritualistically and strangely was a part of this city for two months; it was almost like a parallel society though not completely my own. I just wanted to bring those days back, days where I enjoyed the attention of my relatives and cousins, of course it felt quite natural that time. But it is now that I feel this irresistible force tearing me away from the city and its people although I didn’t even entirely belong here.

Nonetheless, I made it a point to meet everybody I used to meet as a boy, even if it was just for the sake of a spectacular nostalgia trip. So, I visited my relatives and received hospitality which I couldn’t have expected to receive anywhere else, all this while braving the inhospitable climate. Here, I rediscovered all my body pores, sweat surfaced from orifices which have been dry for years, orifices which remained unyielding in the face of the most exacting of physical exercises.

I can’t help describing one of my visits to my aunt in Howrah, a crowded suburb in Calcutta. I had given her a buzz the other day to confirm her availability and directions to her place and she in turn had enquired about my choice of food. It was a Sunday, a truly sunny one, and I couldn’t manage to find a bus to go anywhere near Howrah. Patience might be a virtue, but not in Calcutta’s irrepressible moist heat. I hailed the first taxi in sight and reached Howrah. Again, after that bit of chatter and jokes, lunch was served. Though I had asked her to prepare fish and some mutton, I had no clue what was in store for me.

First I had some daal followed by some green leafy gooey preparation which is to be eaten with rice. Post that started a nightmarish tryst with tackling fish, the backbone of a bong meal. Just a disclaimer here, though I am used to eating fish and I quite enjoy it too, my ignorance is of encyclopaedic proportions when it comes to knowing their names or the means to cook them. I’ve kept myself blissfully unaware of it all because it never interested me. So, the following description is as crude and as it gets.

The first one I ate was fried, dry and easy to devour. The second one was the type we regularly eat at home with fairly large and identifiable bones, but this one was with curry. Here I finished my first plateful of rice and helped myself to a second plateful. The third variety of fish was intimidating and was clothed for deception. Two small, steamy and slimy bundles of banana leaf stared at me, glimmering with oil. They were tied with threads holding it together. The challenge was to free the banana leaf bundles of those menacing threads and I made a royal mess of it, much to the amusement of my uncle. The knots were too small for any effective operation and I couldn’t slip the thread from the sides of the bundle. Oil, natural fish oil, leaked from all sides before I finally saw the contents of the bundle. It was a small mass of some steamed fish flesh sans needle like bones, with mustard for seasoning. It was divinely delicious. Although I am not much of a food connoisseur and it’s the quantity that really matters, I really relished the richness of taste. After that, came along the fourth variety which was an entire fish, as opposed to fish parts I was eating till now, with a long trailing spine and with small spiky bones et al. This was again with gravy, and I finished my second plateful. Then I had a bowl of mutton with some more rice and some custard as dessert. The overhead fan dried the bones as I looked at the fossils on my plate, it was a frightening sight. It looked like the excavation site of a place where the whole fauna had become extinct due to some inexplicable phenomenon. It took an hour and a half to finish my lunch. If gluttony was a sin then I surely was on a highway to hell. I tottered to the nearest bed, drugged with sleep and exertion.

The nights were usually dedicated to didubhai as we sat in the veranda staring at the overcast black sky. I always preferred that arm chair and didubhai sat on a plastic moulded chair, her eyelids tightly shut as she spoke as if making a concentrated effort to maintain a single line of thought though she was always guilty of digressing without any forewarning or any apparent reason. Her efforts to take control of things was nothing short of heroic, her eye for detail, strict quality control, just-in-time kitchen warehousing policies could put any practicing manager to shame. Summer vacations were always a blast because of her. Though during the daytime the climate was quite intolerable, the night time weather was divine outside. There was a steady breeze laced with moisture that could be only described as sweet. This idle talk with her continued till midnight and then I slipped out of the house on the pretext of a walk as didubhai retired for the day, and I smoked while I took that walk. That was the only time in the day I smoked, not that I couldn’t do without it, but it seemed to add to the surroundings. And then began the writing/reading/ movie-watching sessions that continued till three in the morning, sometimes well beyond that.

Next day I visited Park Circus, and from there Shishu Manch, an organisation to promote music, dance and recitation among juveniles. Two of my nieces were performing there and that provided me with an opportunity to meet them, their parents, my cousins and their husbands (my brothers-in-law or is it brother-in-laws?). This chap, whom I had last met during his marriage, said that he empathized with my situation of having to endure the whole proceeding of myriad kids stammering, missing beats etc. for four hours. The auditorium was packed to capacity mainly with relatives of the young performers. I just smiled in return, trying not to appear rude; it might just have been a trap. Thankfully, it wasn’t. It seemed that he was equally peeved at squandering a holiday in this fashion. He made quite an acute observation after that, out of all the people in the audience only two were interested at any point of time, the parents of the performers! One and half hour later the audience had thinned down considerably validating his case and we cracked up loudly and volubly. The concept of an effective audience as opposed to a real audience made a lot of sense…

Calcutta Chronicles I

Yesterday, while boarding my flight, the check-in guy looked at me and asked “Kawlkatta”, with raised eyebrows. Nothing irritates me more than people gleefully mispronouncing Kolkata and my name. Both these unfortunate names suffer the same fate because people accentuate the ‘o’ to an ‘aww’ without much reason. I don’t know whether there some awe factor here or it’s just their honest attempt to do justice to the Bengali phonetic. I rather prefer to stick to Calcutta because it so royal, reminds me of the British Raj and the good old days of the past glory of the city.

Didubhai (my grandmother) has moved into this new place, away from Dumdum where we had some sort of a ramshackle three-storeyed outhouse complete with trees, wilderness and a large muddy green pond. That house was synonymous with Calcutta to me. As the cycle-rickshaw pulled closer to the society, it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to relate to this apartment business to stay in Calcutta. That house in Dumdum represented freedom, joy and excitement. Another concrete jungle could hardly substitute for it, no matter how spacious or ‘green’ it might be. It turned out to be good indeed with highrises overlooking elegantly manicured lawns, all modern amenities et al.

After the initial bit of chatter with her, I checked out the new house which was strewn with furniture from our Dumdum house. Especially that old armchair that sat grimly in the main veranda reminded me a lot of my misadventures of my past, they are just too numerous to relate. Though its upholstery was still firm, one of its arms had fallen off. I searched for one of the lost arms of that ‘Venus di Milo’ in vain. I still didn’t get that feeling I usually get when I am in Calcutta, it seemed like another artificial, pretty apartment, nothing special at all. Despite her age, didubhai has managed to keep herself updated about all petty details of her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren and their breakfast habits. Well, it seems once you cross a certain age you cease to grow older or at least look older, despite your progressing age; didubhai bore ample testimony to that. Her skin was loose and wrinkled and it sagged all over, she hobbled about the house in a loosely draped white sari with a plainly designed colour border and her blouse always seemed to slide off her shoulders. All of that fit into place into that gaunt 5-foot frame of hers. She rattled off information which was exceedingly redundant from my viewpoint, like the relationships shared by my elder cousins with their respective mother-in-laws and an incisive analysis about the same. She spoke about people I never had the faintest clue about and soon I mastered the technique of being an expert conversationalist. I grunted at regular intervals in agreement at whatever she untiringly spoke about. That bit of acknowledgement was all she needed as encouragement. So, we chatted for hours the whole day.

Today, I woke up lazily at nine, and decided to pick up some rare books at College Street. On my way there, I was tempted to visit the place I spent most of my time in Calcutta. The world might have progressed, India might have changed but the winds of change had completely ignored this part of Calcutta. The bus which I boarded on my way to Dumdum was in its penultimate stage of dilapidation as it rattled like a prehistoric being desperate for retirement and then probably salvation. I remember my father saying that these buses were the most efficient in terms of seating arrangement, or ‘standing arrangement’ rather. There were seats lining the interior of the bus, the rest of the space available with bars on the ceiling for clinging on to. According to him, these buses hadn’t changed since his dad had come to Calcutta; beat that for dogged resistance to change. Old men sat unfazed and fat housewives held on to their overgrown, overfed kids. Girls here have this penchant for red thick ribbons tied to their braided hair; I haven’t seen this amazing spectacle anywhere else. The traffic was erratic even when completely normal always caught in crossfire of blaring horns. So, most of the things here had not changed, a very reassuring feeling.

Once in Dumdum, I slowly walked towards our house. It seemed as if it all happened in a daze. The streets lined with shops were so damn familiar; on some occasions even shopkeepers seemed recognizable. As I reached the house, I felt breathless. Though that place had been sold now, it was in a complete state of disuse. I found it locked and so I climbed the surrounding single brick wall, carefully avoiding the glass bits cemented on to that boundary wall and jumped into the wilderness. I could mentally picture the space in its heydays to its plight now. The construction stood discoloured, awkward and complaining.

Dadubhai (my grandfather), post his retirement had taken great pains to beautify this place. He had planted grass all throughout and had made a narrow brick lane way. The furrow besides the grass and the brick lane was filled with small brick chips. He used to weed out unnecessary vegetation, even from the bottom of the pond. His sense of aesthetics was decidedly amateurish, homely and likeable. He never used anything new or snazzy; everything was remodelled with recycled stuff, laboriously put in place. But all of it had a life of its own. Among various trees, we had one gigantic palm tree, one mango tree, one guava, two lemon trees and a clutch of beetelnut trees. The pond was quite large, rectangular in shape with rounded ends; luxuriant green water around seven feet deep was home to some water snakes, crabs and a variety of fish. I and all my cousins learnt how to swim there. During noon, which felt like the midnight of the day, it reflected the buildings around, silent, green and content, cradling our childhood. I used to toss stones, make them skip, glide on the surface or hurl those brick chips at unsuspecting birds much to the chagrin of dadubhai. During my summer vacations it was like a paradise getaway, away from school and all the horrid homework in Delhi.

Now, everything looked the same in a sorry sort of a way in the wild grass and the shaggy trees. From one end of the pond I could see the mango tree aching with blossom, mangoes abundant on all sides and the guava tree was dead. Another boundary wall had caved in. Right at the centre of the pond, the gnarled, rotten branches of a dead tree arose like a skeleton haunting the surroundings. People living around had found a very cost effective and convenient method of disposing their garbage. They could now just toss it into the pond without any hassle. And I stared at this putrid state of my paradise, my childhood which had ceased to reflect anything anymore owing to all trash in it. Dadubhai used to make me and my cousin work for him in return for pittance, now I felt this overwhelming urge to restore its naked orderliness. I had been sitting next to the pond for an hour now, transfixed and somewhat paralysed, even the drone of the blood thirsty mosquitoes acted as memory tags, rather than an irritation. Historical monuments had always filled me with wonder whenever I tried to imagine them in their prime looking at their ruins. Here I had seen the prime and could see its ruins too, nothing left to imagine. As I made a final inspection of the weathered remains, I saw this heavy metal roller embedded in a bald patch of land. As a child, it was my fantasy to be strong enough to roll the device. I had never managed to do it. I gave it a final tug, the rusted remains of that piece of junk budged and then fell back into that pit of neglect, coating my hands with rust. I plucked a flower and left.

I tunneled through the city in the metro and reached College Street, in this sweltering heat. First time since my visit in Calcutta I felt the unbearable heat and humidity. Sweat streamed down my throat, my nape tickling its way down irritatingly. I got a damn good bargain though with some authentic Rajput history, biography of the pugnacious Muhammad Ali, some bit on the Victorian age etc. I spiced it up with Lady Chatterley’s Lover, hoping for some excitement there. Found didubhai waiting for me even at four in the afternoon and wanted to have lunch together. Even after the hourly calls to assure my well-being had failed to convince her that I was safe and sound. Alexander might have conquered half the world by 26, but here elders refuse to believe that their kids can ever grow up…

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Today was one of the days where I was feeling a bit queasy, well not in the gastronomic sense of the word, but just a non-specific discomfort, dunno where. By some crazy coincidence had to go to ‘Not just jazz by the bay’ where they were playing some rock today, so I landed up in that over-populated, over-sexed place which was so damn smoky inside that it seemed that I had entered a sauna-bath parlour or something.

We found a coupla guys inside huddled in an impossible corner, frantically jerking their heads and swigging beer. Contrary to what I thought, it was pretty refreshing, away from the bored silence of my room. The music was jarring; it seeped through the walls and the panelling with those vibrations flowing right under my ass, titillatingly. No wonder most of the folks were standing. With all that rock beating about in hopeless futility and some beer down, I actually felt good. Amidst such noise I could think, finding coherence at the height of incoherence, another of the weirdass paradoxes of life. I had actually been thinking about this for a while now, and this was the right moment to think, I could do it swaying my head as if being possessed and all.

What is good? Good for me, for you, and the world in general? I didn’t know. I grew up thinking that people who drink, party mad, smoke-up are bad, all that changed pretty fast. My convictions, my beliefs changed as I realised that people who did not indulge in all that ‘dirty’ stuff have never tried it, they’ve just played safe, quarantining the rest. Not pointing to anything here, but just that these ‘good’ guys are half-witted and were in no position to comment about anything.

If morality was a question of time, so was our outlook. Who’s bad or ugly is just about perspectives, perception frames, logic bubbles, et al. As I thought, I spotted a hideous creature. This chick wore a dark top, her huge jugs flattened by the fabric, splayed all over her torso. I really hoped she was wearing some kind of a bra, didn’t want to imagine her without one. Talk about disturbing images. Her belly uncomfortably jutted out of a cheap leather steel- studded belt, the kind Russell Crowe wears in Gladiator. Her ass sagged in that frayed denim skirt that kissed her shiny red toes. Oh God, was she ugly? I can swear she was, but probably much better than me in many more ways than one. Maybe her physical ugliness diffused into her character as well? maybe not? When Toifler suggested that we need to learn, unlearn and relearn all the time, was he bang-on. I was relearning the basics of not gauging people based on certain principles, they could be goddamn misleading.

I couldn’t help thinking about our own mythology, Ravana our epic villain, who was bumped off by Ram in that fierce battle, was supposed to be bad. Or at least that’s what’s taught. And remember, good wins over the evil... But I recall reading somewhere that another version of Ramayana says that when Ram took out his brahmastra (divine weapon) gifted by the supreme God Brahma and fired it at the demon king, Ravana accepted it. He could have slung the brahmastra he possessed, but that would have meant complete annihilation, assuming apocalyptic proportions, destroying mankind. Two brahmastras against each other releases a lot of unwanted energy, like two similar forces pitted against the other. He could have been a bad sport, after all wasn’t he evil. Anyways he was dying; Ram was a mighty good shot. Ravana wanted the well-being of his people. He was defending his turf where Ram was chasing his vain ego. Who’s good? Who’s bad? Both? None? Maybe.

No point playing safe and crawl your way to a hundred years, it was much more exciting to try new things and drop-off in the middle. This was not my conclusion, just another musing. I was quite incapable of concluding now; the music was a bit too much. Initially you make friends with people based on certain characteristics you like, you identify with, you come closer to them, hang out with them and all, and then is exposed the jagged realities, the ghastly underbellies, all a part of the same individual. Probably familiarity does breed contempt. There seemed no solution available to define parameters of goodness, to scale folks and grade them which would remain unchanged over a fairly long period of time. Yes, honest people are good, but most people are equally honest, the rest being a bit careless with the truth. Nothing makes sense to me now, writing when I am pissed drunk at 3 in the morning… Nobody’s good, none’s bad, we all are ugly, ugliness prevailing under a delightful veneer of goodness….

That bright red spot

She walked in the class, a distracted lot looked on, whiling away their time, like chicken do when they are stuffed inside that rusted wire cage before being slaughtered, expressionless, not knowing what fate awaits them.

I looked up, waking up from my reverie, everything seemed hazy without my glasses, a woman strode in…draped impeccably in a sari. I’ve always maintained that a woman is closest to being naked when she’s well dressed…. our business journalism teacher someone hissed, as if I cared.

Clarity descended as soon as I put my glasses back on….all blurred edges assumed a definite shape, all the black ink on the board shrank meekly into boundaries, into recognisable text and so did her face……..

40-something, age stealing the thunder off her persona, leaving behind luxuriant pale skin, glowing with brilliance, slightly plump, mesmerising…..

Her eyebrows stretched; yawning into arches…perfect black lines they appeared, drawn with utmost care… with heavenly poise. And between those arches was a bindi, perfectly round and red, red as my blood.

I could have juxtaposed a graph paper on her face to find out the coordinates of that bindi; to confirm the symmetry and its linearity to those arches…..nothing seemed out of place. She spoke; I heard….never listening, my mind veered off to a parallel world all because of that damn bindi.

That bright red spot that I’d seen after so long on somebody not familiar traumatised me …flooding me…reminding me of the clay face of Maa Durga that we have in our drawing room…with big scary eyes, burning upon us. I was in a daze, if not a trance and that bright red spot continued to hog the attention.

Red stood for blood, for integrity, for life, for procreation…..its real meaning unknown…cloaked under mysteries. Through thousands of generations …immigrants, invaders, plunderers, colonisers have added their bit to it and it has flowed retaining its character, its meaning, undiluted, unrestricted.

And that circle? What did that signify? What else but that the earth is round and so is time. That time follows a damn pattern and it all starts where it ended, and that history blissfully repeats it self. Happiness and sorrow, victory and failure, everything’s a mere illusion. All lessons learnt are trifling; they all are in vain in the long run as the cyclical nature takes charge…..

What with the positioning….between the eyebrows, above the eyes, on the line of symmetry of the face…is that a coincidence too? I have often meditated with a yellow circle of incandescent light exactly on that spot as per the rules ….the yellow light relenting at first….. spreads over the rest of the body….is certainly divine. No wonder it is the divya chakshu of lord Shiva.
Mythology and commonsense seemed to converge making the picture a bit clearer and a hell lot complex. She rambled on about some boring details….oblivious of her fascinating bindi…and I gaped at her with child-like curiosity.

‘A Guide to Resolute Irresponsibility’

After a long time, today was a day which I enjoyed like no other, reading, imagining, soaking, sleeping and reading again. Day before, while browsing through the collection of the books in that newly discovered ‘pigeon-hole library’, I found myself staring at this seemingly harmless , pirated and decrepit copy of ‘ The memoirs of Protima Bedi’. On the cover page, beneath the stapled lamination, I found this black & white photograph of a middle aged lady, sporting a carefree laughter and a disproportionately huge red bindi.

As I browsed through the contents, I learnt that she was Kabir Bedi’s ex-wife, and something about her face said that she would be hugely controversial, and that this book would contain controversies replete with steamy sleaze with absolute strangers. I loved the idea and picked it up considering it to be a breezy read. And breezy it was, in more ways than one, the very first page contained graphic descriptions of how young Protima was raped by her cousin with his big paw under her panties!! But then the story changed, it became profound, and worse, I got sucked into the maelstrom of her life.

Her life story can easily fit in a paragraph. Born to a middle-class baniya family, she had always been a wild cat, stubborn, headstrong and eccentric. And thankfully, she was not a bong. Fell in love when she was 18, after some vain promises and a few hopeless tears she ran away from home and married Kabir Bedi while her boyfriend was away. Called her marriage ‘an open marriage’ and gave birth to her first child Pooja. Her marriage must have been a truly open one, as she didn’t know who had fathered her second child, Siddharth, a travelling guest or Kabir. Meanwhile Kabir exercised his share of openness while being busy with films. Walked out of this open formality and got divorced in her late 20’s. After having eloped with foreigners, musicians, politicians and lay-men alike and having loved each one of them passionately, she died under the crushing debris of a landslide, leaving behind a schizophrenic son who committed suicide, a divorced daughter and an unparallel legacy of an irresponsibly led life. She got fame as a model, a celebrity’s wife, a nudist, a talented dancer, an entrepreneur and finally a sanyasin. If I had the liberty to change the title of this book, I would call it – ‘A Guide to Resolute Irresponsibility’.

But I would still call it profound because it made me think, reflect and ponder. She wanted to be free, to explore, to go wherever her fancies took her and to do whatever her spirit demanded. She wrote with a lot of passion about the men in her life and how much she loved them all in the various phases of her life. To her, nothing was absolute, her body available to all, probably it was too good for any one individual to have! She forged relations with reckless abandon, she was the diva who shattered families including her own, with perfect harmony, her soul was true, unrestricted, unhindered, unshackled. Every third page of her memoir, right from her childhood to her final resting place under the landslide, she wept, mostly with her face buried under a pillow. The innocence of her memoirs is funny; I could only pity her helpless idiosyncrasies and all the men who came in her fold. I would recommend this book to anyone who thinks predictable, disciplined lives are boring and that we should live for change.

But she had the mettle to be a genius, as exhibited by the mastery of odissi dance form, and the establishment of ‘Nrityagram’, a village dedicated to dance near Bangalore. But alas, she suffered excruciatingly in her life, mostly on account of her unhindered spirit. I painfully read through the section when she leaves her kids alone, devoid of a father, taking her flights of fancy. I actually felt avenged when her son committed suicide, she deserved every bit of the suffering, the remorse, for snatching the childhood from her kids and for all the families she had shattered.

Well, of all the biographies that I’ve read, this one would easily qualify as the funniest and the scariest. It kindled all insecurities that I harboured about women and matrimony. The aggression with which I seethed after reading her memoirs was purely a defensive measure to protect myself against such maniacs.