Subtle Subramanian - Part I

Vinod Subramanian, sat alone on the beach watching old mamas and mamis in sweaters, monkey caps and mufflers. It must have been twenty-three degrees at least, but in Madras, given its usual weather, this was peak winter. He allowed himself a little smile. The waves hit the shore listlessly, almost as if they were bored of doing the same thing for centuries. Or maybe there was a hint of sadness in their behaviour.

He stared at them until a little drop of salty water was waiting to break free from his eyes and run down his cheek. He held it back, got up, and drove away into the city as dawn eased into a bright morning.
***

"That's the singer who was close to Fidel Castro," she said pointing to a poster that had 'Revolucion' emblazoned across it, and laughed almost endlessly.

"Okay, fine. I'm ignorant. You've said that a million times in a million different ways." Vinod declared indignantly.
"I can understand ignorance, but thinking that Che Guevara was a singer close to Castro..."
"Tell me, why would rock music loving, weed smoking, youth in India who haven't lifted a finger for any cause have posters and T-shirts of a revolutionary in South America? I think I'm entitled to assume that he was a rock star."
She laughed even more.
He continued, "I mean, Bollywood music lovers don't walk around with T-shirts of Chandrashekhar Pandit."
"Who?"
"Chandrashekhar P-p-pandit..."
Now she could hardly sit straight laughing. Her laugh was about the most unique laughs he'd ever heard - some people snorted, others sounded like Bollywood's professional rapists, but this one was in its own league - there was a high-pitched squeak that came in every two seconds or so! In his experience, many of the world's prettiest women lost their aura when they laughed out loud. She didn't.
"Chandrashekhar Pandit?"
His eyebrows knotted. "Wait, I know this guy's actual name - the guy with a mush and a gun..."
"Don't forget the dhoti."
And after two whole minutes of agony, he declared, "Azad!" Pause, "Why do I know Chandrashekhar Pandit?"
"Azad was called Panditji by people..."
"Oh yeah, that's what Ajay Devgan keeps calling him."
"Ajay Devgan?"
"That Bhagat Singh movie..."

More laughter filled a room that was a collage of newspapers, books, wires, clothes and cigarette butts. There was a sofa somewhere, but was well camouflaged amongst the previous days' Economic Times, while a mass of wires that belonged to her sixteen-piece sound system made their home on the mattresses that doubled-up as dewans. He looked nervously around the walls to see more people who looked like singers, but probably weren't, and an odd photograph or two of her family. There was a battered old TV in one corner of the room, and even at 8 pm, CNBC was on - in mute - with the stock prices and headlines flashing at the bottom of the screen. The rest of the furniture in the room was a table that had more newspapers and books, a shoe shelf that was nearly empty, and a little teapoy with yesterday's coffee mugs and a coconut shell doubling up as an ash tray. He cleared a few newspapers off the sofa and settled down on it.

She pointed upwards, towards the ceiling.

"Holy fuck." he exclaimed.
"We need to work on your vocabulary!"
"You painted that?!"
"Yeah. Nice?"
"A nude chick?"
"Yes. A nude chick. We really need to work on your vocabulary."
"An unclothed member of the female race?"
"We're a different race now?"
"A lower one, yeah." She gave him a look. "Kidding..."
"Thin ice."
"Anway, what does it signify? Some female liberation shit, with her clothes thrown away?"
"Thinner ice. But I'll let that pass. Benefit of the doubt and what not. You see that little equation in the corner?"
"Yeah..."
"I read this article once that had this long set of equations to prove that an erectile disfunction is equivalent to the square root of minus one. Those are the last two steps of the derivation. If you look closely, the that the woman is made of..."
"Little numbers and equations! Fuck!! But what does the erectile disfunction have to do with her?" and after a couple of seconds of reflection, "Or the square root of minus one?"
"Oh, that is for you to interpret and understand. One doesn't 'explain' art to other people."
"Yeah, when art is that hot, it is a crime to 'explain' it!"
"You think she's hot?"
"Very!"
"My brother told me that her eyes are a little off-centre - specifically the right eye."
"What?! Come on, look at those eyes, they're perfect! And Bipasha Basu has one eye smaller than the other. So, that really doesn't make a difference."
"I never realised that!"
"You have to observe her closely..."
"Her face? Do guys do that?"
"I do," he said, with a superior look.

She said nothing for some time - just stared at the woman who somehow signified the erectile disfunction and the square root of minus one, and dreamily walked into the kitchen. "What do you want?" she hollered.
"You," he said joining her in the kitchen.
"Sen wont be too pleased," she said.
"Sen'll never suspect a thing," he said moving towards her naughtily.
She thrust a drink in his hand. "For now you'll have to do with this."
"You know," he said, "I used to actually have a huge crush on you when I met you initially."
"I know."
"How do you know?"
"You weren't really Subtle Subramanian."
"Damn. I was really hoping you'd break up with Sharma."
"Sherman... I cant believe I was with him for that long."
"Yeah, and by the time I'd heard you broke up, someone pointed out that you were seeing your co-newsreader!
"He asked me. If you had asked me, even when I was with Sherman, I'd've said yes."
"Is that offer open even with Sen?"
She looked at him with that raised left eyebrow. "Are you asking me seriously?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Yes. The offer is open."
He laughed into his drink.
She said, "Vin, I'm serious."
His eyebrow was raised now. And then his eyes grew as wide as two tennis balls. He took stock of the situation, and leant closer to her and asked, "Will you go out with me?"

She didn't say anything. She just leant towards him.

"I must warn you. The features on my face are to the left."
"Eh?"
"My face is not proportional."
She looked at it closely. "No!"
"Yes."
"I've done an experiment. I clicked a picture of myself, and took the left half of my face and laterally inverted it and pasted it instead of the right half. I looked different."
"Bergman-esque!" she said suddenly. He laughed. That's what he loved her for. He didn't understand what she meant by that - who was Bergman? Did he have a disfigured face? He didn't understand most things she said - about discourses and ontologies, about nihilism, countercultures and anarchy, about imagined communities and shared histories, about feminism and maelstroms, about Yugoslavia and Rwanda. But he listened to her, often with fascination, because she had this way of talking that made her look much prettier than she already was.

"Bergman is this famous Swedish filmmaker..." she explained.
"The joke sounded funnier without the explanation," he said.
"Jokes always do."
"But, coming back to the point, I have a disfigured face."
"You actually did that?"
"What?"
"Your experiment?"
"Yeah. I wouldn't have told you, if it weren't true."
"Nice use of the subjunctive mood. Not bad," she commented suddenly.
"The what?"
"Oh, don't bother."
"Yeah. I have other things to bother myself with."
"Like your disfigured face."
"I think I should get surgery done."
"Nah."
"Yeah. Plastic surgery."
"I'll compensate for the disfiguration," she said, moving her lips slightly to the right before towards his face. And the kiss was just the right mix of the spiciness of romance and the tangy tinge of mischief.
***
As much as he enjoyed getting up early in the morning to watch cricketers monkeying around in Australia in yet another Test Match, he hated Ravi Shastri's cliche-ridden drone. The cricket was often 'ordinary', the 'keeper almost always played a 'gritty' innings (unless he was Adam Gilchrist, god bless his soul), bowlers either hit or did not hit the 'right areas', and every now and then, the visiting batsman was "Edged and taken!" On this particular day, when an 'attractive shot-maker' was 'in his element', the ball had 'four written all over it' nearly every two minutes. Some poor soul was doing a lot of writing.

He increased the volume until the drone filled his little apartment and walked to the basin in the interests of personal hygiene. His reflection in the mirror confirmed his recent beliefs - that his face wasn't proportional. Slightly to the left. He told himself that he shouldn't worry about it so much. When he bared his teeth to his reflection, he noticed that his teeth were to one side also. The middle teeth at the top didn't fall on the middle teeth at the bottom. After a whole minute of trying to remember, it came to him - his incisors! That's what they were. They were off-centre.

"You know what I hate about this place," she said suddenly entering the bathroom. "You don't get newspapers."
"I get the Mid-day..."
"Newspaper?"
"Mid-day." he declared, emphasising on the first syllable for no reason, when the dreaded voice came, "Edged and taken!"
"Fuck. Laxman."
"Dravid falls for that teasing line outside the off..."
"Thank god!"
"You know, I think the Hyderabadis' love for Laxman is much like Laxman's batting..."
"Don't theorise about cricket. Please. I mean, how would you feel if I said things like, 'The subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible'?"
"That's Maugham, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"I'm impressed."
"Wikipedia."
"Better than Competition Success."
"For quite a while, that was my primary source of knowledge."
"But you actually read up on the subjunctive mood?"
"Yeah, I didn't realise that it was a grammatical thing - I was hoping it'd tell me more about women."
"The sub..."
"Edged and Taken!"
"Fuck. Laxman."
He ran to the TV wearing a worried expression and a T-shirt that now had more toothpaste than fabric. She had other worries.
***

To be continued