Love Brinjal - Part IV

The Classic Storyteller’s Handbook requires every story to have a beginning, middle and an end. The Modern Storyteller’s Handbook also says that a story needs a beginning, middle and an end, though not necessarily in that order. It also defines a beginning, middle and an end very loosely – the first few sentences of the story are its beginning, and the last few are the end. Whatever is left in between could safely be defined as the middle.

A story needs to mature before it ends, or the critics will say that it ended abruptly. I don’t give a bandicoot’s posterior about the critics, but I believe in the theory – a story does need to mature before it ends – it is like a good whiskey – no point drinking it before it is mature. Or like a good game of hide-and-seek – if the seeker seeks before the seekees can prepare themselves to be sought, there’s no point.

Often, when I have looked back at those days, I have wondered whether I was the seeker or the seekee. I did a lot of the seeking and chasing, like when I went to Delhi, but she did some of it too – for instance, when she looked for me for desperately every time my phone was disfunctional and I was being my disassociated self. Then I sometimes think, does a relationship need to have a seeker and a sought? Aren’t both the parties usually seeking the other, for whatever reasons? And then I get sick of “seeking” thoughts – both thoughts about seeking, and seeking those thoughts, and revert to my usual sick thoughts.

“You’re such a sick guy!” she said.
“That’s not what I meant,” I tried.
“Da, you’re incorrigible.”
“Machi…”
“Ok, I’ll grant you this much – your intentions are noble, but the way you put them across needs some polish.”
“All I’m trying to say is that this country’s going to the dogs.” Almost as if on cue, a dog walked past us. Both of us smiled.
“How do you do this?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Have these props come in at the right time?”
“It’s this theory I believe in. You believe something is there, and it is.”
“Eh?”
“Look. A hippo!”
“Man, you’re good at this.”
“And look at that…”
“A mastodon! One hasn’t been sighted in Bangalore since the ice age!” she exclaimed.
“Right. Getting back to what I was saying, have you ever seen a village? Basic water and sanitation aren’t available, but people are laying optical fibre cables!”

We loved these freewheeling conversations that seemed to mix fact, fantasy and fiction, start and end nowhere, much like Modern Storytelling.

I recall another conversation.

“If you were given one superpower, just one, what would you ask for?” she asked.
“I’d just ask for unlimited strength.”
“Boring.”
“Ok. The power to fly.”
“Blah.”
“I’ll be happy with that - imagine being able to fly.”
The expression on her face made me feel as boring as a Hindi movie maa.
“Why? What would you ask for?”
“I’d like to have this power by which I just do a little swish with my hand, and a pile of shit falls on the person standing in front of me.”
I laughed.
“Pile of shit,” she said, swishing her hand.
“Pile of shit,” I mimicked.

To this day, when I get angry with someone, I just swish my hand, and mutter, “Pile of shit”.
***

But this story needs a beginning – it had to all start somewhere. And it did. I remember it was exactly the thirty-first day of October, because that is the day Indira Gandhi died. Now, I share my birthday with Indira Gandhi, and somehow, I remember the date she died, even though I often forget our birthday.

Back then, I was the violinist for a little-known, pompous, talentless ‘fusion’ band that claimed to fuse jazz and Carnatic music – we also had a pianist and a percussionist who played both the tabla and the drums. Much to the distress of my mother and passers-by on the road, we practised at my place – everyday, for six hours. My sister, whom I refer to as Akka, more out of habit than respect had come to town for a weekend.

While practice was in full flow, our pianist who came back into our room after drinking some water, said, “Dude, there’s this super-hot chick in the adjacent room.”

“I hope you aren’t referring to my sister,” I said.
“Well, your sister is kind of hot, but this girl is something else.”
“Let’s just start practice,” I said, starting off our piece de resistance, our locus classicus, magnum opus, circus maximus. This was the only piece we played with any promise, and as our improvisations warmed up and sounds of the instruments intertwined till they were one, she walked in. Not my sister, but the other one. I believed, for quite a while, that our music was arresting. But when she walked in, I understood what the word meant.

She said, “Go on. Don’t mind me.” It was asking for the impossible. Don’t mind her! We were fairly good actors, or so we thought, and we continued playing. Towards the end, I heard some beautiful humming, almost as beautiful as its source. I said, like Belafonte famously did, “Sing a little louder”.

When the song was over, she smiled, and was about to say something when my sister summoned her. She made a gesture that we didn’t comprehend in our dazed state, and against our will, we allowed her to leave. For a whole five minutes, we sat in silence.

“I’m off,” the percussionist declared.
“Cool. Tomorrow then,” I said.

I walked down the stairs to find her standing at the doorstep.
“You sing really well,” I said, walking towards the garage.
“You play really well too,” she said.
“You don’t have to polite.”
She just smiled.
As I got on my bike, she said, “Hey, it’s fine. I’ll take an auto…”
“Huh?”
“Um, I’ll take an auto. You don’t have to drop me…”
“Uh? Oh! I was just going to the cigarette shop.”
“Oh.”
“Oh, bu-but I could drop you. Where are you going?”
“Airport Road… Um, where’s the cigarette shop?”
“Um, J-Just down the road.”
“Oh, ok, cool. Um, I’ll, um, see you around, then…”
There it was again – that arresting smile as she walked out of the gate. Then, it struck me.
“Hey, there are cigarette shops on Airport Road,” I said.
“Of course there are!”
She hopped on, and we were off. In another sense, we were on.
***

Grandfathers are usually fascinating– they use their experience to great effect in weaving theories of life, explaining modern phenomenon, and understanding the youth. Grandfathers with a sense of humour are even more fascinating. Women with a sense of humour are the most fascinating, because there are so few of them. She once told me, “As a woman, you can be butt-ugly, but if you’re funny, the guys love you.”

Her sense of humour came from her grandfather.

“Ours is the worst religion,” he told me, “Jesus says, ‘You work hard, and you’ll make a lot of money.’ Allah says, ‘You pray five times a day, and I’ll give you oil.’ What do our Gods say? ‘Shave your head, and take away laddoos.’ ‘Give me murukku. Kozhakattai.’ That’s why we are like this.”

Insightful, I think.

“You know, at the end of each street, there’s a little temple. The vaadyar there, with his big tummy, and pseudo-Sanskrit decides each morning what he wants to eat. Say he feels like having some semiya paayasam, he tells these middle-aged women who come there, ‘Today, give God semiya paayasam, and your cable guy wont have a power cut all day’, and by afternoon all of them will bring him the tastiest semiya paayasam.”

“If you hate this religion so much, why don’t you just convert? Pray five times a day, claim your oil well, and live in peace?” she asked him, irritatedly.
“I’m too old a dog to learn new tricks. You, on the other hand, have all the energy.”
***

There are some events, some small incidents that you recollect, remember, relive literally every day of your life. There are also times when you use three words when even one of them would convey, express, communicate what you are trying to say. I often have the urge to annihilate such people. I also think people who start each sentence with the word “basically” deserve to be gagged, bound and made to watch Tamil soaps on a large screen for the rest of eternity. But that is a separate point. Coming back to the crucial issue, there are incidents you relive literally every day of your life.

This one happened on a Sunday – the Sunday I came back from Madras after an interview with The Hindu – one of those interviews that ended with, “Thank you. We’ll get back to you. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” It was two Sundays after I had made my fruitless expedition to Delhi. An expedition born out of a suspicion that ended in an endless argument.

Akka asked, as I entered the house, “Are you going to be at home for dinner?”
My Akka was turning into my Amma – both were most worried about where I would eat. It was almost as if nothing else about my life mattered. What happened at the interview? Did you get a job at The Hindu? Did you tell them you were a cardholder of the CPI(M)? All these were questions I was left to ask myself. All she was interested in was whether I was going to eat at home.
“I’ll just call you-know-who and let you know.”
“She won’t have dinner with you now.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know?!”
“No.”
“Ask her,” she said, with a little grin on her face.
She picked up the phone, “Hey!”
“Why wont you have dinner with me tonight?”
“Eh?”
“Akka told me you wont.”
“Oh, that…” Beep, beep. Engaged tone. This was my trick of avoiding uncomfortable questions.

“Akka, what happened?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“The phone got cut…”
“She’s engaged.”
"It got cut, di. Not engaged."
"Dude, engaged. As in, she now has a would-be."
In my most unconvincing tone, I managed, “Wow. When did that happen?”
“Why? You thought she’ll marry you?” she said, still grinning.
“Of course not! Pah!” I was devastated, shocked, dismayed.
***

It was a kela in the most royal sense of the term. All of South America put together didn’t produce kelas on this scale. At Cubbon Park, where we performed the last rites, I asked her some important questions.

“Why was the Universe created?”
“Dude, wrong speech.”
It was the most important question. If the Universe wasn’t created, then we’d be living in empty space, and time wouldn’t have been the empty signifier it is right now. Sorry, wrong speech.

“Why Cubbon Park?”
“Oh, I just thought it’d be trippy, with all the couples around.”
Trippiness. Yes. As if losing out to a black-spectacled, French-beard sporting, laptop-carrying, sandhyavandanaming, fake accent show-offing, non-resident was not trippy enough.

“Where did we screw up?”
“Chronology of our births.”
My only option, therefore, was a time machine. If I was a little crazier, I might have started re-learning the science that I had gleefully dumped for more liberal learning.

“Why not?”
“Why?”
That put things in a whole new perspective.

“Did you ever love me?”
“I’ll have to think about that one.”
She did love me. I could feel it. She thought. And she said, “Perhaps not.”

“Any chance of a divorce?”
“Bastard.”

On that day, I decided I’d wait for that divorce. She’d get bored of his speaking in Engineering short forms, his nostalgia for sessionals and internals, his calculating, scientific approach to lovemaking and his attempts to estimate the distance in light-years from his house to the Department Store. But, my decision changed soon. Another girl waltzed in, and on this occasion, I wasn’t chronologically challenged.
***

I met her only on one other occasion – bumped into her at a concert in Madras, actually.

“You’ve put on weight.”
“Don’t fucking fuck around.”
“Marriage clearly hasn’t civilised you.”
“I’m still better off than I was with you.”
“But how the weight?”
“I’m pregnant da.”
“You’re not fat enough for that excuse.”

She had no reply to that. It was very unlike her. The rest of the evening wasn’t this exciting though. The concert was extraordinarily brilliant, and walking down from there along the beach to this curiously titled restaurant called “Pupil” humming the song she first sang with us was really nice, but dinner got boring. We had hardly anything to talk about. Her sharp wit and biting nastiness had given way to some random kitty-party jokes. Her stunning waist curve had become aunty-hips. She was worried about random things like the fact that the gas guy hadn’t come. I kept calling her Mami and she didn’t have a retort. Clearly, she had become an auntyji!

Yet, there was something enticing about her. Something that told me that underneath all the aunti-pankti, she was still the same. After much dilly-dallying, I agreed to spending the night at her place. It was there that I got my interminable bout of hiccups. Water, sugar, holding breath had all been tried unsuccessfully.

Her last remedy was to close my nose and my ears, and blow as hard as possible. I told her that it was physically impossible for me to close both my nose and my ears at the same time. So, she closed my ears, and I held my nose. Something made her lean towards me, and without realising what I was getting into, I leaned forward too.

Just when something was about to happen, the doorbell rang. Microsoft’s star employee was back. I dont know about her, but I felt horribly guilty about this. The next morning, we got up and behaved like nothing had happened. Strangely, there was no awkwardness, and we were back to being who we were. But then, every time I think of our relationship, I think of that one second, when both of us, strangely, just let go.
***

Thank You!
Arun, for the pile of shit. Kai, for her continued support, blessings and inputs. Vidya Balan, for all the inspiration, and an arresting smile (Marry me?). Most importantly, Francis, for being Francis.

Love Brinjal - Part III

Penultimate Part. Perhaps. Previous Part - Press. Pehla Part - Press.

***
I love her. So much. So so much.

The Delhiness of Delhi is often lost on Delhiites. But I shall get to that later. Let me start with how I got to Delhi in the first place. A dear Delhi friend told me that the Karnataka Express, curiously abbreviated as KK (At first I thought that the Delhiites think Karnataka is actually Karnata Ka - a sequel to Calasso's most famous work, but then I realised that Delhiites know nothing of Calasso, the concept of a sequel or work. I take back that statement - they would know of sequels after Dhoom 2 and Krrish. Or maybe they just look at them as episodes of a saas-bahu soap.) was the train to take. He said it was more romantic than the Sampark Kranthi, which, apart from stopping only thrice during the whole journey, had a certain revolutionary flavour. It was the old world charm of chai and Chacha Chaudary on railway platforms versus water in Laloo's matkas. He forgot to mention the small matter of non-availability of tickets in the KK.

The highlight of travelling unreserved for forty-eight hours was how I mastered the art of bladder control, because losing control of your bladder meant losing control over the little space you had. Other interesting incidents included a man taking a Krishna idol out of his bag, performing an elaborate pooja, and passing the aarti around; another man built like a bear in more ways than one deciding to take his shirt off for a major part of the journey to beat the heat; a youngish couple entering the compartment with a harmonium to entertain all and sundry; the numerous boards on walls on the outskirts of Delhi with numbers of seedy doctors promising to cure "health problem" and the dreaded "gupt rog"; and lastly, the customary tax-collectors - the hijras - who collected an additional long-hair surcharge from me - "Tum hum mein se ek ho"! I tried explaining that that should have counted for a discount, but my argument fell on deaf ears (and greedy eyes).

When I reached the station, I gave her a call from a telephone booth, "Hello?"
"Hey. Hello. This is me."
"You?!"
"Yes."
"But you're calling from a Delhi number..."
"Yeah. I'm in Delhi... I just wanted to know the address of the place where you're staying."
"Dude, I am in Bangalore!"
It took me seven whole seconds to register that. She asked, "Are you there?"
"Yeah... Um, so what do I do?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"I'm in Delhi. Shall I just take the next train and come back?" That was a ridiculous question. I had nothing else to do in Delhi - I was scared of the Punjabis and unaware of the differences between any other communities. My Hindi was limited to jaldi, aao, jaao, mera naam joker and behnchod. I wanted to go back.
"No. Wait. Give Gaurav a call, and go to his place. Have a bath, and then take the train back."
"Bathe?"
"Yes. Two days on a train, and you don't even feel the need to bathe!"
"This was a fairly clean train."
"Did I detect some sarcasm?"
"No. You didn't."
"What are you doing in Delhi?"
"I came to see you. I was missing you..."
"Elephant fart," she said. This was her alternative to 'bullshit'. She picked that up from me.
"Why else would I come here?"
"Maybe...."
"Maybe what?"
"It's okay. I don't want to tell you. It'll just start a fight."
"Maybe what?" I was trying my firm voice, and it worked.
"Maybe, just maybe, you came to check on me and Gaurav."
How? How did she know? Was it that obvious?
"Of course not! Whatever gave you that idea?! Man, I can't understand how you can even think something like that!"
"Now I'm sure."
"My god! First you tell me that I'm not romantic enough, and when I travel across the coutnry for you, you dismiss it."
"You're a paranoid guy. I can't believe you did this."
One of my uncles once told me that when you want to cut a call mid-way, and make it seem like it was a fault in the connection, cut it while you're talking.
"How can I..." Beep, beep. Engaged tone at her end. I calmly paid the phone booth guy and left.
***

So, as I was telling you, the Delhiness of Delhi is often lost on Delhiites. Trying to find a bus to Vasant Vihar, I asked a conductor, "Yeh bus Vasant Vihar jaata hai?" The conductor said, "Jaata nahin, jaati hai," laughed meanly, and drove away! I laughed at my fate - I was left here in an unknown city, having to speak a language that attached a gender to every object. That too, without any logic! I mean, what was feminine about a bus? It struck me as more masculine than a table any day - and yet, the bus was a woman, and the table was a guy - if you gave them one night together, we might have a bus with four wooden legs instead of tires.

The next time, I passed the grammar test and was admitted into the bus.

As I passed the India Gate on my way to Gaurav's place, I saw the strangest sight - the pools of water created for landscaping were teeming with people bathing and washing clothes. When I pointed this out to a middle-aged man sitting next to me, he said, "What else do you want them to do in that water?"

After much vernacular-grappling and address-hunting, I reached Gaurav's place. In my life, I hadn't been to a more Punjabi establishment. There were photographs of his loving family plastered across the house. The decor was most garish, some Gurdas Mann played through the radio - Worldspace's Tunak channel, and the latest Stardust, Maxim, Dainik Jaagran, Femina and Filmfare were strewn on the floor. The drawing room had a curious map framed and put up on the wall - it was a map of Ludhiana. "Parents live there," he said, "Home town. I feel emotional about it."

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. This guy was her ex-boyfriend?

And then he made a loud phone call to a certain paaji, who arranged for my train ticket by the next morning's gaddi. For the rest of the day and night, I lazed around the house forced to appreciate the nuances of Punjabi smash hits, and vivid descriptions in those songs on the exquisiteness of the kudi. As a part of the hospitality, I was offered the Tamilian version of the kudi - the drink - a typically Punjabi McDowell's with soda.

When the first rays of the rising sun rebounded off the mirror and flashed in my eye, I got up to leave. Hung over and still recovering from the previous journey, subconsciously, I sang in an interminable loop, "Thoda daru vich pyaar milaade..."
***

Lifts make for a fascinating study. Being in a closed lift with an unknown pretty girl can be quite an uncomfortable experience. The girl knows she's pretty, and that the guy could be observing her in ways that he shouldn't observe her. The guy makes an extra effort to ensure he doesn't come across as the undesirable types - an exercise that usually proves counterproductive. What is even stranger, is being in a lift with a uniformed liftman, and having continuous devotional chanting playing instead of the usual lift music.

That was the distinguishing feature of the lift in her apartment. You were always subjected to "Om Shree Maha Ganadhipataye namah", or "Om namah Shivaaya", or "Om Shakti Om", or the Gaayatri mantra. Recently I found out that the liftman, uplifted and enlightened by the constant chanting became a Godman and established an ashram on the outskirts of Bangalore, where devotees were put in models of lifts, and made to listen to chanting.

On this night, we were coming back from a movie to her apartment, and she commented that the greatest advantage of coming back at night was that the chanting would be turned off. I subtly put the point across that the lift usage by other residents is also very minimal after midnight. And so, when we got into the lift, almost immediately, we fell into each others arms. When I pushed her against the wall (and unknowingly a little button), suddenly, out of nowhere came, "Swamiye Ayyappa, Ayyappa Swamiye; Swamiye Ayyappa..."!
***

For two whole weeks we fought about my trip to Delhi. I told her about everything I braved in the train to get to her, hoping it would convince her of my love. She seemed to think that it was mistrust that drove this, and love could never have produced such effects. She was right, but I argued forever. I mean, I loved her. If I didn't, I wouldn't have worried about whether she was making it with someone else, right?

"Wrong. That is caused by jealousy..."
"No, I'm serious. This is love. Ask these guys who are reading this... Guys, tell her. I love her. You know that. Tell her that."
"This is between us. You guys stay out of this!"
"But they're my witnesses. Guys, refer her to the opening lines of this part!"
"You added them in just now. Bastard."
"Fine. Don't believe me."

This state of stalemate finally ended on a Sunday morning.

To be continued.

Love Brinjal - Part II

Continued from here

***

Increasingly, I find Coffee Day unbearable - the yuppiness of the place, the music and the crowd, the violet and red with 'ambient lighting' inside, and more than anything else, the fact that you cant ask for "Coffee" and get coffee. The company I keep has coverted me into the Koshy's 12 buck coffee and the Fabindia-ised Alliance cafe types. A dear friend theorised recently that Coffee Day was the new-age Cubbon Park. Just look around, she said, and put these people in the Cubbon Park context - they fit! In those days, though, I was a through and through Coffee Day man. Sipping on the lemon tea that I hated more than I hated beetroot and staring blankly into space as if I was communicating with Him, I was a perfect photograph for promotional material. "Coffee Day - It's More Than Just Coffee".


On this day, I hated Coffee Day even more because the one we decided to visit was empty, except for this loud table occupied by four thugs. With their gold chains and "mamu"s, they looked like the cast of Munnabhai. She was late, and I was feeling uncomfortable in their presence. I wasn't scared, but I didn't feel up to telling them to keep it down.

But this was a visit like no other. This boy was coming to "see" her, and while the parents chatted over filter coffee, dahi-vada, sojji and bajji at home, the "boy" and the "girl" would go away to the Coffee Day nearby to get to know each other better. It was like blind dating. Check out singles in your community. If gotrams are agreeable, parents arrange meeting. If boy and girl are agreeable, get married.

Here, the girl wasn't agreeable, because she was in love with me. Or so I thought at that time. We had arranged the perfect gag - they would come to Coffee Day, I'd be sitting there, pretend to have bumped into her, and would proceed to scandalise the poor boy.

Halfway into my glass of lemon tea, they walked in - the boy, a bespctacled IIT Madras graduate who worked in the US, and the girl, a pretty architect from Madras who the Beatles composed "Girl" for. The Munnabhai boys threw lecherous glances at her - "Kya figure, Mamu!". She looked my way and winked. I waited till they setlled down at a table.

"Hey, hottie!"
"Hottie yourself!" she said. Nice boy wore nervous expression. The girl has guy friends?
Hug. Expression gets nervouser. She punched my tummy and said, "Stopped gymming?"
"You don't come there anymore."
Now the Nice Boy was even more nervous. Girl goes to gym and meets this guy with long hair there. Will she do it once we're married?
"So, new boyfriend"? I asked, pointing at Nice Boy. Nice Boy thought, new? So, there have been old also. How many? Is this hippie-like guy one of them?
"No, he's come to 'see' me!" she said with a laugh.
"Marriage and all aa? I didn't think you were capable. After all you've done..."
Now why did he say that? Is there something I should know? Maybe she had physical relations with other men. Did something happen?
"Stop fucking around," she said.
Hello? She uses the f-word? I use it too, but I'm a guy!
"Do you mind if I..." I said, pulling up a chair. It wasn't a question. All of us knew I was going to sit with them now.
Now he realised he had to do some talking. "So, you've had boyfriends?"
"Three," she said and referring to me, "Could be four also, if you count this guy."
I laughed. So, I was right. This druggie is one of them.
"What about you?" she asked.
"Love failure," he replied earnestly.
***

For days we laughed about his 'love failure' - this girl who dumped him for another software engineer. But all that mocking seemed so ridiculous now. I was a love failure, and he wasn't. At Cubbon Park, she revealed that she was actually going to marry him. Societal pressure, she said. She couldn't wait beyond 26 to get married.

"But we used to laugh about him all the time!"
"He's a nice guy. What we did wasn't right."
"There are so many nice guys in the world! Why him?"
"See. I have to get married now, and this guy's sweet, smart and settled."
"Sweet, smart and settled! Is that what he put up on tamilmatrimony.com?"
"In fact, yes."
"I'm smarter, suaver and so-cool!"
"Um, you aren't ready for marriage."
"Who said that?"
"How old are you?"
"20..."
"Exactly."
"But I will be 21 in like three months."
"You'll marry me? On November 19th?"
"I... I, um, I could."
"I rest my case."

Fine. She was probably right. "But you've never before been too impressed by the settled types..."
"Who? Arjun?"
"Yeah. He was a struggling playwright. Alcoholic. Piss off."
"There was still something about him..."
***

"Stop being struthious!" she screamed.
"I'm being struthious?!" Arjun asked.

I had to butt in, "Um, what does 'struthious' mean?"
"What are you doing here?" she asked, "This is my part of the story!"
"Well, I'm the writer. I have the right to know what my characters mean!"
"Ok. Struthious means 'like an ostrich'".
"Why is Arjun like an ostrich?" One look at the guy told me that he couldn't run too fast, and that he didn't have a long neck.
"You know, ostriches bury their head in the mud. He does that - bury himself in his work all the time."
"I'm a writer, and I'm inspired," he said, "I have to write today and now!"
"If you write such trash when you're inspired... 'Softly the poignant dew drop on the chrysanthemum leaf of the morn...'"
"Morn rhymes with porn," I butted in.
"Just leave me alone. Now."

And she did leave him alone, to his romantic, naturalist, poetic, trashy, brain-softening writing, his worship of Lord Old Monk, subservience to King Romanov, his Smirning-off on richer days, and the King Flakes of Gold that kept him going.
***

She went instead for strapping, Delhi-ite Gaurav who swore, "Woh meri behen jaisi hai." Later, both of them realised they were capable of incest. When she went to Delhi years after their college romance, she insisted on staying with him. I'm not a trusting guy by nature, and decided to make the trip to Delhi to check on her.

To be continued.

Love Brinjal - Part I

This is one of many parts of a story that will, hopefully, appear on this blog at regular intervals. 'Love Brinjal' is a direct translation of one of my favourite Tamil expressions - 'Kaadal Kathhirikka'. All characters in this story are fictional and creations of my imagination. If they bear any resemblance to any characters real, I tender apologies to such characters!
***

"Chill, da. There are other fish in the ocean. You might never find them, but they are there," she said, smiling.

At once, this became the prophecy and curse of my life. Every now and then, I'd get an inkling that the fish I was looking for existed, but I never found it. On many occasions, I'd believe that I had found this fabled fish, sitting next to me in a bus, or at a concert, or at a friend's birthday party. And then she would open her mouth, and very quickly, become another one of those squids that inhabit the ocean. One of the more infamous cases of this was at a bookstore in Delhi. Now this could have happened only in Delhi.

While I was looking through the Indian authors section in a little bookstore on a wintry January evening in Delhi, this girl walks into the shop. Without doubt, she is the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She could have been Miss Universe! (Now, there's another girl I saw much earlier who could have also been Miss Universe, but I'll get to her later.). Women in Delhi, I believed, were too stupid for my psuedo-intellectual, Herman Hesse-reading, discoursing, anti-globalisation self. It was a sweeping generalisation, (All generalisations are usually sweeping!) but I believed it strongly. Until this girl walked into that bookstore. She was a beautiful woman in a bookstore - like Tendulkar playing a cover drive in the Sydney Test - a sight you never thought you'd see. She walked straight towards the Indian authors shelf - towards me! I looked away. I didn't want her to catch me staring. First impressions last long. She looked through the books, occasionally taking one out of the shelf and reading the back page. She was judging the book by its cover - just like me. I had found the fish. After what seemed like seven years to me, and one minute to the rest of the world, it became clear to everyone that she was looking for something in particular. For some reason, she asked me.

"Hey, have you seen that Abhijit Sawant book around?"

I thought of the day when the prophecy was made - the day I was branded an unlucky fisherman. They say knowledge is power. Balls. Knowledge is pain. Now I knew there were other fish in the ocean. Before the day of enlightenment, I would have presumed that there was no fish left, and stopped fishing. But now I knew.

The scene was as filmy as they came. We were at this quiet corner of Cubbon Park, having this intense conversation on the question that would be answered with the Adamsian "42". But then, it probably was not as filmy. Nobody in the movies ended a relationship thinking of fish and oceans. Nobody in movies ended their relationship with the guy saying, "Don't stop me now," referring to the smoking of a cigarette, and both parties smiling. Nobody ended their relationship at Cubbon Park, they sang songs there! Finally, I did something really filmy. When she held out her hand and said, "Let's go," I said, "You go. I'll leave in a while." And when she left me sitting there alone, smoking my first Milds in two months, looking depressed as hell, I was in a movie, every action rehearsed to coincide with the music that slowly drowned out the sounds of Cubbon Park, the camera zooming out, and a sad song taking over.

In a Hindi movie, this would be followed by this sequence where I gatecrash at her wedding and win her back. A French movie might have ended with a scene where she cheats on her husband and I emerge winner. But this one was Woody Allen style, where linearity of time is never really the concern. This one started there. As she walked away, it started drizzling. The drizzle never really went beyond a bracing moisture in the air, although it got more bracing all the time.

**

When I rushed into her house, she was in the kitchen. Making rasam. In an interview, Vishwanathan Anand said that no two women can make the same rasam. They might have learnt from the same person and follow the same recipe, but the rasam is never the same. I haven't heard a truer statement about South Indian women.

"Quick. Get your sruti box out."

"Why?"

"This is the opportune moment to feel good about our music."

She didn't understand what I meant, but got the sruti box and turned it on. I sat on the dining table, and sang five notes. She looked at the sky and replied, "You bastard!"

I continued singing. She kept looking out of the window, and then looking at me and saying, "Not working."

But it was bound to work. It was overcast, and rain was imminent. She joined in, and almost immediately, it started pouring. I don't know if it was my imagination or the truth, but the rain seemed to follow our singing, as if it were dancing to our music. She ran out to the balcony, and in a very movie-like manner, stood in the rain with her arms wide open. I followed suit, and we stood there, on the sixth floor balcony, in heavy rain, with Amritavarshini still playing in our ears, the sruti box droning on in the background, and we kissed.

"Wait... This can't happen" she said, breaking away
"Why?"
"You're too young."
"Five years isn't all that young!"
"You smoke too much," she said.
"That's hardly a reason."
"Have you ever kissed someone who smokes?"
In fact, I had.

***

This was one of those days, three hours after India had thrashed Bangladesh in another inconsequential, insipid one-day. I realised that I felt more and more like the Bangladesh cricket side. Especially when it came to women. From being a geeky, inexperienced bumpkin, I was suddenly thrown amongst a battery of the fairer amongst the fairer sex who seemed to find my lack of charm cute. On this day, I was bowled over by yet another girl, much like the Bangladesh side by Zaheer Khan. I decided at 8 pm that a Milds would brighten my evening, and took my Scooty to the Little Cigarette Shop. On my way back, I got stuck at The Signal as usual - a place where much of my life's exciting events took place. This incident rates amongst the most exciting.

While I puffed on my Milds at The Signal counting backwards from 180 along with the clock, a Thunderbird pulled up next to me. On the Thunderbird was the other woman who looked like she could have been Miss Universe. She asked, "Do you have a light?"

And then there was light, I thought. I was never very eloquent when it came to describing love, or even conceptualising love, and the sad thought was a manifestation of this limitation. 148 seconds remaining. I rummaged my bag for a matchbox. Where the bloody hell had it disappeared? 112 seconds now. She was asking another guy for it. I saw him shake his head. Relief. 99 seconds. It had to be in my bag. But then it wasn't. 80 seconds. Oh, wait. It was in my pocket. Rummage, rummage. 68 seconds. There. I handed it to her. In one smooth movement, she lit the cigarette, and handed me the matchbox. 44 seconds. I was now totally in love.

For some reason, she liked me too. Things progressed and pretty quickly, we were an item - she on her Thunderbird, and me on my Scooty (or sitting behind her) - setting the town on fire. Bangalore was suddenly on top of my favourite cities list, because I discovered the joys of claustrophobia at Pecos, free beer with each food item at Windsor Pub, the cheapness of getting drunk at Ganesh Bar.

One thing irked me, though - the Metal I was forced to listen to. Innumerable concerts spent standing cluelessly in the front row, headbanging to mindless growling, and even more number of nights spent in her room listening to the latest that the Brotherhood of Growlers had to offer. Countless days spent discussing lyrics of the Grand Panjandrums of the Brotherhood, and copious amounts of illicit substances actively or passively consumed.

One day she said, "These lines are so deep - 'reverberations of drowning death, meticulations of reptilian breath.'"

I had had enough of pontification about death! I felt like Bangladesh team again, analysing the end each evening. I quit, and hoped that Bangladesh would too, before all Test Match records became irrelevant.

**