A Sorry Interruption

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Thirteenth Day

This is part of something much, much larger. But it sort of holds up on its own. And, I haven't written in a while and the blog feels neglected. Hence.

***

My grandfather died when I was 17. We lived in Dehradun then, and he died in Madras. My father was a bureaucrat and we lived all over the country. This meant that I met him only when I came to Madras for the holidays, once a year, sometimes twice. 

He was a journalist with the Express, and he wrote a weekly column on politics and current events. Each day, he left for work only after a leisurely lunch. On many days, he never went anywhere. So, we read all the newspapers together. And we deliberated about the news. Our discussions stemmed from what we read, but very soon, we found ourselves far, far away from where we started, debating, discussing, throwing ideas and arguments at each other. I remember refusing to eat for a whole day after a long argument we had on the ethics of begging. I was indoctrinated to never give money to a beggar -- I was encouraging begging, my mother said. But he argued (and I never found out whether he was being serious or just playing devil's advocate) that I was being inhuman. I think I told him I will earn my food, and that he need not give me anything. He let me be hungry until I asked my grandmother for food the next evening. I don't know if that exercise taught me anything else, but it sure taught me hunger. 

I wrote to him regularly when I was away, and he replied unfailingly. He rambled and went off topic in almost every letter. He was often obscure, and he assumed I knew many things. Like, he would write about something he read in the EPW, and say, 'It makes the standard utilitarian arguments.' But I was 12. I didn't know what utilitarian was. It was a wonder that he wrote such precise, clear, forceful editorials week after week. I was, perhaps, his outlet for all that went on in his head. 

One day, I heard him speak at the University of Madras. He spoke on the space where language and culture meet, and linked it to Tamil patriotism. He spoke in a language that was neither English nor Tamil, switching so seamlessly between the two that his tongue had a fully formed structure of its own. I wondered if he was making a subtle point with that exercise. 

His lectures were famous, you know. He had this New Years' Eve lecture each year on contemporary politics and what to look forward to in the coming year, and I was told that the halls would be overflowing and people stood in the aisles for two whole hours. Each political party would send its spies to find out what he lauded and what he criticised. 

It was almost cruel that after a stroke, he lost his ability to speak. He taught himself to communicate through guttural sounds and gesturing, but there was no way he could lecture. He lived like that for four years. He was healthy enough to walk around sometimes, but other times, he was wheeled around by a nurse. 

One day, four months after the stroke, my uncles who lived with him noticed that he was reading a lot of political theory and making furious notes in some old diaries. When people asked him, he revealed nothing. Just a grunt or two dismissing their questions. Then, a month or so later, he demanded that he be taken to the University of Madras library each morning for half a day. My uncles, glad that he still wanted to do something with his life, made the arrangements. 

He read all sorts of journals and essays. He started maintaining boxes and boxes of photocopies. He cut out articles from newspapers each morning and put them in folders. His poor nurse bore the brunt of his compulsive arranging and rearranging. 

He met some of his lawyer friends every other day and spent hours discussing things with them -- apparently, he would write what he wanted to say on a piece of paper, and they would respond vocally. Each night, after dinner, he would write. First, on one-sided paper. Write, edit, rewrite, tear pages, write again… Then, he would transcribe his first draft into notebooks. These were refined with a red pen and fully re-copied. After almost two years, he handed four notebooks to my uncle and asked him to get whatever was written there typed out. 

It was about two hundred pages in print, and it was a meditation on the notion of equality, from its underpinnings in philosophy and political theory to how and why it was the cornerstone of human rights. For him, everything else was negotiable. Equality wasn't. Everything stemmed from equality, he wrote, and so, if we understood the idea, we would understand the entirety of political science. It was a grandiose thought, perhaps a little too sweeping. Still, the grasp over his arguments, his cogency, and the sheer breadth of knowledge made the argument as convincing as it could be. 

He covered equality in interpersonal dealings, you know, between husband and wife, parent and son, boss and employee... "micro-equality". And he covered "macro-equality", in the way Government deals with people, in the way large corporations deal with each other, in how nations negotiated deals... His thesis was that they are all manifestations of the same idea. The prose was like one of his editorials -- sparkling, crackling with wit and wisdom. His ideas were crystal clear. His arguments were as strong as fortresses without being as imposing. It was incredible.

I remember reading it then (while I read it, his voice rang in my ear as if he were reading it out to me) and not really understanding it. My father, though, read it over and over again for months. He made copious notes while he read. He even sent my grandfather three letters about it. He never got a reply. 

My grandfather's health deteriorated almost immediately after he was done with bringing the book out. I had gotten into IIT Delhi by then, and was waiting for college to start. It was a great time to be in Dehradun. Away from the crippling summer on the plains with nothing to do and an admission in a top course in a plum college.   

Each evening, I would go out with this girl and come back really late at night. She was my father's colleague's daughter. Dehra was quite safe, and neither of our parents cared that we were out after dark. I had a motorbike, and we went on long rides to deserted places. She was smart, though she behaved like she didn't like being smart. She was moderately pretty, but behaved like she was much prettier. She had a fascination for scatological humour.

One day, in some thicket, at dusk, we kissed. I hadn't kissed a girl before, and I burst out laughing. She asked me why. I said, "It's strange, isn't it? That we express our fondness by locking lips." She said, "No. We lock lips because it feels good. I'm not fond of you or anything." 

Kissing became a regular feature, although we barely went much further. My hand went inside her shirt once, and I felt her back and worked my way up to her bra when she stopped me. She giggled about it afterwards.

One day, her parents were out of town, and she told me most nonchalantly that she wanted to try having sex. She was a year older, studying in Delhi, and some of her classmates had done it. I was nervous, but she was confident. I was also excited, of course, that some girl wanted to actually do it with me. She insisted, more than once, that she chose me only because I was "available and attractive enough". 

So, we gave it a shot. No pun intended. 

I sent our watchman to buy condoms and swore him to secrecy. I went to her house by afternoon. We kissed first, and I made nervous attempts to take her top off. She broke off suddenly and declared that we must drink a little to make the whole thing more relaxed. I had never drunk before, and I gulped the vodka like it was a glass of buttermilk. She did the same. A couple of rounds of this vodka, and we almost naturally threw ourselves at each other. After some fiddling with each other's clothes and the pack of condoms, we had awkward teen sex… Limbs getting in each other's ways, not really knowing what to grip and how, never sure what can be done and what cannot, not finding the right spots.  

I even remember her saying, "Don't look down there, you pervert!" And I wondered once, loudly, "Ok, if I don't look, how do I know if I'm hitting the right place or not." I was too nervous to even find it funny. Pressure of performance, perhaps. Of course, every now and then, we got going, and we felt that incredible rush of pleasure. But largely, we were like two people looking for treasure in a dark cave with no torches.

I asked her more than once, "Am I in?" and saying, "This condom doesn't let me feel anything, so I'm never sure."

We weren't wholly unsuccessful, although I had expected it to be a lot more fun than it eventually was. She concluded that the foreplay was more exciting than the sex itself. I insisted that it would improve with practice. She said we would practice the following day. I agreed. Still naked and tired, we threw our limbs around each other and fell asleep. 

I woke up way after midnight, much later than the time I usually got back home. For the first time, I experienced that heaviness you have behind your eyes after you've had sex. My head was pounding. I was groggy, I felt like I was under sedatives. I wore my clothes quickly, gave her some desperately breathless goodbye kisses and rushed back home. 

Outside my door, there was this little note, 'Thatha passed away. We have left for Madras. Wait here for instructions.' It was a functional note, no frills. But I could sense their anger at my disappearance. I wondered how they might have rushed to Madras. They would've taken a taxi to Delhi, and a flight from there. I was away from home for almost the entire day, and I had no idea when the note was written. There was no way of telling if they had left in the afternoon and were already in Madras, or if they left in the evening and were now in Delhi. 

I first called my father's friend in Delhi, where we usually stayed. He groggily told me hadn't heard the news, and asked me questions about it. I told him I had no clue. It was three in the morning, and I was scared to call my grandfather's house in Madras. I guessed that my parents would have gone straight to the airport, and taken a flight to Madras. I could hear my father's voice asking me what I had been up to. I decided to call in the morning.

Then, I had this brainwave. I called my brother's hostel -- he was studying management in Ahmedabad then. But someone told me that he had left a few hours ago to Madras because his grandfather had passed away.

It took me almost half an hour to register that my grandfather had died. The first emotion I had was of guilt. Guilt for being away from home when the news came in. Guilt for thinking of how to save my skin for being away, when I should have been grieving over his death. Guilt for having sex when he died… I don't know, it was a combination of all these things, I think. 

That's what made me leave for Madras immediately, without waiting for instructions. I took money from my father's cupboard, and got into the earliest bus to Delhi. Then, I went to the airport, but found the tickets too expensive. After half a day of hoping in vain for tickets on some train, I got into the unreserved compartment on the Grand Trunk Express the next evening. I didn't tell anyone how I was coming. It was the guilt, perhaps. It was also, strangely, a sense of adventure. 

My family in Madras couldn't contact me for two days. In the middle of the mourning over my Thatha's death, there were relatives and friends looking for me in Delhi and Madras. My mother's sister, who lived in Calcutta, flew to Dehra, and asked around. That girl I slept with broke down and confessed to having spent the day with me. She told my aunt that I left at only two in the morning. My aunt and her parents asked her what we were doing till then, she merely cried. This bit of news reached Madras around the same time that I did.

I was coming from two grimy, gruelling, grief-stricken days on the train. I barely spoke for those two days -- there was no one to talk to, really. Even in that crowd, I had found the space to be lonely. The world in my head was in one of two modes -- over-activeness or completely blank. There would either be too many parallel trains of thought -- memories of my grandfather, the wrath of my family, the absolute bizarreness of my instinctive travel, the fuzzy whirl of having sex for the first time, all running in tandem, coiling around each other, swirling, in my mind like a slow-boiling broth -- or absolutely nothing at all. Zilch. A whiteness. A numbness. 

I didn't have a reserved seat, of course, and that provided its own challenges. I would wait for the train to pick up enough speed so that no one could get in or out, and then go to the loo. For two nights, I caught sleep sitting up on a wooden bench between two men. I didn't brush. I barely ate. I didn't have enough money to.

In Madras, I was welcomed by my mother with a resounding slap. I didn't know which of my infractions that was for. She said, "I was mentally prepared to start a parallel funeral for you." I said, "Don't be dramatic," and walked inside. I was tired, and I thought the least I deserved was a chance to bathe and a hot meal. My uncle didn't like my tone, and started screaming at me. I turned around, and said, "You want to wake up the dead with all that shouting?"

The family was too exhausted to respond to that statement. They all stopped talking to me. The next ten days felt like that train journey -- surrounded by hordes of people who didn't want to make conversation with me. My brain, just like the train, was on those two modes, of hyper-activity or numbness. I had many variations on the dream where I was having sex with a much older woman who lived near our house in Dehradun, where she taunted me for not being inside her. Soon, I was crying and asking her to let go of me. She kept saying, "Make me come, I'll let you go." This dream woke me up many times, sweating and thirsty. 

On the sixth day, I went to my grandfather's cupboard and picked up a copy of his book on equality and read it carefully for the next week. I joined my family at meal times, conversed with them in monosyllabic grunts, like my grandfather used to do, and stayed as far away as possible. I frequently took walks around Alwarpet on hot afternoons, getting lost often, to come back hours later. No one asked me where I went or why. No one cared anymore.  

Finally, the thirteenth day came. After the big lunch to which all sorts of people -- academicians, lawyers, doctors, journalists, students, fans -- came, a cousin was asked to sing. He was a few years younger than me, and was already some sort of classical music star. He must've been only twelve or thirteen then.

The house had a large,  partly open hall and a courtyard. My cousin sat on the floor of this hall, on a mat, with an electronic tanpura and sang my grandfather's favourite classical kriti-s. He closed his eyes, cocked his head slightly upwards, and sang. There was little sentiment in his demeanour -- he was too young for that -- but the music was highly emotional. Open throated, slightly rough and loud, the voice filled the hall with great warmth. Hope emanated from that little boy's music. An aunt who hadn't smiled in two weeks, smiled. Two uncles started singing along, while another cousin accompanied them tapping on a table. Someone remarked that my cousin sang just the kind of classical music my grandfather liked. One of the uncle's who sang along imitated how my grandfather would've appreciated the music. The hall resounded with laughter. The woe of my grandfather's loss was replaced by the warmth of his memory. 

Soon, the hall was filled with people telling stories about the departed. Really embarrassing stories. His sister even described how he would fart silently and secretly in public, and how she learnt to recognise it from the expression on his face. There were stories about him and my grandmother disappearing shadily on many afternoons. One of his cousins said he once saw them walk into a nearby lodge. 

The hall was more electric than it had been even when he was around.

After the crowd cleared, my father, who hadn't said a word to me about the entire incident, put his arm around my shoulder and said, "Next time, call me. I'll put you on a flight." I looked at him incredulously, but I realised he meant it. After a long silence, I smiled. He smiled back. My brother, who was within earshot, laughed, and said, "God, you are the real pet. If I had done this, Appa would've disowned me."

For the first time since I saw that note, I laughed. 

Their silence

They sit in silence, staring at an emptying wedding hall. There is a sense of satisfaction in the air, the feeling of completeness. It is like the guests have all collectively, contentedly burped. Her new husband sends some relatives off, somewhere near the entrance to the hall, bidding them farewell, cracking a silly joke or two, promising to visit them soon in their distant towns. 

They look at around the hall, still in silence, and they turn to each other. She smiles, he smiles. They turn away and continue staring at the hall. 

She wonders what they are to each other. They are friends, she concludes. They have always been. They met, three years ago, as friends. They worked in offices that weren't far from each other, they knew common people. 

They met for lunch often. Sometimes, they planned it. Other times, they just landed up at the same little dosa place at the same time, often knowing the other was likely to be there. He always ate a rava masala dosa and followed it up with a mini coffee. She studied the menu and ordered carefully -- sometimes elaborate and sometimes minimal. They ate mostly in silence. Every now and then, one of them would say a sentence or two, and the other would nod.

One day, he declared he had a crush on a friend of hers. She nodded. The next day, her friend was with her at lunch. Conversation flowed that afternoon between him and her friend. They met a few times after that, but that died out. "It didn't work out with your friend," he told her, "She wasn't really interested." She only nodded. 

One evening, they went for a long, silent walk down the beach. For some reason, they held hands. They didn't say much about it that evening, and they never discussed its significance. 

They met more often after that. They went on long drives to nowhere in particular, they went for movies whose names they didn't register, and plays they didn't know anything about. They ate, they drank.

They spoke more than they did earlier, trading sentences that had little to do with one another, interspersed with lengthy nothings. They had little to talk to each other about. He read, she didn't. She watched sport, he didn't. Their musical tastes were vastly different. But their silences spoke the same language, their silences had common interests, their silences understood each other like their conversations never did. 

Love came and went in waves. One day, it lashed against them, throwing them off balance, goading them to hold each other for support. Then, it receded, silently, before gearing up to hit them again. They stood in the sea, soaking in the waves silently. 

Only twice did they make attempts to express their fondness for each other in words. The first time, she said, "I want to be kissed." He said, "Let's not complicate us." The second time, after a spontaneous bout of incredible kissing, he asked, "Will you marry me?" She dismissed him with, "You're drunk," before proceeding to bite his ear. 

They are friends, she concludes amidst the winding-up of the wedding. His silence indicates that he's come to the same conclusion. Their silences have decided - they can't always be with each other. The waves come, but they always go back. 

But they know that they will always share these special silences. Nothing, not her wedding, not his, can take that away.

Blogger

For some years now, I've been reading a blog by a woman from Japan. I don't know her name, I don't know what she looks like. I know she writes. I know she's been working on a Japanese novel. I know that she finds it weird that her novel is in Japanese, but her blog is in English. She thinks she has an identity-crisis, but, as she asks her readers in one post, 'Don't we all?' 

I don't know if she does anything else for a living. If her blog is to be believed, she does have a lot of wandering time. In both senses -- she has the time to wander, and time does wander around her. This suggests she doesn't hold a regular job - at least not the variety that requires you to swipe your smart-card in at 9 am each morning and swipe it when you leave at 6 pm in the evening.

I don't know how old she is. She talks of college in the past tense; she must be twenty at least. She once talked of going to the countryside for an older cousin's wedding. This suggests she isn't 30 yet. Her tone, her life, her world, all suggest she's in her mid-20s. I don't know if she has a boyfriend. She talks of men here and there, she talks of even sleeping with them. But she doesn't reveal more. She does ruminate on relationships, usually in the past tense, and her posts reveal she didn't like at least one. Something tells me she's single now, although if you ask me for conclusive proof, I can't give it to you.

Her writing is beautiful. More beautiful than you or I could ever dream of writing. It's taut, it's precise, it's clear. It's vivid, it's vivacious, it's whacky.

Her writing is delightful. And sad. Sometimes both at the same time. Sometimes she says nothing sad, she just chronicles what she had for breakfast, but you can sense a sadness in her tone. Sometimes, she says a lot, her posts run to pages and pages, but she says very little. I wonder, when I read those posts, if she's blocking something out of her mind with a shield of words.

I think she has no other reader. No one leaves any comment on any post. But nor do I. I just read and leave quietly.

I read each post of hers many times over. Often, she says just what I want to say. Sometimes, I have no idea what she's going on about -- either the references are too Japanese, or she deliberately hides behind a veil. Still, I read them. Still, every post lodges itself inside me. Her words come out, in conversation, like they are my own. Her ideas form the core of my own writing.

Once in a while, I tell people that the idea I just discussed with them was something I read in an odd Japanese woman's blog. They give me a strange look when I tell them this. Some people tell me I'm a stalker. That I'm unnaturally interested in another person's life. That this is a dangerous obsession. I laugh at them and tell them that I'm not really that obsessed.

But I know, somewhere, somehow, that I am. I know that I can recite some of those posts like they were poems in my fourth standard textbook. Love is too far-fetched a word, and infatuation is too complicated a word to describe what I feel towards her. A fondness. That word rings true, I think. I am fond of her. Very fond of her.

It has been three months since she last posted -- she used to post every other day until then. I waited a full month before leaving this comment: "If I say I miss you, will you come back and write more?" I go to her blog every day, hoping there's something new. There never is. I open the last post and eagerly scroll down to the comments, only to find, "Your comment is awaiting moderation." 

I guess I'll have to wait a while longer. 

Her Obviousness - V

Sorry for the delay.
***

It is nearly two-thirty AM, and I am at the Chennai Central station. That unearthly humidity hangs in the air amidst moderate to not-so-moderate temperatures, the sea-breeze bids goodbye for the day with an unsaid promise to return tomorrow, the ineffective air-conditioning whirs, trying to drum up some enthusiasm. People lie in various levels of comatose, on steel chairs, plastic bucket-chairs, on suitcases, bags, dhurries, newspapers fashioned as dhurries, on hard concrete, or on the cool marble flooring in the new waiting room. Some are waiting for trains that should have come yesterday, others have trains to catch tomorrow. Some work here, others have no other place to sleep.

A nasal voice makes occasional announcements in three languages, the sort where some numbers, like six, are high-pitched, others, like three, are low-pitched, and the rest, like seven, are of medium pitch. Prefixed and suffixed by a gong, the whole thing sounds like a Vedic recitation.

Most of the shops are closed; a tea shop with an incongruously awake and alert shopkeeper is open, and so is another little hole in the wall that stocks chips, biscuits, fried knickknacks, chocolates, sweets, soda, and cup noodles. The noodles excite me, and I help myself to a cup. In my hurry to eat, I open the cup too early, and the noodles aren't boiled enough. But I am hungry, I gobble them up eagerly.

My idea of spending the night at the railway station doesn't seem very smart anymore. Gopal left last night, with Sundari, to Bangalore. Their train was at eleven-fifteen. Uma arrives, from Bangalore, by a train scheduled to arrive at four-thirty, but often arrives earlier. It sounded like the soundest of plans - drop Gopal, say bye, act like I'm going back home; once the train leaves, slip back into the waiting hall, and wait for Uma's train - but it isn't.

I have two hours to kill now. Sleeping is an option, and it sure seems like the most desirable option at the moment, but I fear that the sheer coolness of this exercise will be lost if I slept through it. I want to tell people, "You know, I once spent the night at the Central station, and there, I saw..." Somehow, "You know, I slept at the Central station one night," just doesn't cut it. It doesn't have the makings of a tellable story.

But staying awake hasn't given me any stories either. I'm sandwiched between a fat man who snores like an asthmatic rhinoceros and a drunk whose head has comfortably settled itself on my left shoulder. The station is lifeless. No, wait, it isn't lifeless, there is surprising amount of activity, but nothing worth reporting. People are doing what people do in a railway station - waiting for trains. This exercise is heading towards resounding flop.

The word 'flop' that passed fleetingly through my conscious makes me wonder if I'm spending the night in this station only because I want to tell this story to someone. If that is the reason, I could just make up a story - tell people that I saw a young couple who looked suspiciously like they had just eloped, or that there was this man who delivered a shady looking bag to another man who quickly tucked it within his t-shirt and disappeared. Real-life untrue stories are easy to invent - the art is in striking a balance between the reassuring boundaries of possibility and the subtle thrill of the marginally unordinary.

But this doesn't answer the original question - am I here for a narratable story, or am I here just for the experience? Do I want to tell myself that the station holds no apparent stories? I say "apparent", because each person here, in this newer waiting hall, must have a reason for why he or she is in the station. Some might have finished a job assignment of some sort, some might be visiting relatives. Someone might have come to Madras for a funeral, a wedding, an engagement, or one of those undefined "family functions" and someone else could be going somewhere for one.

One of these guys might be missing his girlfriend or wife terribly, and might be going back to see her. On a whim. Another might be going back to see some girl his parents have lined up for him. Overcome by shyness, he will probably look at her through the corner of his eyes, while his father asks her what her hobbies are. He will hope that she can sing. The old lady sleeping in the far corner might be visiting her son, she might be upset that her daughter-in-law, from another religion, cannot be bossed around - or she might be happy that her daughter-in-law has found a voice she never found.

For the vendor in that tea stall, afternoons might be as exciting as nights - he probably hasn't seen one in years. The afternoon air, like the night air to me, is alien to him. His sleeping self knows it well, but his consciousness is unaware. Lunch is like dinner, going for a matinee is like a night-show.

None of the people in the waiting hall look like holidayers, though, except the two foreigners I saw entering the AC waiting lounge. That is strange. Do Indians not go on holidays? Or do the Indians that go on holidays not wait in the halls of railway stations?

I wonder - am I here to ponder over these life-altering issues? Create stereotypes for sleeping people in the station? Am I here out of sheer laziness? Do I not want to drive up and down twice in five hours? But if I am lazy, I should sleep. So, I reject that idea. I guess I am here because I find an excitement in this, an adventure even. When Uma arrives, I will tell her that I've been here all night, and she will think I'm strange. I like people thinking I'm strange. But there I go again, defining myself in terms of how people will think of me. Is everything I do just for effect?

It is shocking how innocent boredom can lead one to rethink one's life.

I bury myself in the book that keeps me company - a collection of Raymond Chandler's not-so-short stories. The one I'm reading is called Trouble is my Business. Chandler writes in stereotypes. The men in his books come in five varieties - the gritty, world-weary, sarcastic, Philip Marlowe, who "collects blondes and bottles"; the rich old men with slightly dishonourable backgrounds, whose money the world is after; the  smart, suave, smooth, big-time gangster, (though Marlowe eventually shows he's smarter, suaver, smoother) who has a convoluted plan to get the rich old man's fortunes; the honest, hardworking small-time crook, the sort that needs the money, the sort that is willing to work for it, the sort that's not wily enough to be the big-time gangster; aad lastly, the dumb small-time crook, who says stupid things and indulges in random acts of violence before sleeping the big sleep. The women in Chandler's books, they're from another world. A character says about one of them, "Every time I think of that dame, I have to go out and walk around the block,". He invented the femme fatale - the maddeningly alluring, coldly calculative, morbidly manipulative sort, whose only fault seems to be that she cannot keep her hands off Marlowe.

In a sense, he does just what I did a while ago - sees faces in a crowd, and categorises them into pigeon-holes he invents for himself, and writes stories around them. There is a joy in stereotyping, there is a joy in telling stories about caricatures.

The story simmers and rages to a chilling end. Marlowe ends up with the girl, but only briefly - he has to be available for the next girl in the next story. He says this girl was nice, but he doesn't have "the money, the clothes, the time or the manners". I smile. I'm like this, sometimes. I don't have the time, the money, the clothes or the manners. The only difference is that I hate to admit it to myself.

There are three stories left in the book, all enticingly dangerous, but I need a break. I get up to buy myself some tea. As I near the tea shop, I wonder if that's a good idea - it might affect my sleep. But again, how much will I sleep once Uma arrives?

I don't even know why she wants to spend the weekend here. She's getting married in the wee hours of next Sunday, there is a cocktail party the Saturday before, and a soporific reception on Sunday night. I am sure there are lots of things she has to do - shopping, planning, inviting. Maybe she needs space to do something she hasn't done enough of - pondering. She's unsure of Arun, or she's unsure of the permanence of marriage. But marriages are not necessarily permanent, she knows that. Maybe that's what worries her.

I'm being presumptuous, I know, she's probably tired and just wants to sleep. The more I think of it, the more convincing it sounds. She has had too much wedding planning over the last few months, and wants to get away for a weekend, think of other things, and go back to Bangalore fresh.

I amble to the tea shop, and ask for tea. And then I change my mind, hot milk might be a better idea. "No sugar," I tell him. He tells me in a grumpy mumble that the sugar is already in the milk. I give him six rupees, and take the paper cup from his hand. He asks, "What sir? Diabetes already?" much more brightly. I smile, "No, no. I just don't like sugar in milk." I sip on the milk, it isn't all that sweet after all.

He asks, "Are you Kannada?" I'm surprised, but he explains, "Your Tamil accent..." I nod. He adds, "Also, you are very fair. First, I thought you were a North Indian, after I heard you speak Tamil, I realised you might not be." I smile again. I take another sip from the paper cup, and feel the warmth go down to my stomach. I have no obligation to stand there, I know, but I remain. He continues, "You don't talk much, do you? I jabber away to everyone who comes to the shop - I have to stay awake, no?" I smile again, I really don't know what to add to this conversation.

He continues, undaunted, "I come here three days a week. You know, if you come here every day, it's not too bad. But when you come here three days a week, your sleep gets disturbed. Your body, you know, it has a clock inside it." This is where I switch off. He speaks for a while on body clocks, afternoon naps and various domestic issues that invariably end with him not being able put mutton on the table for his family. My cup is nearly empty, I keep up the polite nods and hmmm-s.

He asks, "Sir, what train are you taking?"
I say, "I'm just waiting for the Bangalore train... Have to pick up someone."
He looks at the large station clock, and his eyes widen, "Sir! You're too early! The train will not come for another half an hour."
I wonder if I should tell him that I've been waiting all night. I don't. I just make some noise that suggests that I know.
Like a bolt from the blue, he asks, with a twinkle in his eye, "Sir, girlfriend aa?" I glare. He grins. My glare turns to a smile, I put the empty cup of milk on the counter, and leave.

The train chugs in purposefully almost exactly half an hour after I finish my milk, just like the tea-stall vendor predicted. Pairs and pairs of groggy eyes stare out the grilled windows, the enthusiastic stand at the door (in a tearing hurry to alight, of course), and the lazy will wake up only when the porters wake them up.

Uma emerges from one of the air-conditioned compartments in a loose t-shirt and bright orange pyjamas, hair tied-up in a haphazard bun, carrying a backpack and another little bag. She sees me, smiles, and her step quickens in my direction.

"I've missed you," I say, hugging her. She doesn't say anything, not even a hi. A smile of contentment fixes itself on her face and she clutches my arm fondly as we walk to the car, wordlessly holding hands. This was the typical Uma emotion - a muffled sort of joy.

We reach the car when she breaks her silence, "New car?"
I look at the grey WagonR - I only bought it to bring a modicum of respectability into my existence - with stifled pride, and say, "Yeah. Like it?"
She throws her bag into the backseat, settles down in front and says, her voice barely betraying emotion, "It is a little uncle-ji..."
Only Uma can talk like this - say something that someone else might have said with a twinkling eye, a wink or tongue firmly in cheek in the most inexpressive manner.

The parking fee comes to seventy-five rupees for six hours, and I rummage in my wallet for change when Uma asks, "When did parking at this station become this expensive?"
Avoiding her eye, I say,"I spent the night at the station." She doesn't ask me for an explanation, but I find myself constrained to offer one, "I dropped Gopal and that girl..."
"Can't bring yourself to say her name?" she asks, again, in that same distant tone.
"Nothing like that! Pah!"
She smiles. "What is he up to in life?"
"Gopal?"
"Yes."
"He's writing a book of some sort."
She stares out of the window for a long time, observing early morning Madras. I don't think this city is especially pretty. Large parts of it are just dusty brownish grey buildings and dusty brownish grey roads. She throws her hands out and feels the wind against her arms. Then, she asks, "Fiction?"
I have forgotten what we were talking about. She asks again, "Gopal's book - is it fiction?"
"God, no." I say, cackling. She looks at me questioningly. "He tried writing this novel some time ago... I told you."
"Oh. That one," she says, with her hands still outside the window, "I was surprised when you told me it was bad. He wrote some really good plays, you know."
"I thought he only acted."

Uma first saw Gopal at a rehearsal for a play for which she designed costumes and sets. He played an odd character whom nobody, not even the playwright, fully understood. The character was on stage even as the audience were settling in and sat on a high stool at the back of the stage, looking around expectantly, checking his watch a couple of times, not too fidgety, not too dispirited - just like a person waiting for a show to start. The play started. Gopal's character, who had no name, reacted to the play like the audience - he laughed at the jokes, he gasped when he was surprised, he frowned when he was confused and nearly cried at the climax. He didn't speak a word, he didn't get off the stool or get involved in the story.

No one was told what or who he was, but everyone remembered him.

A reviewer, who noted that a couple of characters in the play referred to the eyes of God always watching over men and their actions, wrote that "Gopalakrishnan as God watching over us, was an eerie presence." Someone else called Gopal a mirror, "...an interesting device to show the audience who they are." A third review said, "The unsettling story was accentuated by an unexplained panopticon-like person scrutinising the proceedings."

At the rehearsals, for days, Uma did not even know Gopal was a character in the play. He sat on the stool for the three hours as actors rehearsed and re-rehearsed their lines, blocked their movements, the director stopped the play every now and then to issue orders or discuss something, the backstage crew figured out their parts. And when it ended, he got off the stool, hung around in the background for a couple of minutes, and without saying a word, left. It was like he was in character throughout. Only ten days before the show, when he asked Uma what he should wear did she realise he was actually going to do on stage what he did every day in the rehearsals.

After four shows, one afternoon, Uma came to the rehearsal to see Gopal engaged in an enthusiastic debate with the director over the finer points of a new script. "Uma, can you read this and tell me if you like it?" the director asked, "This guy here, Gopal, he wrote it." Uma gave him a searching look, but he hardly reacted.

Soon, the rest of the players arrived, and the rehearsal proceeded as usual. When they were leaving, the director called Uma aside and said, "I think the play is brilliant, but I have a crush on this guy and I want someone to read it objectively." Uma smiled.


The play is set in the drawing room of a bare Brahmin-looking house somewhere in Madras. A woman, a violinist, waits for her brother, who was once a child-prodigy Carnatic violinist, to come home after fifteen years. She has a little argument with the help who insists she has been too jumpy all morning. Their stern father, a legendary violinist himself, is barely alive - the world doesn't know if he even comprehends life around him. Everyone hopes the return of his favourite son will help.

The son, now a photographer living anonymously in Delhi, arrives. We learn that the son ran away from his talents years ago. The reasons are ambiguous - a combination of his father's over-disciplining, pressures of being constantly reminded of his genius, and an aversion to incessant travelling is hinted at.

His sister says, "Appa was jealous of him, I think. He told me, 'I spent two years learning to play that raagam perfectly. He took two hours.' It wasn't a vindictive sort of jealousy. No. But it made him push my brother more than he should have been pushed. The jealousy drove my father to want to be a part of my brother's genius, by moulding him and mentoring him too much." 

The son shows little interest in his father who invisibly disintegrates, but takes a fancy for his young student - a girl from the US. Their repartee, musical and conversational, culminates in a tender moment where the son reveals a story he had been hiding within himself for years.

"When I was fourteen, I had a concert in a town near Ernakulam," he starts, "I can't remember the name of the place now. It was in the evening, and when I reached the station in the morning, there was an unexpected thunderstorm. The venue for the concert was an open air place and I expected the concert to be cancelled. But it wasn't - this was Kerala, right? A fairly decent audience showed up, and stood in the rain holing umbrellas.

"This sort of thing should have inspired me, but it didn't. I played horribly, losing focus, trying strange ideas that I never tried before, being very fractured and insipid. It was like I was deliberately trying to get rid of the audience. But they refused to leave. Every single one of them stayed till the end and left silently.

"When the concert ended, I had this thought that I wasn't able to get out of my head - that the entire trip had been slightly wrong. My mother usually saw me off when I left for the railway station. This time, she was asleep. There was too much salt in the curd rice she packed for the journey. I usually called her before every concert, to discuss the concert plan with her, but the rain meant that there was no working telephone around. I usually called her after every concert again, but I couldn't.

"I had another concert after this. In Bangalore. And I was supposed to take a train from Ernakulam. On the way from this town to Ernakulam by taxi, the rain suddenly stopped. It was unseasonal rain, and the driver said it was just a passing cloud.

"I tried to sleep, but I couldn't. On the way, I saw a hill with a temple on top that took my fancy. The hill was not very tall, and it stood out in the flat coastal landscape. There was this bright light coming from the temple - someone had lit a really large fire. I asked the driver if I could go see it. My train was much later in the night, I had a lot of time to kill.

"The driver told me that there was a road two-thirds the way up the hill, but I had to climb the last stretch. I could do that, I told him. He asked me, 'Sir, don't you want to make that phone call home? You will not find a phone until the station now.' I considered that question for a second, because he delivered it like it was some kind of warning.

"But I ignored him, and asked him to go. We snaked up the hill road through some really dense forests - the vegetation did not look that dense from the bottom. There was one thing, though. We could see the light from every part of the road. At one point, the road just ended. The driver said, 'I'm too old to climb, sir. But just follow the mud path. It is a little steep towards the end, but you should be able to manage fine.'

"I trudged along the path that climbed gradually, and it was much like the road - snaking around the hill carefully. It was very unlike a path made by people on foot, which tend to cut corners and go through little crannies. It was as if someone deliberately wanted you to be able to see the light until you reached the top.

"At some point, the path narrowed and led itself into this shrubbery of sorts. The path was lined by four feet of dense bushes on each side. It got steeper, but never too tiring. It was getting slightly darker as I climbed, and the light shined even brighter.

"I tripped over a stone, after which I tread carefully, my eyes glued to the little road. The last part of the path led into a rock-formation tunnel, which was hardly fifteen feet long, and when I emerged from it, I was at the top. The climb was rather easy, and I wondered why the driver said he was too old to make it.

"It took me a couple of seconds to realise that there was something wrong - the light had been put out. There was light, but that was from the fading day. The temple was deserted, the door was locked with an old padlock that looked like it hadn't been disturbed in decades. There was no smoke, no sign of any flame having been lit anywhere.

"Dejected, and frankly, quite spooked, I hurried down the path, through the rock-tunnel, the shrubbery and the forest back to the taxi. The driver was fast asleep, and I woke him up. I told him what I saw, and unfazed, he said, 'Oh, they lock it after six, I think. The fire would have gone out once the firewood ran out.' It was a completely plausible explanation, but there was one flaw. There was no other way down from the hill, and I saw no one pass me while I climbed up. The driver remained silent when I asked him about this. Something in his silence suggested that I shouldn't probe more.

"I reached the station by around ten at night. By this time, the phone booth was also closed. Again, that thought struck me - that something was amiss. I bought myself a pack of biscuits and a cup of tea for dinner, and got on to the train to Bangalore.

"I reached Bangalore in the morning, not having slept for most of the night, and found the sabha secretary and his wife at the station. They were to send their driver, but they came. Instead of being pleasantly surprised by their presence, I was disconcerted. This trip was not going to plan at all. I got down from the train, and they asked me to sit down on a nearby bench. I asked them what was happening. The lady merely asked me to drink some coffee. The secretary told me that my mother was seriously unwell, and handed me a train ticket to Bangalore - the train was to leave in minutes.

"I rushed to Madras to find out that my mother died even before I reached Ernakulam.

"My father didn't know how to contact the sabha in that small town... No one even remembered the name of the town. When they finally found out the details, they couldn't contact the place because the phone lines were down and it was impossible for anyone from Ernakulam to travel in that rain. The messenger set out as soon as the rain stopped, but by the time he reached, I had left for the station. My father was forced to contact the sabha secretary in Bangalore."

He paused for a long time, before saying, "I felt I had to run away that day. And I did."

At the end of this story, the young girl hugs the son comfortingly, and soon, the hug evolves into a kiss and the lights fade out.

Next morning, a lady arrives at the house and declares herself to be the son's live-in girlfriend. They even have a two-year-old daughter.


Here, the script that Uma read said, "Interval." She put it down, picked up her phone, called the director and said, "Do the play."
***

To continue.

Gaze

At a lecture on native language and Indian English writing, I first felt his gaze upon me. It had this reassuring warmth, as if I were sitting at the perfect distance from a campfire in mild winter. It came from three rows in front of me combating the harsh air-conditioning, enclosing me in its cosiness - it was like he picked the ideal spot to get a clear view. The gaze was distant, but pointed; it was welcoming I smiled at him, once, and he turned away immediately. After that, I pretended not to notice, and he pretended not to look. The gaze followed me after the lecture, as I walked through the lobby, down the stairs and into an auto.

A week later, I felt the gaze on my neck, from behind me, at a book launch. I was surprised to see him, and that manifested itself in a smile. He was bolder now, he smiled.

I remember his face vaguely - it was shaped like an elongated egg and punctuated by a round nose that ended almost as soon as it started. His hair could only be described the word nondescript. His eyes were as genial as his gaze. He wore a dangling earring in one ear - but that was a fashion fiasco I could live with (or eliminate).

There was this moment, after the launch, when we passed each other, a colony of butterflies fluttering in my tummy, when I hoped he would say something. He didn't.

The gaze was upon me frequently over the next few weeks, at a concert here, a play there, at the beach, even at a bookstore. He often moved in my direction, exciting those butterflies each time, but never said hello.

I am in a concert now, and I feel a warmth that I only vaguely remember now. I turn around, to see an elongated egghead and nondescript hair. I am in the blanket of his gaze now. The earring has disappeared - perhaps he works in a cultured atmosphere - and his eyes look tired, but the gaze still envelops me snugly, and I can still feel it upon me even when I'm not looking.

The concert starts, I drown in the tambura's drone and melt into the song.

The concert ends, I head out into the cavernous lobby. He approaches me, with purpose this time. The butterflies wake up from a six year slumber.

He talks, finally, in a baritone warmer than his gaze, with clarity of expression that suggests he has practiced this speech, "Some years ago, I came across a short story by Haruki Murakami. About this guy and girl who walk past each other, but don't make conversation."
I say, smiling, "They know they are 100% perfect for each other..."
"And yet, they don't talk. They just walk past."
"And the guy says he knows exactly what he would have told her had he walked past her now."
"Yeah. He'd tell her a story."
"One that starts with 'Once upon a time...' and ends with, 'A sad story, don't you think?'"
"Yes... That story."

We pause, breathlessly, and I say, "Sorry for ruining your speech."
He says, "I like the way it went." He pauses, and says, "You disappeared." He wants an explanation, I think.
"I moved. I don't live here now. I'm only visiting..."
"Oh," he says, indeterminately. If he intends to convey sadness, he fails. He asks, "Coffee?"
I cannot, I know, but I make it look like I'm giving it some thought before saying, "I should be going, I'm in a hurry."

I walk away, leaving him jolted. The gaze is on the back of my neck until I disappear amidst the crowd. I walk out to the blustery evening, and wait on the pavement until a car pulls up. My daughter waves at me from behind the glass. I open the door, hurry into the warmth of the car-heating, and close my eyes. The car stereo starts - I drown in the tambura's drone and melt into the song.

Her Obviousness - Part IV

Chandni Kedar floats around the terrace, the melody forms a part of the atmosphere, its phrases, the pulse of the teentaal bandish I picked up from that recording rings in the air.

My music isn't deep, ever. Even when I ponder, like I often do, I only ponder the notes, only ponder the glides, the connections, the phrases of the raag. I read of music and its higher purposes in many books; for me, music is what it is, my purpose is the raag, my contemplation is the ornateness of the notes that make it up. I wonder if my music lacks pathos as a result. I have a feel for music, I know; my haphazard training has meant that it has developed primarily through feel and not through mechanised training. I wonder if I should, for instance, contemplate the moonlight as I play Chandni Kedar, make the listener feel its softness through the music. But then, if I just meditate on the raag, shouldn't its natural construction emit the feel it is supposed to?

It's not like I haven't tried. I meditated on a radiant light while I played Deepak, but the raag suffered. I tried playing like the rain when I played Megh Malhar, but I realised that I could play many raags like the pitter-patter of the rain or the pounding of a thunderstorm. I wonder if these purposes are too obvious. What is the purpose, say, of Bhairavi? Or Gaud Saarang?

Sundari keeps beat with the drut teentaal in the Carnatic style. In some ways, I like it, it gives me a framework to play within. But it distracts me. I finish the drut with two long rounds of improvisation, and end with a complicated set-piece of threes. Even Gopal, hard as he is to impress with music, seems suitably soothed.

I am out of practice, though, I can feel it. Some phrases don't come out the way I want them to, some don't have the right feel, others don't pack the right punch. The stresses are a little off and the clarity of expression doesn't match the clarity of my thought. In improvisational music, what you imagine and what you execute must be a part of the same transaction; you must not be able to tell one from another, each must flow from the other, each must push the other. If your physical faculties struggle to keep up with your imagination, cyclically, your imagination suffers. Today, after this downward-spiraling internal tussle between idea and expression, I know that I not only have a long way to go, I also have to re-traverse the path I have un-traversed in the last month.

If you ask me why I haven't played the sarod for a month, I won't be able to give you a satisfactory answer. I haven't been all that busy, I admit - I am at home on most days by seven, on some days, even earlier. But I've spent my evenings vegetating on obscure sites on the internet, solving crossword puzzles, reading conflicting opinions on socio-economic-political issues (often ones that have no relevance to my existence - like the healthcare systems in the United States), going through blogs and profiles of women I will never meet, watching videos of cute babies, virtuoso musicians, mimicry artistes, ridiculous Sandalwood song-and-dance routines. I have spent them getting lost amongst cheap plots in cheap novels of espionage, intrigue, thrill, women of otherworldly allure, popular science, popularly wrong or popularly misleading science, ingenious methods of mass destruction, imagined motives, imagined communities, imagined realities.

Somewhere, it begins with a laziness to pick up the instrument and sit down with it. This laziness slowly transforms itself into guilt, and every evening, when I come back, a voice inside my head tells me to play, and I plead with the voice for some time to let my mind calm down after work. Before I know it, time evaporates from under my nose, I droop off, and wake up the next morning. My mind turns numb to the pricking of this guilt in a few days, and soon, the musiclessness becomes a part of my routine.

The sarod, unlike some other instruments, requires a proper sit-down session - it needs space, physically and mentally, it needs time, it needs a single-minded devotion. I told myself, over the last month, that my job did not give me this space, and that my music would, naturally, erode and die. How easy it is to lie to yourself.

All that was until I encountered Viayat Khan's Chandni Kedar recording, Live at the Taj, the cover says, accompanied by his brother, Imrat Khan on the surbahar, an instrument with a hauntingly deep, low, bass timbre. Here was a Kedar with a quirk, the komal nishad that made fleeting appearances to liven up proceedings. And every time I played it, Sundari opened her twinkling eyes, and gave me a look of pleasant surprise.

"Too beautiful!" Sundari says, when I finish my rendition.
"Thanks."

There is a long silence, only punctuated by Gopal's incessant fiddling with his phone. Avantika sips her glass of water poignantly, and I suspect it might not just be water.
"Who is your teacher?" she asks.

Avantika laughs, "Tell her," and turns to Sundari, "This is his favourite story."

I am flushed, it is my favourite story. It is the only thing I'm proud of.

"No one taught me," I say. "One of my uncles," the one who made that prophecy, "Is a collector of musical instruments. During a trip to Benaras, he discovered this sarod made in a style that was abandoned a hundred years ago for the newer model. He wanted to buy it, but the guy who owned the shop refused to sell it. He offered to make one in the same model, though. My uncle brought that replica back, proudly, and showed it off to everyone. I just picked it up, and started fiddling around... I was around eleven then, you know. In six months, I began playing some small tunes - film songs and stuff, you know, Didi tera dewar...
"No one taught the sarod in Mangalore - that's where I grew up - so, I learnt from another uncle, who is a vocalist, mimicking whatever he did on the voice on the instrument."

"His technique is almost blasphemous sometimes," Avantika juts in, "It shocks sarod players' consciences. I've seen that look on some of their faces, it's too funny!"

"That is super-cool!" Sundari says, "As in, you learnt all the instrument techniques from scratch? All by yourself?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
"Impressive, man."
Gopal says, suddenly jumping into the conversation from the corner of the terrace, "This Uji only looks like an unimpressive bumpkin. He's actually a dude. In other words, he's the opposite of what I am!"
This is Gopal fishing for a compliment. I don't react, but Sundari falls for the bait, "What are you saying? You're really a stud, man! You're doing a cool fellowship, you write so well, you're on TV all the time..."
"I live in a little shit-hole in T.Nagar with an aged uncle. I have no job, I have nothing I want to do." He is taking this too far now, but Sundari laughs this bait off.

"Are you guys drinking vodka?" I ask.
Avantika laughs, "Yeah. Want some?"
I walk into the apartment, and holler from inside, "Yo! What are you guys drinking this with?" I know that my fridge has no soft-drinks or juices.
"Cold water!" Gopal says. That is disgusting, vodka with cold water. I fish out some whiskey from my cupboard and fix myself a drink with ice.

Just then, I get an SMS, from Uma, "Awake?"

I call her back immediately, "Hello!"
"What's up!" she exclaims in a way in which only she can, mixing the excitement with a slice of restraint.
"I'm just drinking whiskey! What's up with you?" I ask, sipping my whiskey. It is a single-malt, bootlegged from Pondicherry, and goes down my parched gullet eagerly.
"Coming for the wedding, no?" Uma asks, sounding slightly tense.
"Of course! Why are you even asking?"
"Generally..." She pauses. I sense that she wants to tell me something else, but doesn't know how to. I wait for a few seconds for her to say something, before changing the topic to my eccentric guests, and the mini-performance on the terrace.
"The girl must be cute!" she says.
"Gopal has his eyes on her," I say, dryly. Then I add, remembering suddenly, "You remember that party where I first met you?"
"Vaguely!" she says, sounding vague.
"Yeah. So, I met this girl there. I even spoke to her for some time. But she doesn't remember me at all!"
"You reminded her of your conversation?" she asks, matter-of-factly.
"No! But we spoke for quite a while. And I remember her so clearly."
"Uji, did you say, 'Hey! Remember, we met at that party?'" she says, imitating my voice alarmingly accurately.
"No, man!" It is a ridiculous question to ask, I'm sure.
"Well, then how do you know she doesn't remember you?"
"She spoke about that party, she spoke about seeing Gopal there. Hell, she remembers you!"
"Hmmm," Uma says.

There is another pause, again awkward, where I sense Uma wants to tell me why she called, but she isn't able to bring herself to. We speak of other things. We discuss each other's jobs for a while. She writes on films and drama for a living, and she tells me that she has this idea for a book of famous stills from Indian cinema, with some comments on each of them. Her choices veer between the cliched and the eccentric. She has the immortal beam of light from Kaagaz ke phool in mind, she also thinks of the last freeze-frame in Charulata. From Sholay, she tells me of a shot of Jaya on the balcony - I don't recollect it, but she assures me it is worth it. She wants to include a couple of shots from an Adoor Gopalakrishnan movie I haven't seen. "Gopal was named after him, you know?" she says. We discuss this and more for a bit, until I get through many more sips of my whiskey, before I get impatient, "Listen, Uma. You didn't call me for this chit-chat, did you? Because I have to go back to my guests at some point."

Uma laughs nervously, and says, "Ok. Listen. I am getting really nervous about this wedding."
"Next Sunday, right? Isn't it a little late to be getting nervous?"
"Better now than after, I think."
I laugh, and ask, "What are you nervous about?"
"Random things, you know. I've been seeing Arun for a year-and-a-half, yes? But living with him is a completely different deal, no?" Before I can react, she continues, "I mean, who knows what I'll discover about him, what habits will irritate me... I mean, it's all okay to love someone, and I love him, okay? But I'm getting a little tense about the permanence attached to this wedding."
"Why don't you live with him for a while before marrying him?"
"Yeah, right."
"I'm serious."
"Dude, we still live in India, as much as we try denying it."
It is time now for falsely confident advice. "Hey, it'll all be perfectly fine! I mean, he's a great guy, you love him... Yeah, you'll probably find some things about him that you don't like - and you'll never discover these things unless you live with him. But those are just small compromises, right?" I don't know Arun too well at all. I have this theory, that you can never know a person unless you drop societal niceties when you talk to them, and I've met him only twice, in very civil, very social circumstances. But this is cliched advice, I don't need to know Arun, or even Uma, to give this speech. Like the horoscope advice in the papers, "Control your temper to avoid confrontation", it is applicable to any person, of any persuasion, on any day of the week.

She reacts with silence. I drone on along the same lines, telling her of stability, long-term vision, and lasting relationships. I morph into a nondescript self-help book.

She says, suddenly, "Can I come and stay with you for a couple of days?" She pauses, and continues, "I just need to get away from this world for a bit."
I am taken aback, but I don't let it get in the way of my response, "Yeah, sure!"
"Thanks!" she says, sounding relieved. And she adds again, "Listen, no Gopal for those two or three days, please?"
I almost saw that request coming.

Some time ago, Uma came to Chennai for a weekend. She wanted to get away from her work, her extended family introducing her to various eligible boys, and her boss who was developing a dangerous crush on her. I didn't live in Chennai then, I would move there a couple of weeks later. She stayed with Gopal at his uncle's house. Conveniently, Gopal's uncle was out of town.

I have heard this story from both parties, and my version is a little muddled.

Uma told me on the phone, the evening I told her that I had met Gopal after years, "It was too much fun, you know. We walked all around Madras, going on aimless walks on the beach, around Georgetown, in the bylanes around the Central station. We came back home, drank lots, watched art movies, read poetry to each other... It was a lot of fun. It felt like we had finally gotten over the fact that we had broken up."

Gopal, on the other hand, said, "So, she came one afternoon. I picked her up from the station and showed her around the by-lanes. We saw all sorts of stuff, we bought strange books off pavements. Then I took her to Georgetown, bought her Burmese noodles. We went to the beach, we drank, we watched movies. It was highly romantic.
"We did some hanky-panky at night," he added, "And she promised to come back next weekend. But she didn't. And she didn't come on the weekend after either. Then, one day, out of the blue, she called me and said she was seeing this other guy. Some fucker called Arun. He's a lawyer, apparently. Sounds like a bloody bore, no?"

Uma had a different version of Arun, "You remember this guy I told you about? The cute, fair, tall, slightly plump guy..." I remembered her mentioning some such. "So, I'm seeing him now."

Gopal said, "He has a fascination for cars, apparently. So hackneyed, man. I'm sure he's a James Bond fan. She deserves better, dude, don't you think?"

"He's so refreshing," Uma told me, a month into the relationship, "Never tired, never irritated, never complains of work, or the pressures of the world. He's a big-shot in his law firm, but it doesn't affect what he's like outside. Such a breath of fresh air, to be around him in the evenings!"

"They seem very settled, man," Gopal said, resignedly, "I'm not saying she should dump him for me, but she really should find someone better. Anyway, thank god she never found out that I was getting some relapse of feelings." Uma found out, soon enough. She ignored Gopal completely for a while - and that was the least she could do for his well-being, give him that little distance from her - and Gopal eventually stopped talking of Arun and his mainstream-ness.

It was in this context that I re-connected with Gopal - he saw me as a window to Uma, and he tried, in convoluted ways, to gaze through it. Sadly for him, she closed the curtains firmly. In this second-coming, I saw a Gopal who was a faint shadow of his earlier self. He got drunk and sobbed about his failed party, he withdrew into his uncle's house and buried himself in writing some fiction. He showed me a few chapters of the book, they were stultifying beyond belief. I don't know if you can describe it as fiction at all, much of the book seemed like a pompous autobiography masquerading as a novel about a young student leader getting disillusioned by a nasty system. The novel was unbecoming of someone of Gopal's intelligence - it was biased, the characters were dreadfully two-dimensional. I thought of Gopal's understanding of people as so perceptive and nuanced, that I couldn't digest this drivel. I wondered if his circumstances had forced him to paint his characters in such clearly black-or-white shades. The writing was boring, the character arcs were predictable, he segued too often into political sermons and morality tales. In short, it was the opposite of unputdownable - unpickupable.

I don't know how the novel ended, because he never finished it. He found the strength, somehow, to be objective about the book, and gave up.

What intrigued me the most during this time, was that Gopal managed to maintain his regular media appearances. He remained a much-wanted talking head on TV and wrote columns for newspapers and magazines. His opinions still leaned as leftwards as they had when he was in the party, but because be fashioned himself as an academic, and not a politician, they were seen as having more credibility.

Gopal and I became each other's only close friends in the last year or so, walking around the bazaar, drinking tea and whiskey, riding around the city on his bike, and making whimsical trips to places around Chennai. Gopal has vast interlocking networks of politicians, academics, writers and dramatists, who hang out in my balcony often. He uses my apartment as his lounge, and I don't complain; I don't have too many visitors otherwise.

I don't know how I will handle Uma's request. It will be impossible to tell Gopal that Uma will come, but she doesn't want to meet him. If I tell him that I'm going out of town, and he finds out I'm here, he'll get very upset. He has a house key, he might even try taking advantage of an empty apartment.

But then, Uma will come only on that condition. "Yeah, sure. No Gopal for those days," I concede.
Uma says, "Great! See you next weekend?"
It is Thursday today, "You mean day after tomorrow?"
She checks something and says, "Oh yeah! Yes, day after tomorrow."
"Done."

I walk back to the terrace to find my three guests locked in what looks like a fierce debate, but on closer inspection, turns out to be merely a dissection of Gopal's rebel-plan for Sundari. "Mussolini had a greater respect for human liberties than your parents!" Gopal says. She seems a little uncomfortable with the statement, but says nothing.

Gopal then plans a weekend getaway, to Bangalore, and lays it down like it is a military operation, "Tell your parents that you're going with a couple of friends, and come. Even if they refuse, just leave. Drastic action is the order of the day."
"Which weekend are you planning this?" I ask, hopefully.
"Tomorrow night," he says.
"You're also going?" I ask, with more hope in my voice.
"I am." I am relieved now. Uma can come without fearing of bumping into Gopal.

"Come along?" Sundari asks me, with those pleading eyebrows of hers - in two words, turning my solution into a whole new conundrum.
***

Have had a very tough two weeks. Too many night show movies, concerts, partying, a trip to Bangalore and work. And, I'm off westward today - for the first time in my life, beyond Jaisalmer. Back in two weeks to tell you more of this story.

Her Obviousness - Part I

Breezy romance (like Subtle Subramanian). The blog was getting too meaningful for my own good!
***

A few days after my fifteenth real birthday - I have two, one official birthday, in November, from my forged birth certificate, and one real, the actual day on which I was born - an uncle, inebriated, declared to a large family gathering, "This fellow here," pointing to me, "He'll make it big." He paused, and said again, "But he'll be the most boring of us all." My family, an assortment of old-moneyed caricatures living amidst small-town Karnataka's high society, all stared at him incredulously briefly, and burst into a volcano of laughter. At the cost of being dramatic, I must confess: that evening, I knew I had enough of this life.

A seat in a prime engineering college, much to the shock of my family, who didn't think beyond the failing family business, brought me to the outskirts of Bangalore - to a crowded hostel characterised by smells of urine, stale sweat, dirty underwear and cheap deodorant.

I came back home, each vacation, growing less fond of my cousins and uncles, and grudgingly accepting my parents' grumbling about my career choice, only to rush back to the comforting smells of the hostel. When that was over, my family, disillusioned by my older cousins who seemed happy bringing the old-money down to old-no-money, and buoyed by my uncle's tipsy prophecy of untold successes, urged me to come back and take over. I bought two years' time, telling them I needed to do an MBA.

My family disintegrated in those two years - a couple of cousins moved to the Middle East, taking their parents with them, one aunt died, large properties were sold, suits were filed in Courts in and around Mangalore, and everyone got together for one last meeting where the properties were settled. My parents bought a plush flat in the eastern extremities of the town, and settled down into their hermitage.

I moved to Chennai, gainfully employed at a bank, the gains were much more than I expected them to be, lived a life of monotonous anonymity that showed no signs of "making it big". My uncle's prediction, I realised, was just drunken gas. Only the second part of the his prediction, of being the most boring person around, seemed to be coming increasingly true over the years.

Gopalakrishnan Menon, the hero of this story, or the central character, to be more correct, for he doesn't engage in much heroism anywhere, is the only person about whom I made a similar drunken prediction - I said that the world would know his name one day. I don't know what to make of him - he's not finished with the world, and it might be too early to write him off - but he seems far far away from anything earth-shattering.

He called me this evening, and said, "Uji, I need a place to hide a girl for the night."
I reinterpreted this line, like one does with everything that Gopal says, as, "I am bringing a girl along. I hope that extra bedroom is clean and empty."
I said, "Sorry, man. I have a cousin staying over. She's sleeping in that room."
Gopal said, "No problem, da. This girl and the cousin will sleep in that room, we'll canoodle on your bed. I just need a place to hide her."

In six years of knowing Gopal, he hadn't made a request this unintelligible. I tried asking him what this deal was, and why she was being hidden. He evaded, and told me he'd tell me when the time was right. I told him that I didn't want police at my door, and he told me stop being dramatic.

My first encounter with Gopal was in my first week in college in the toilet. He threw the door of the loo open, walked out content, and declared to the queue of boys waiting to get in, "You don't feel like the holidays are over until you crap in one of these shit-holes!"

It was my first week, and I was warned that these seniors, cackling away, would pounce on me if I reacted to their jokes. But I couldn't help it, I guffawed with them. One senior, a particularly thug-like variety, glowered, "What do you know, fuckin' fuchha? Must've come straight from your amma's lap." Gopal turned to me, his shampoo-commercial hair strewn over his face, and a shiny earring peeking from one ear, winked, and turned to the thug, and said, "You're so full of shit." The queue cackled some more, and forgot about me.

I saw Gopal act in a play the next week - he performed with a theatre group in town - as a waiter given to philosophical outbursts, delivered in a deadly, robotic monotone. Moving constrainedly and speaking expressionlessly, he got the audience cheering each time he entered the stage. I didn't watch or know much theatre then, but I thought it was an extraordinary performance, for, off stage, he was maddeningly energetic and his face conveyed meaning even when you couldn't hear him speak. A classmate, who claimed to have a background in theatre, dismissed it, "He was playing the character so two-dimensionally. There was no depth. I mean, he was just that - a waiter who makes philosophical statements." I disagreed, but not vocally.

For an engineering student, Gopal was atypically political. He was a cardholder of the Communist Party of India, often found at political rallies and labour strikes, leading the sloganeering and shepherding the masses. He started a chapter of the Party in college - I joined, out of hero-worship - and tried to politicise college elections. He had a two-point manifesto - regularise the maintenance staff who were employed on contract basis, and make administration more transparent and inclusive. The hostel didn't care. They voted for him because he was Gopal the Great, and he beat the day-scholar candidate by a humiliating margin.

Gopal was most popular in the hostel because he had a girlfriend who wasn't from the girls' hostel. Gopal's girlfriend, a tall, thin, fair, light-eyed city girl, who occasionally drove up to campus in her own car, was a part-time model, we heard. She also did radio jockeying, apparently, and there was a strong rumour that she was a few years older than him, and recently divorced. The last part was untrue, I discovered years later, she had only broken up with a long-standing live-in boyfriend who was also a model, but the rest was fairly accurate.

I spent most of that first year observing Gopal from a distance. He spoke to me a few times - usually issued instructions on Party work - but I never had the courage to speak to him about anything else. He was friends with a lot of first years, but I was always slightly intimidated by his coolness.

One evening, a month before he finished college, he came to my room suddenly, and asked, "You have a screwdriver?" If it were one of my classmates, I might have replied with, "The tool or the drink?" But I was so taken aback when Gopal asked, that I mumbled something, rummaged and fished out a spanner and asked, "Will this do?"
"Screwdriver?" he said, again, laughing.

When I was looking again, for I was sure I owned one, he asked, "You drink?"
I told him I didn't. He said, "Brilliant! Want to go to the city for a party? I need someone to ride the bike back."
I was nervous again, "What party is this?"
"Don't worry. It's this bunch of friends I have in town. Eclectic crowd. You'll like it."

The bike ride was quite a trek through the narrower gullies of town, "Short cut," he said. "If I take the main roads, we'll reach in time for next weekend's party." I hoped he wouldn't be too drunk by the end of the party; there was no way I'd make it back to college on my own. He seemed to read my mind, "I'll tell you the road on the way back, don't worry! I won't get that drunk."

My usual bout of nervousness struck again. I was on my way to a party to which I wasn't invited, and I was going with a guy I barely knew. It wasn't the inappropriateness that worried me - I was known for being inappropriate - it was that I would have to spend an entire evening with people who all knew each other, but didn't know me. I hung on to Gopal's words, "Eclectic bunch." Eclectic bunches were usually very open and accepting. Or, they were the other extreme, cold and exclusive. But if this group had Gopal in it, they were likely to be the former.

As the bike wound around Bangalore, somehow, I found myself at a landmark I recognised - the Cantonment station. From there, again, it was all a whirl of bungalows and tree-lined residential streets. He stopped at one such bungalow, from where muffled noises of a wild gathering wafted towards us - it was the particular combination of loud music and louder conversation. Until then, I had only encountered this in my Mangalorean family gatherings.

Gopal rang the bell, and the noise stopped for a couple of seconds. I heard a woman holler from a room upstairs, "Dude, Annie, open the door!"
Gopal said, twinkling, "Brace yourself for Annie."
This brought two images to my mind. The first one was a matronly, overbearing sort of Annie, who engulfed you in a combination of a hug and expletive filled greeting. The second image was that of a extremely hot Annie, who would make my knees go weak.
What I didn't expect was a stubbled man built like a boxer. "Annie!" Gopal said, giving him a manly half-hug, and said, introducing me, "Meet Ujwal - my junior and chauffeur for the night," and introducing Annie, "Meet Aniket - my political rival." Annie laughed, and said to a puzzled me, "My father is a Congressman!"

The house was a proliferation of levels - we entered into what I thought was a mezzanine floor, but was only a platform that had a drawing room and led to a depression that had a more private drawing room, where two guys tensely followed a game of tennis on TV.

"You remember that chick we met last week at the play?" Annie asked Gopal. Gopal nodded. "She's in that room," he said, pointing to a bedroom that was on a level of its own, "With our man." Gopal's eyes widened, he smirked, and gave an impressed nod. My family parties didn't involve all this - there it was just drunk uncles discussing chemical factories and corporate rivalry, and bored aunts discussing cooking and school uniforms.

Two women, in flashy party clothes ran down the stairs, screeching and squealing; one chasing the other with a butter knife in her hand. They ran straight to Gopal and Annie, split them and ran past. The chased girl jumped over a couch, and the chaser positioned herself on the other side, knife poised to attack. Gopal watched the stand-off with excitement, Annie started chanting, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" He was joined by the tennis-watchers, while the two girls panted, half-smiling evilly, until the chaser lunged over the couch at the chased. They collapsed in a giggly heap on the couch, and fell to the carpeted floor, laughing, speaking excitedly and unintelligibly to each other.

The chased got up, rose to her full height, and said, "Gopal!" Gopal, who lost interest in the fight, and was walking up the stairs then, turned back and said, "Yo!" She said, "Meet my cousin Sundari upstairs. She also does some theatre and all." Gopal said, "Definitely!" The other girl said, "Hey! Uma's upstairs." Gopal said, "Thanks!"

He bounded up the stairs, followed by Annie and me.

The room upstairs looked like it was put there for a party like this. A dining table in the far corner had a huge group sitting around it, throwing tissue around and talking animatedly. The centre of the room was a sprawling dance floor, with low lighting and wooden flooring, with four or five drunken dancers, swaying to music that wasn't loud or pounding enough to dance to.

The gathering was all much older than Gopal or me - most of the people looked like they were between their mid-to-late twenties or their early thirties. I didn't know how Gopal, born and brought up in Thrissur to academic parents, got himself to be a part of this group. I had more respect for him now; he was a man knew how to get around.

There was a couch and a few beanbags in one corner where a bunch of men and women were settled. I recognised one of them as Gopal's girlfriend. In a short grey-and-red dress, barefoot and carrying a glass of beer in her hand, she was more beautiful than I remembered her from her campus visits. For one, she looked older and more mature than she did when she came to campus, and that gave her a dignified beauty. She also looked more at home here than she did when two hundred men stared at her from their windows.

She got up when she saw Gopal, came to him and planted a full kiss on his lips. Gopal recovered, and introduced me to her, Uma, with the same words - junior and chauffeur. She said, "Oh! I've seen you at one of the rallies!" I was flushed. I couldn't believe she remembered me, and wondered if she was making it up. But she said, "You were the one chatting up that girl with black specs, no?" I smiled embarrassedly. "Anything happened with her?" she asked. I shook my head.

We settled down on the floor around the couch, where the crowd discussed TV shows. Gopal and I didn't have much to say - living in the hostel, we hardly knew what the TV had to offer. A plump, happy girl walked up to us from the dining table and said, "Gopal and friend! What will you guys have?" I presumed she was the hostess who had commanded Annie to open the door.

Gopal, who was engrossed in Uma's hair, looked up startled, and said, "Yo! What's up?" He paused, and introduced me again as Ujwal, his junior and chauffeur, and said, "I'll help myself to a vodka. The kid doesn't drink, he says." The clink of a shattering glass was followed by a shriek and collective groaning. Someone had broken a wineglass on the dance floor.

The hostess hollered again, efficiently, "Don't worry! Turn on the central lights, I'll take care of this," and scurried away down the stairs to find a broom. Gopal beckoned me to the bar table, and mixed himself a strong drink, and poured out a glass of orange juice for me. "You're sure you wont have even one drink?" he asked again. I refused.

The party got over its shattering glass induced lull. The music started playing again, the voices regained in volume and once the glass pieces were swept away, the dance floor was repopulated by the same group of drunks. We made our way back towards the couch, when one girl caught Gopal by the arm and said, "Listen, come downstairs. We have to discuss the Bombay show." Gopal nodded, asked me to settle down wherever, and left with her.

I went back to the couch, and sat next to the only other person who took any interest in me - Uma. "Where's your boss?" she asked.
"Some girl whisked him away," I said, still recovering from the term 'boss', wondering if she took the chauffeuring too seriously. She looked curious about the whisker-girl, so I said, "Not very tall, fair, curly hair, red t-shirt..."
"Oh. Her. They were talking about some play?"
"Some show in Bombay, yes."
"That's his ex-girlfriend," she said. There was no discernible expression in that statement. I didn't know if she just said it as a matter-of-fact, or if she was upset or if she was jealous. It hung there for a few seconds, before she suddenly asked, "How old are you?"
I didn't want to answer that question, but I had no choice, "Eighteen!"

"He's eighteen?!" another girl sitting on the couch asked, "Serious?"
"This Gopal's a gay. And a paedophile..." someone drawled, to hooting and laughter.
"Weren't you bonking a high school chick just when you finished college?" Gopal asked the guy who made the paedophile allegation, suddenly emerging from the stairs.
"How do you know?!"
The entire crowd laughed again. Uma said, "By the way, Ujwal..."
"Your name is Ujwal," the drawler asked again, "Brightness..." he laughed. "You can't be very bright if you're hanging out with Gopal!"
Before I could respond, another guy said, "Dude, he's a kid. We should rag him."
The first guy said, "Ok. Kid. Come here. Stand."
I looked at Gopal, but he looked on emotionlessly. I was on my own. "Come on, kid. Stand."
I pulled myself up to stand, but lost balance and fell. It was the most inexplicable fall. Gopal said, suddenly, "Guys, he doesn't know how to stand. Show him."
One guy stood up. Gopal said, "Ok. Then what is he supposed to do?" I smiled, catching on to Gopal's grand plan. "We were thinking we'll make him stand on one leg, with his arms outstretched," the guy who was sitting down said.
The guy standing up said, "Like this!" and stretched his arms wide, and lifted his leg up, and collapsed on to the couch.

When he fell down, Gopal said to me, "Dude, come along. Let's get another drink."
The guy who fell, said, "Dude, sorry for ragging you!"
I said, "Only you thought you were ragging me!"
The crowd clapped and laughed more, and I heard someone say, "Gopal's found himself a kid just like him!" I was beaming, for a few minutes, I felt like the new Gopal - the magnetic student leader, strong, opinionated, popular with the women. The cliches rolled in my head until I reached the bar.

Gopal re-poured the same two drinks for the two of us, without asking me if I wanted something else. The hostess appeared at the bar with another girl and said, "Gopal, meet Sundari." The name struck a bell, but I couldn't place it. Gopal immediately said, "Pri's cousin. Theatre of some sort..."

The girl's face was defined by her nose - she wore a pretty single nose-ring that seemed to distract from everything else about her. Once you got past the nose-ring, you discovered that she was maddeningly pretty - large eyes, long eyelashes, knotted eyebrows, not-so-long curlyish hair, not-to-fair, not-too-dark.

"Yeah," she said, in a voice that seemed younger than she looked, "Not theatre, really. More like traditional vernacular drama."
Vernacular drama, I thought to myself. Gopal asked the question I wanted to ask, "Which vernacular?"
She smiled, "I used to do Kannada when I lived here. But now I do Tamil... I live in Madras now. Going to college there now."
"What year are you in?" I asked, almost involuntarily.
"First year," she said.
"A kid like you!" Gopal declared, and left us to our conversation. The conversation wasn't anything great, I remember, there were long awkward pauses, and longer silences. But I had a feeling I liked being there, just talking, and I presumed she liked talking too. When we were leaving, I asked her for her phone number. We didn't have cell phones then, and so she scribbled a landline number on a piece of paper.

I never called, and nor did she. And we didn't even hear of each other until this evening when Gopal, out of the blue, brought her to my house to hide her from her parents.