The Bestest

A cricket post after quite long.
***

Some days ago, I undertook the arduous task of picking a team of the greatest eleven from a century-and-a-quarter of Test Cricket. The task was made trickier by a shortlist of eighty-eight players who made their country elevens. Sanath Jayasuriya was available for selection, but not Herbert Sutcliffe or WG Grace, Chaminda Vaas was there, but no Courtney Walsh or Joel Garner, Prasanna wasn't allowed, while Underwood was. You could argue, of course, that if a player didn't make his country eleven without question, he can't be on the all-time eleven. But logic and all-time lists aren't happy bedfellows. You compare and choose players you haven't even seen. I know Sachin's genius like I will never know Hammond's or Ponsford's. Yet, I have to select one. Similarly, I am forced to give some weight to Sobers' pronouncement on Subash "Fergie" Gupte's genius even though I've never seen him bowl. Statistics guide me, yes, but ultimately, it is a gut-feeling. No, a guess.

For the first opener, I can't look beyond Jack Hobbs. Amongst the early masters of batting, three names stand out the most influential - Grace, Ranji and Hobbs. Grace was the first to develop back-foot and front-foot play - a child learns these osmotically today by just watching people around him bat. Ranji showed the world the art of leg-side play and wrist work. But it was Hobbs who mastered all these principles of batting. He was the coaching manual. A question remains - which Hobbs am I picking - the early, Trumperesque Hobbs, or the post-war Jedi? I don't really know. I'm okay with either. Opening with Hobbs, I would have loved Sutcliffe - Hobbs' long-time collaborator at Surrey and England, and an expert on batting on unplayable wet wickets. His sixty-plus average is still the highest for an opener with over 4000 runs. But the England eleven went for the other stalwart, Len Hutton instead. So, I chose the greatest modern opener to partner Hobbs - Virender Sehwag. If Hobbs conquered the complex art of batting, Sehwag simplifies it. Which is why I think they would make such a great pair - at one end, you would have the calm, solid, immovable genius, and at the other end, an edgy, unpredictable, frightening one. For the record, Hutton and Gavaskar were probably better batsmen than Sehwag, simply because they played against much fiercer bowling in more difficult conditions. But I'm choosing a pair of openers, and not the two best. Which is why Sehwag makes it.

In the middle order, Don Bradman is a no brainer. Critics say that the bowling he faced wasn't as good, the fielding was poorer and he played all his cricket only against three teams, but ignore the fact that there were uncovered pitches, primitive protective gear, inferior bats. I think if you made adjustments for all this with a sophisticated statistics model, you would find that Bradman's record would remain untarnished. No batsman has ever scored even nearly as heavily, consistently and quickly as Bradman. He's in at No. 3. George Headley, the "Black Bradman" is the second middle order batsman. The first great black West Indian batsman, he played only twenty-odd Test Matches, but scored runs at an average of over 60 in a batting line-up where he accounted for nearly half the team's output. Until the Ws made their appearance, Headley was the West Indies' only world-class batsman. Batting in an order like that would have had an effect on his batting, as he found himself battling with the tail very quickly. Still, he managed that average, that record and had such an impact on the game that his loving fans described Bradman as the "White Headley", and Ramachandra Guha describes him as the greatest West Indian batsman ever - even above Lara and Richards.

Arguably, the most complete cricketer of all time, Sobers was born to play the game. He was one of the greatest batsmen of all time, he could bowl spin and medium pace and was a great fielder. He walks into the team as a batsman and an extra bowler. So far, the middle order has selected itself. Now comes the difficult part - picking one between Lara, the two Richards (Viv and Barry), Chappell, Hammond and Tendulkar - a list so diverse and distinguished that it would be criminal to leave anyone out. Ultimately, I went for the most complete batsmen I've seen - one of those guesses - and chose Sachin Tendulkar. For all the allegations on not finishing games, or scoring against weaker teams, Sachin Tendulkar remains the purest, most selfless, most beautiful, batsman of the last two decades. He has invented shots - the guide over the slip cordon, that perfect straight bat while playing the paddle sweep behind the keeper, that cover-drive on the up, or those million ways in which he manufactures singles of absolutely any ball.

This brings us to the wicketkeeper. When the batting line-up has Hobbs, Sehwag, Bradman, Headley, Sobers and Sachin, the wicketkeeper need not be a great batsman. Even as far as wicketkeeper batsmen go, Andy Flower, whose batting I rate higher than Gilchrist or Sangakkara is not available. When I chose the list on cricinfo, I picked Sangakkara. But after some research, I'd rather go with Alan Knott, who stands up there with the most skillful keepers of all time. Knott's art came to the forefront when he stood up to Underwood on wet wickets in the County circuit, when each ball had a mind of its own, and Knott still managed to collect them noiselessly. When you have Sydney Barnes swinging and spinning at the same time, and Muralitharan flummoxing batsmen with his doosra, there better be a keeper who can keep pace with what is thrown at him - the batsman isn't going to touch much.

This leaves us with the bowlers. The combination I prefer is two quicks and two spinners with Sobers bowling according to the pitch, and Tendulkar pitching in if another hand is required. Malcolm Marshall, with his extreme speed, skid, seam, swerve, swing and smartness picks himself. He was the greatest fast bowler of them all - at an unconventional five-feet-ten, and a bustling open-chested action, he could decimate batting orders. Ask England - he bowled once with his left hand fractured and still destroyed them. Just like Ranji invented leg-side play and changed the way the game was played, the Pakistani quartet of Nawaz, Imran, Akram and Younis rejuvenated old-ball bowling with reverse swing. The most skilled of that lot was Akram, bowling with the cleanest of actions and doing things with the ball that pacemen before and after him have only dreamt of. Plus, he adds left-arm variety to the attack.

Sydney Barnes was an unclassifiable bowler. He bowled a cocktail of swing, seam and spin - it was hard to tell one from another. He bowled at a Kumble-esque pace, and made turned the ball as much as O'Reilly or Warne. When someone remarked that O'Reilly was a better bowler because he bowled the googly, Barnes said, "I didn't need to." A temperamental character, he once bowled badly because his captain refused to give him the new ball. He skipped a Test Match because the English Board refused to pay for his wife's accommodation. The reason he makes it here, quite apart from his incredible numbers, is because for three generations (he played cricket for almost forty years), batsmen said he was the greatest of them all. The slot for the second spinner is a toss up between the game's two most successful - Warne and Muralitharan. Arguably, Warne was more skilful, while Murali was more successful. Warne bowled, very often, when teams had been softened by McGrath and Gillespie before him. Murali bowled when batsmen were well warmed up. Warne bowled in spinner-unfriendly, bouncy Australian tracks, but Murali bowled on pitches that were built for him. The litmus test, for me, is how they fared against the best players of spin of their generation. On this analysis, Warne, for all his wizardry, comes a distant second. Murali might not have murdered India like he did England, but he did trouble India more than any other spinner had done since Richie Benaud. Murali, in one sense, was like George Headley - he was the only world-class bowler amongst a string of also-rans. He had more opportunities, therefore, but he had more pressure as well. He rose to the challenge and ended up as the greatest matchwinner of all time. For that, he makes it as my No. 11. (This is also a change from the selection I made on cricinfo.)

The team, in batting order:
Jack Hobbs, Virender Sehwag, Don Bradman, George Headley, Sachin Tendulkar, Gary Sobers, Alan Knott, Wasim Akram, Malcolm Marshall, Muttiah Muralitharan, Sydney Barnes.
Twelfth Man - Sunil Gavaskar. (If the pitch is difficult, or the opposing team has West Indian fast bowlers of the 80s, Gavaskar sneaks in ahead of Sehwag.)

Image

I was almost seventeen-and-a-half when I saw a bus held back from falling headlong into a river by a mesh of electric wires; this was after I had jumped out of the driver's seat of the bus. I had successfully cracked an exam the previous evening, one that defines my existence to this day, but that didn't matter. My big story for the next few weeks was that my overnight bus was nearly thrown into the Pangala River. "You should've seen it, mare. Too good!"

I was nearly twenty-six last week when another overnight bus nearly killed me, but killed another man, and injured at least three more. I wasn't awakened by the jolt this time. I was there in the thick of the action, standing a few feet behind the driver, begging him to stop at a place from where I could take a share auto. One moment, the conductor cackled, "Non-stop! Central!" and the next moment, he gasped.

The mind calculates really quickly, or time slows down, I don't know - it just takes a second for you to know that you're done for. And another second for impact. I was too scared to look. I opened my eyes to shattered glass, screaming, commotion, and a yellow van that had fallen on another taxi. The mind told me again - my bus hit the yellow van that tumbled over and fell on the taxi. Save for a few small shards of glass on my body, a few scratches, and a diffused pain in my cheek, I was fine.

I noted with relief that the taxi driver made his way out of the taxi, looking shaken, but not injured. I craned over the debris, from inside the bus, to take a look at the yellow van. The driver didn't get out. There was glass everywhere, and blood on it. The driver's body emerged only when people pulled him out. I read the lettering on the side of the van, now facing the sky. "School Bus". Immediately the mind conjured an image - of screaming, bruised schoolchildren, blood, battered bones, broken glass, all struggling to crawl out of the mangled school van.

It was six am, the school bus was empty, and there were no children.

Yet, three days on, this image haunts, turns me into an insomniac, worries me each time I drive, wrecks me when I see an overnight bus. Soon, this image will become a part of that memory, so skilfully woven into what I actually saw, that I will not be able to separate the two.

The mind has a way of numbing the effect of what it has seen, it has its antidotes against what it knows. But against what it imagines, it is powerless.

Witness for the Plaintiff

If this post offends you, it is meant to.
***

The ten-thirty bell signalled tension for both sides. The plaintiff's crucial witness would be cross-examined by the defendant's bewildered lawyer. The large courtroom where the Full Bench of the High Court would sit was a large, airy, cheery, bright room until they installed air-conditioning a few years ago. Now, it looked like early evening throughout the day, and a low hum provided the background noise for complicated litigation.

The lawyer held the witnesses proof affidavit nervously in his hand.

"I state that Rama, also known as Lord Rama (no offence meant to My Lords) Ram (not to be confused with a male sheep), Ramachandra, Raghuvara, Pattabhirama, Kodandarama, Ram Lalla (I did not know this one until this case), Dinamanivamsatilaka, Maryaadapurushottam, Daasaratha etc. was born in Ayodhya in the sanctum sanctorum of a ruined temple. I was present that day, and was one of the sanyasis who performed his naamakarana. I state that a structure was built, around four thousand years later on this very site by invaders."

The defendant's lawyer read the paragraph thrice to make sure he was reading what he was reading. "This guy can't be serious," he told his tired junior, who was poring over volumes of officialese that archaeologists had thrown up. He saw, in the back row of the visitors gallery, a geriatric with long white hair tied up in a ridiculous bun on top of his head, flowing white beard, dressed in saffron attire, sitting cross-legged on the century-old wooden bench, looking irritatingly smug.

The judges entered the courtroom ceremonially, led by three ushers in traditional white-and-red attire and majestic sceptres. Even as they entered, one was giggling, the second was trying to tell the first to stay in control, and the third looked grave. Everyone stood up, and bowed. The judges acknowledged the bow with folded hands. The bench clerk called out, "Item one!" and read out the cause title, and said, "Posted for plaintiff's evidence."

"If it may please your Lordship, I am appearing for the plaintiff. My lord, the matter is posted the cross examination of PW 677."

The bench clerk handed the proof affidavits to the judges, and the senior-most judge said, "Are you ready, counsel?" The defendant's lawyer nodded unsurely.

"Please call the witness."

The plaintiff's lawyer signalled to the gallery, and the old man in saffron robes got up from his seat, and walked confidently to the witness box, where he was administered an oath. The typist recorded on his barely-in-one-piece desktop that the witness was administered oath.

The defendant's lawyer, reading from the affidavit asked, "Shri Shri Shri Shri Shri Shri Shri Shri Shri Satyasivasundarananda..."
"You have one Shri too many," the witness said.
"No, I don't. If your name was Ramesh, I'd say, 'Shri Ramesh'..."
"Oh."
"Out of curiosity," a judge asked, "How do you decide how many Shris you add before your name?"
"In the olden days," the witness expounded, "We added one Shri for every three-hundred years of abstention from Shrimatis. Though sources today tell me that the figure is about three hundred minutes."
The judge giggled. His fellow judge whispered in his ear, "Learned Brother, please behave yourself."
"You state in your affidavit, Shri Shri Shri Shri..."
"I think you can call him 'PW 677'," a judge interjected.
"Much obliged, my lord," he said, looking truly obliged for a change, and turning to the witness, "Shri PW 677, you state that you are about 5010 years old. That would mean that you were born in 3000 BC."
"Wrong. I was born in 2940 BC. You see, we sanyasis are born at the age of sixty. Have you ever seen a twenty-year old sanyasi?"
The defendant's lawyer nodded gravely. The typist duly recorded the evidence. The judge said, "This is fascinating."
"Yeah. So, when I was eighty, someone said I was young and upcoming. I was overjoyed." The typist was about to record this when the judge motioned him to ignore it.
"I wish I was a sanyasi," the giggly judge said, suddenly, "I'm just sixty-one, and I'm retiring in a few months."
"Please ignore my Learned Brother. He's been like this for months. Anticipatory withdrawal symptoms."

The defendant's lawyer picked up a book, and said, "If you are that old, how come you don't figure in this book?"
"What book is that, counsel?" a judge asked.
"The Limca Book of World Records."
"Ho dude, what is that?!" the witness asked, "Looks like I've been away from civilisation for too long. Damn it."
The typist looked at the judge uncomprehendingly. One judge said, "The Limca Book of Records does not mention my name as the Oldest Living Indian."

"You state in your affidavit that you reside at 'Small hillock, K2 backside, Karakoram Range, Gilgit Baltistan, Pakistan'. How do you survive there? What do you eat?"
"I meditate for a few years, and then wake up for a small bite, and then meditate again. I eat snowflakes."
"Snowflakes? How do you eat those?"
"Like you eat cornflakes."
The giggly judge asked, "Ooh. Is it tasty?"
"Of course! Why don't you come home sometime? Bring some milk when you come, and if possible, some bananas, strawberries and honey."
"Honey! Yum!"
"Learned brother! Let us please concentrate on the issues at hand."
"Learned brother, we are writing an 8000 page judgment. Surely one small recipe won't hurt."
The second brother whispered to the third, "Our Learned Brother is acting like he's had too much grass."
"Oh. Is he vegetarian?"

The defendant's lawyer soldiered on, "You state that your occupation was as a rishi and a sub-guru to Dasharatha and Rama after him. What were your duties?"
"My main task was to perform rituals for the princes. Drive away ill omens and the like. And then we taught Sanskrit to our princes, juniors and successors. I was an expert archery theorist. I couldn't shoot an arrow too well, but I could talk about it relentlessly."
"Like Harsha Bhogle," the judge said, guffawing.
"Learned Brother!"
The typist duly recorded these findings.

"Were you personally acquainted with Rama?"
"Oh, of course. I was born only ten years before him. So, even though I was seventy years older, we were contemporaries in a sense." The keyboard clippety-clapped.
"What interactions have you had with him?"
"We used to discuss matters of civil engineering. That helped him build bridges later on. We even enjoyed the occasional drink of soma. That was quite something, not like the drink this lawyer fed me last night - whiskey, he called it. Jack Daniel, apparently."
"Any other interactions?"
Oh, I was also his economics teacher briefly."
"Only briefly?"
"Yeah. Before I could teach him macroeconomics, he went away to fight some gents and ladies in the forest with a senior of mine, and came back married. And once he was married, he had little time for classes."
"Anyway, after marriage, you only need microeconomics," a voice rang.
Another resigned voice said, "Learned Brother..." Then came the clippety-clap of the keyboard.

"What were you doing on the ninth night after the New Moon during the Chaitra month on the day when Rama was born?"
"Dude, I can't reveal all that."
"Did you watch him being born?"
"No, I did not have access to those areas."
"So, you did not see him being born."
"No, I didn't."
"So, it could well be that he was not born at all."
"But I told you that I knew him."
"Please answer my question."
"Yes, yes," the judge said, "Just answer the questions put to you, 677."
"I put it to you that Rama was never born." The plaintiff's lawyer banged his fist on the table.
"Wrong."
The typist typed furiously, "It is wrong to say that Rama was not born at all."
"At what age did you interact with Rama?"
"When he was around fifteen."
"I put it to you that just as you were born at the age of sixty, Rama was born at the age of fifteen."
"Wrong." The typist typed, "It is wrong to state that Rama was born at the age of fifteen."
There was some murmuring around the courtroom. Someone shouted, "Don't insult my God!" The giggly judge said, "Damn. If this was a movie, I'd have a gavel in my hand, and I could say, 'Order! Order!' I'll retire in six months without ever having said it!"
"Learned Brother!" came the groan.

"Where was Rama born on that night?"
"In Ayodhya."
"Can you show me the palace on this map?" the lawyer said, taking out a map of Ayodhya.
The witness peered at the map closely and pointed to a spot and said, "Here!"
It was the place right under the central dome of the destroyed mosque.
"But you said you hadn't seen him being born."
"Well, that was the delivery room in the palace."
"Delivery room?"
"Yes. There were so many women in the palace, and so many children being born that the palace had one. You know, I can even tell you where he was conceived."
"Conceived? I thought the king just gave his wives some nectar and they conceived."
The witness erupted into a volcano of laughter. "Valmiki wrote in metaphors you know! Nectar! Hahahaha!"
The giggly judge roared with laughter. "Learned Brother!"
Then the judge asked, "What do you mean by lots of children being born?" The typist began to type, when the judge asked him not to.
"Oh, the palace was a fairly wild place, My Lord. If you played your cards right, you could get fairly lucky."
"Damn. I'm telling you. I should've been born five thousand years ago."

"Lets get back to the point here," the lawyer continued, "Babies were usually born in this 'delivery room'. But not necessarily."
"I don't know of a baby who wasn't."
"Rama?"
"He was."
"Did you see him being born?"
"No."
The typist typed away, the plaintiff's lawyer exasperatedly stoop up and said, "My Lords! I have already gone through this. The Amar Chitra Katha clearly shows a room where the queens are lying on beds. This must be a delivery room."
"That's a matter for argument, My Lords! No point raising it now."
"Yes, Counsel. Go on with the cross-examination."
"How do you know the delivery room was at this exact spot."
"I have seen it. I used to go there to bless the children."
"Did you bless Rama there?"
"No..."
Type, type.

"Now, PW 677, lets come to the other important question. What were you doing in the year of 1528?"
"AD or BC?"
"AD."
"There was a Kumbh-Mela at Sangam. I came down from the Himalayas for it. I lost my brother there."
"Did you pass via Ayodhya?"
Guiltily, the witness said, "Yes. We aren't supposed to have any material pleasures, according to our dharma. But you see, I had a sentimental attachment to the land of my birth. So, I came here."
"Did you see a mosque in the city?"
"They were building one."
"Were 'they' Babur?"
"No. 'They' were some masons and daily labourers."
"Did Babur commission the mosque?"
"I don't know who Babur is."
The judge whispered to his brother, "He doesn't know Babur. No wonder he hasn't got a haircut. Teehee."
The other judge whispered back, "Really, Learned Brother, are you on drugs?"
"Abbey, Learned Brother, you were the one arguing yesterday that the place of birth is a juristic person."
"Well, it is!"
"God save this country from judges like you."
"Just for that, I'm going to dissent."
"Learned Brothers! Maintain decorum!" the third judge said.

"PW 677, do you know Humayun?"
"Of course! He was this monkey who used to hang around Rama."
Type, type.

The lawyer, quite pleased with himself, said, "I have no more questions."
***

Tyagaraja, the Environmentalist

The anupallavi of Tyagaraja's popular Kharaharapriya kriti, chakkani rajamargamulundaga, always intrigued me. Consider, first, the words of the pallavi:

chakkani rajamargamulundaga
sandula duranela, o manasa

"When there are beautiful, wide roads suitable for kings, why do you squeeze through gullies?" Fine. Makes sense. If you ignore the traffic, of course.

Then, we come to the anupallavi:

chikkani palu migadayundaga,
chiyanu gangasagaramele?

"When you have sweet milk and cream (yum), why would you choose to drink the..." and this is where I kept getting stuck - "gangasagaram?" I know the Ganga is highly polluted, and I would choose sweet palu and migada (yum!) over it, but I found it unlikely that the pious Tyagaraja would denigrate the Holy Ganges in his songs. But then, I'm a lazy guy, I didn't bother to find out what this word meant. I convinced myself that that the saint was also an environmental activist and let things be. Each time I sang the anupallavi, I would picture the yucky Ganga, floating dead bodies, toxic effluents from corrupt factories, the stench, the green colour, and contrast it with sweet milk, flavoured with a little badam, perhaps, drunk hot from a steel tumbler, early morning, skimming the cream (yum!) off the top with one swift movement of the tongue.

Bliss.

This morning, while writing the notation to this song for someone, I checked T.K. Govinda Rao's book for the lyrics and meaning. And I found, "river of toddy - gangasagaram!" After ploughing through another Telugu book that has detailed commentary on all Tyagaraja kritis, I found that "gangasagaram" was the saint's sarcastic way of referring to toddy. The man had a wicked sense of humour!

I sang the anupallavi with rare vigour this morning. "Chikkani palu migada(yum!) yundaga, Chhiyanu gangasagaramele?"

Two Disappearances - Continued

I wanted to put this part and the next one up together, but it was too long. Split it in two. Kachaak.

Also, there's a chapter in Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle called 'No Good News in this Chapter'. Random fact.
***

On a rickety bus to Kodaikanal, trundling along a highway in disrepair, Ajith called his father. They hadn't spoken in almost a year.

"Ajith?" his father asked, immediately.
"Dad," Ajith said, in a tone that suggested he wanted to stay away from small talk, "Where in Kodaikanal is that house Thatha owned?"
"Why?" his father asked.
"Just answer the question."
His father paused, considered his response, and then said, "Your Thatha sold it. I'm not sure if it exists anymore."
"Address?"
His father hesitated, and then said, "Listen. Your Paati called me the other day and told me that you were meeting NV Mani about your grand-aunt." Ajith was surprised. Sharada was not on talking terms with her son for as long as Ajith remembered. "She wanted to know," he continued, "If I told you about them."
"Well, you did," Ajith said, bluntly.
"I might have. But that doesn't mean you go looking for these dead stories. It has split three generations of our family already. Leave it alone now."

"What does that mean?" Ajith asked.
"Why doesn't your Paati talk to me?"
"Because you left me."
Ajith's father sighed, and said, "No. I had stopped talking to them even before you were born. I didn't leave you, Ajith. I left your mother, and my parents. You just happened to be with them, that's all."
Ajith was silent. His father continued, after a few moments, "Your thatha gave away that house to your Taapi a year before you were born. For nothing. And she gave it away to Mani. Again, for nothing. And your grandparents did not say a thing. They said it was her property, and that she could do whatever she wanted with it."
"And you left my mother because?"
"They were all together. In their love for your Taapi and Mani."
"I never thought you were such a prude."

Ajith's father went completely silent, the words stung. They lingered for as long as father and son held their phones. His father finally cut the call. Ajith stared out the window as a dark, indiscernible landscape spiralled around him on the climb up the mountains. He couldn't sleep, for thoughts formed whirlpools in his head - swirling, chaotic and deadly. He drifted occasionally into snatches of sleep, only to be awakened by the rumbling of the bus or of his own mind. Ajith woke up in the morning, from that half-sleep, to the cry of touts and auto-drivers in the Kodaikanal bus stand. His phone had two messages from his father. One gave him the address of the house, and the other said, "My father loved her. Everyone knew."

The weight of that revelation fell surprisingly lightly on Ajith's shoulders. Too many lofts in too many houses with too many secrets had been emptied out onto the floor too quickly.

Ajith barely remembered how he made his way to that address. He didn't register how much the auto driver asked him for, he was only vaguely relieved that the driver immediately knew the place. He noticed that the house was slightly away from the bustle of the touristy quarter of Kodaikanal. Inhabitation became more sparse as they made their way through an untarred, climbing road towards the top of a densely forested hill.

"Shortcut!" the driver announced. Ajith nodded distractedly. "You're working at the observatory?" the driver asked again. Ajith muttered, "No..."
"A writer, then!" the driver said.
"Yes," Ajith said, not wanting to engage in any conversation.

When they reached the house, Ajith found that it had been converted into a guest house of sorts. A home-stay, they called it. A caretaker emerged from behind the house with a pair of gardening shears in his hands.
"Yes?" he asked Ajith, scanning him through his thick glasses. His gaze reminded Ajith of Shankar.
Ajith didn't really know what to do at this point. He needed to see the house, but he had no idea what else to do there. He said, "This is a guest house?"
"Yes."
"I need to stay here."
If the caretaker was surprised, he didn't show it. "How many days, Sir?"
Ajith made up his mind as he went along, "Two days."
The caretaker now stopped hiding his surprise, "Sir, what do you do?"
"I'm a writer," Ajith said, almost naturally.
"Ok," the caretaker said, "This way. I'm Thanjan, owner."
"Hello," Ajith said, swinging his backpack over his shoulder, as he walked along the pathway to the door. Thanjan had a walk that was slightly off-balance, with each step, it seemed like he would fall over to the left. He wore a faded khadi kurta and track pants, and hadn't shaved in four days.

As he walked towards the make-shift reception, Ajith had this disconcerting sensation that something was wrong, somewhere. He had seen this house in those photographs, and he vaguely remembered the place from his childhood, but something disturbed him. The place was largely familiar, but not entirely. There was a newness that troubled Ajith - since the owner had kept it so similar to the way it used to be, the small changes stood out. It was almost what he remembered, but it wasn't. That unsettled him.

As Ajith filled the details in the caretaker's register, tweaking small details here and there, changing one digit of his telephone number, or changing the old and new number for his house out of sheer habit, Thanjan asked, "Only two days, Mr. Ramachandran?"
"Yeah."
"The reason I'm asking you, is because we've had writers before, and they've all spent months here, writing."
"I'm not writing," Ajith said, "Merely looking for inspiration."
"For a novel, Sir?"
"Perhaps."

Thanjan picked up Ajith's bag, and led him along a corridor. "Until last month, there was this girl staying in this room," the caretaker said, joyfully pointing Ajith to a bright room with a sit-out. Ajith remembered it as the sit-out where his Taapi sat with a cup of tea in a photograph. "This writer, Sir," the caretaker continued, "Sharanya Ramkumar, her pseudonym is Mythili Iyer."
"Ah," Ajith said, "I know her. Very autobiographical novel..."
"Yeah? A sad life, then! She wrote the whole thing here, in this room," he said, almost wistfully, then, suddenly, springing to life, "Shall I get you some chai?"
"That would be great."
"You don't mind a light tea? Flavoured?"
"Sounds great."
"I'll get you the tea. You have to guess the flavour. You will not get this anywhere else in South India. I grow the flavouring in the garden!" Thanjan left Ajith to himself and scurried away to the kitchen.

Ajith spotted a black tambura in a corner of the room, in a pretty wooden stand, nestled amongst floor-pillows. He recognised it immediately as the one in the photograph.

He fished out his toothbrush from his bag, and found he didn't have paste. Thanjan came back, almost on cue, and said, "I thought you might not have toothpaste!" and handed him a Dabur Red paste. The paste tasted as foul as it looked, and Ajith washed his mouth until he could taste his teeth again.

When he finished, he found Thanjan waiting for him in the sit-out, laying out the tea. There were two cups - Thanjan had invited himself.

The sit-out was sunshiny, it opened out to the view of a rivulet twisting around moss-ridden grey rocks amidst a thicket. There were two cane chairs - Ajith recognised them from the photographs again - and a plastic teapoy that looked woefully out of place.

"I suggest you have it with honey. No milk, no sugar," Thanjan said.
Ajith obeyed, he was hardly given any option. He brought the hot cup towards his mouth, and smelt something fruity. He sipped the tea and found that the flavour was a mix of two or three fruits. Pineapple, definitely. A dash of mango, perhaps. And a little lemon.

"Wrong," Thanjan declared, "It's only one fruit."
Ajith was surprised. He took another sip, the taste began to grow on him now, and it achieved some coherence - instead of tasting like a mixture of three flavours, it tasted like one. But he couldn't put his finger on what it was.
"Passion fruit!" Thanjan said, "The previous owner of this house was a bit of a gardener also."
This made Ajith curious, "Who was he?"
"There was a she, who was the gardener, and then there was a he, who sold it to my father," Thanjan said, "Biscuit?"
"Mani sold it to your father?" Ajith asked, ignoring the biscuit.
Thanjan put the biscuit back on the tray, "How do you know Mani Sir owned this house?"
"I've been interviewing him."
Thanjan didn't believe him, "He wouldn't have told you this."
"Why?"
"I can't tell you that. Anyway," he said, emptying the contents of the teacup into his mouth in one large gulp, "I must be going now. You can leave the cups here."

Thanjan stood up to leave, when Ajith said, "I am Ramachandran's grandson. I've been to this house before."
Thanjan sat down, "Please don't tell me you are going to write this story?"
"Why is everyone so ashamed about it?"
"Mani Sir is a respected classical musician..."
"Many respected classical musicians have had open dalliances."
"But at his age, you want all this to come out... And," he said suddenly, "Saras Akka is your own family!" Then he declared with an air of finality, "If you came here looking for a story, you're not getting one."

Thanjan stormed out, and walked back in to say, "Do you want hot water for a bath? I'll have to heat it on the stove."
Ajith nodded.

Ajith bathed lazily, the hot water from Thanjan's stove was exhausted too quickly, but his body got used to the sting of the cold tap-water after a few tentative mugs. How quickly we get used to things, Ajith thought, what seems undigestible, intolerable, painful, soon becomes a part of our everyday. This isn't about making friends with discomfort, he thought, it is about redefining it for yourself.

He felt a lot better after that bath, the happy smell of soap and shampoo lifted his spirits. He went back to the sit-out, spread his legs out on to the teapoy and picked up the newspaper that was kept for him. He tucked into the sports page when Thanjan came back and said, "Breakfast is ready."

Ajith took his newspaper with him to the dining table, where he ate in silence. Thanjan coldly served him idlis, fresh from the cooker, with steaming sambar and slightly salty chutney. They didn't say a word to each other. Another cup of passion fruit tea later, Ajith went back to the sit-out and sat down with his laptop. Now that he had two days to himself, he thought it might be a good idea to sit and transcribe the interview.

With his legs on the teapoy, laptop on his lap, recorder in his shirt pocket and earphones in his ear, Ajith began the transcribing. He started with the first part of the conversation - Mani's memories of his childhood and his early teachers. He spoke of his mother, of how he kept taalam with the clatter of her sewing machine. "She had rhythm in everything she did," Mani said, "You could play the mridangam to her walk, to her talk, to her cutting vegetables, cooking, churning the cream into butter..." And his father, who could imitate the great nadaswaram vidwans, the distinct violin styles of Chodiwah, Dwaram and Papa, Dhanammal's veena, all with his voice, and Mali with his whistling. He wrote about Mani's brief schooling in a convent, where Mani claimed to anger his English teacher by asking him how Jesus could carry a goat in his hand and walk around when his followers ate the goat with relish. Then came his memories of the drama company, practising long and hard to get every entry, exit, every dance sequence, every song perfect, travelling on bullock cart to different villages for performances, singing and acting about eight hours a day without a trace of tiredness or boredom, tasting alcohol for the first time at fifteen after a particularly successful show, and learning Tyagaraja kritis from unnamed 'mama's.

Ajith remembered Mani's wonderment and joy while recollecting these memories - he really didn't want them lost with his passing. And he was happy he found a patient listener, who would also write about them.

By lunch, Ajith reached the part about Janani, but he had already exceeded his word limit. He had two-and-a-half days' worth of conversation still left to go through on his recorder. He decided to transcribe everything, and then begin the editing process.

Thanjan announced lunch as sourly as he had announced breakfast. Ajith ate the lunch at the common dining table as sourly as he had eaten the breakfast, which was a pity, for the food was excellent. There was another man at the table for lunch, but Ajith buried himself in a novel, not wanting to make any conversation.

After lunch, Ajith resumed his writing in the sit-out, but found it a lot harder to concentrate. The food had settled heavily in his tummy, and kept sending him into snatches of sleep.

The rivulet gurgled outside, the water sparkled in the sunlight that fell from directly above it. He saw a rabbit by the trees, hopping about aimlessly. His phone rang, and a woman's voice he had definitely heard before said, "Follow the rabbit." The voice was familiar, but Ajith couldn't exactly place it. Something told him, though, that he should follow the rabbit. Soon, the rabbit had led him to a part of the forest where Thanjan and Mani sat discussing something in hushed tones. When they saw Ajith, they bolted, and Ajith ran after them. Soon, Ajith found he wasn't chasing Thanjan or Mani, but his father and grandfather. Saraswathi overtook him, caught up with them, and ran past them. Ajith ran faster, overtaking all of them, and nearly reaching a finish line, when he found the rabbit and a tortoise had reached before him, and were bickering about some cheating.

Ajith woke up when his laptop fell to the ground with a thud. He was disoriented and worried for a second, but he calmed down when he found that there was no damage done. He saved the file, and put his computer on sleep mode and took a proper nap on the bed.

He woke up nearly three hours later, with a faint sense of a tense, nagging dream - he didn't remember it, though. He could do with another cup of that passion fruit tea. He found Thanjan in the garden again, with his shears and a hosepipe, tending to a tree that Ajith had never seen before.

"What tree is this?" Ajith asked.
Thanjan, his voice still unfriendly, replied, "Tea tree. You let the plant grow, and it turns into this."
Thanjan didn't seem to be doing anything with his shears or the hosepipe. He was just walking around the garden with them for company. Once he reached the main gate with Ajith following him, Thanjan asked, "You want tea?"

Ajith was now at the desk in his room, his laptop on the table, a cup of tea by its side, attempting to restart his transcribing. After much thought, he decided to skip the portion about Janani for now, and moved on to the second day of the interview. Here, Ajith found, very little of the conversation was recorded - most of it happened in the room when Mani's brother was picking out furniture, or in the car on the way to the beach. Ajith dropped the conversation format, and wrote in a more freestyle prose way for this part of the interview.

It was almost eight before he finished writing this part and editing the entire interview until then, when Thanjan came again for dinner. Ajith said, "You want to read what I'm writing?" Unsurely, Thanjan said, "Yes."

Just then, Ajith's phone rang. It was Nethra.
"Hello!" he said.
"Where the hell are you?" she asked, urgently.
"Kodaikanal."
Ajith heard her take a deep breath, before she said, "Mani's very breathless. Might not last till morning."
***

I am not a Whale

Some borrowed words for your reading pleasure, from an early chapter in Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase. I finished reading this book a while ago, but the book hasn't finished with me.

"We are not whales - and this constitutes one great theme underscoring our sex life.


When I was a kid, there was an aquarium thirty minutes by bicycle from where I lived. A chill aquarium-like silence always pervaded the place, with only an occasional splash to be heard. I could almost feel the Creature from the Black Lagoon breathing in some dim corner.

Schools of tuna circled 'round and 'round the enormous pool. Sturgeon plied their own narrow watercourse, pirahna set their razor-sharp teeth into chunks of meat, and electric eels sputtered and sparked like shorted-out lightbulbs.

The aquarium was filled with countless other fish as well, all with different names and scales and fins. I couldn't figure out why on earth there had to be so many kinds of fish.

There were, of course, no whales in the aquarium. One whale would have been too big, even if you knocked out all the walls and made the entire aquarium into one tank. Instead, the aquarium kept a whale penis on display. As a token, if you will.

So it was that my most impressionable years of boyhood were spent gazing not at a whale but a whale's penis. Whenever I tired of strolling through the chill aisles of the aquarium, I'd steal off to my place on the bench in the hushed, high-ceilinged stillness of the exhibition room and spend hours in end contemplating this whale's penis.

At times it would remind me of a tiny shriveled palm tree; at other times, a giant ear of corn. In fact, if not for the plaque - WHALE GENITAL: MALE - no one would have taken it to be a whale's penis. More likely an artifact unearthed from the Central Asian desert than a product of the Antarctic Ocean. It bore no resemblance to my penis, not to any penis I'd ever seen. What was worse, the severed penis exuded a singular, somehow unspeakable aura of sadness.

It came back to me, that giant whale's penis, after having intercourse with a girl for the very first time. What twists of fate, what torturous circumnavigations, had brought it to that cavernous exhibition room. My heart ached, thinking about it. I felt as if I didn't have a hope in the world. But I was only seventeen and too young to give up on everything. It was then and there I came to the realization I have borne in mind ever since.

Which is, that I am not a whale."

Now you know why he leaves me speechless.

Grandmother of the Bride

Mohammad Amir bowling is one of the more beautiful sights in the world - fast, fresh, whippy, and seaming, he lights up dull evenings here in Madras. And then there's Mohammad Asif, trundling along from the other end, weaving his wiliness around that unsuspecting outside edge. On one such evening, I sat before the television, watching these two when Paati sat beside me and said, "Will you turn down the volume for a second? I need to talk to you."

Paati always had the strangest things to say, and mostly, they concerned food. She would offer some strange dish, usually, "Shall I make Maggi for you with some kadalai in it?" or "What about bread with tomato and molaga podi, toasted with cooking oil?" "Perhaps you'd like some mango juice - one half of the mango was spoilt, so I squeezed it along with the other half to compensate." I usually listened to these questions, and dismissed them politely. Sometimes, impolitely. But Paati never failed to offer these quirky culinary delights.

On this particular day, it didn't seem like she was offering me anything to eat or drink. I felt she actually had something to discuss. I wondered if she had her leg-cramps, whether her eyes were watering, it could've been her teeth, or her hands, or that shooting headache she complains of sometimes. She once had a 'gastric' pain from her head to her stomach, radiating from end-to-end endlessly.

But she seemed fine. Perhaps she wanted to buy something for the house. Once she wanted to buy a folding bed, in addition to the four in the house, because you need one for the guests. Once she decided that a steel almirah must be duly purchased for keeping my books. Once she demanded a separate TV she never really watched.

"I am organising a wedding," she said, with a faint smile.
I was surprised. Organising a wedding - at eighty-six! It couldn't have been mine, she didn't have the guts to suggest something like that. There was only one other cousin eligible, but my Paati wouldn't bother with his wedding at her age.
"It is between a neem tree and another sapling," she continued, with that smile still lurking on the corners of her face.
I was startled. But I maintained a straight face and asked, "Why? What have these trees done to merit this treatment?" I really wanted to ask her if this was an inter-caste wedding.
"So," she started. My Paati tells the most convoluted stories - like the Panchatantra, where one starts with a story, and then moves to another one, and another one nestled within it, and so on and so forth, before each shell is reopened, and each story is revisited in reverse, and all neatly tied up in the end. "You know, that a niece of mine gave me a neem sapling. I planted it in a little pot on the balcony, next to the manathakkali plant. It was growing really well, and slowly outgrowing its pot. So, I called Sarasu, the lady who sweeps the steps, and asked her to plant it outside somewhere. When she uprooted it from the pot, She discovered that another plant was intertwined with it. She told me that this was great luck, and that I had to marry them off for lifelong fortune."

I wondered if it was some Rama Sene at work - marrying off intertwined couples.

Paati was in her flow now, "So, Sarasu took the plants to the Amman kovil on Boag Road and planted them there. A vaadyaar will come sometime next week and decide the date of the wedding. I have already arranged for a veshti and saree to be bought for the bride and the groom, and one more saree for Amman and a veshti for the vaadyaar." Darth vaadyaar.

I was now too stunned to speak. Paati said, "I know you think this is ridiculous, but I believe in all this. See, your cousin in the US gave birth to a boy the day I found these plants, and that other cousin found a good job. All this is because of the intertwined plants." I wondered if discovering intertwined people also brought good luck. What about intertwined dogs? Or cats? Or books?
***

A few days later, she told me, "The vaadyaar came today from the Amman kovil. He is from the Nagavalli Amman kovil."
Thatha jumped in with this little detail, "It's on the platform right next to Sivaji Ganesan's house."
"He said that the wedding will cost a thousand five hundred. Four brahmins will be fed, and some naivedyam will be given to the people who come to the temple that evening!"
"When is the wedding?" I asked.
"On the fifteenth."
"Fifteenth, fifteenth. Sunday." Thatha repeated.
"On Thursday, the vaadyaar will come and collect the money."
"I have been discouraging your Paati from the time she brought it up," Thatha said, suddenly. By this time, I found the whole wedding too beautiful, too poetic to let it die. So, I said, "Thatha, please. It's just a small thing. Let her have her fun."
***

As Thursday approached, and a fever raged within me (the intertwining wasn't bringing me health), Paati began getting expectantly fidgety. "Should I make a sweet for the wedding myself?" she asked me. I gave her some sound logic, "See, at your daughter's wedding, you didn't cook. Only the samayal fellows did. So lets just let it be, no?" "Should I give the green saree to the bride and the red one to the Amman?" "That sounds like a plan, Paati. Amman usually wears red, no?" I said, offering my expert knowledge on the Nagavalli Amman's fashion sense.

Thursday morning, I was too tired from my fever to drive to work. I worked on the internet and a phone, sleeping for an hour, working for an hour, and pretending to be important to the world. Every time the doorbell rang, Paati would jump and rush to open it (her leg pain, her limping, were pushed to the background), only to find the milkman, the flower-lady, the courier-dude, the vegetable-lady, or a man collecting donations for a temple. By evening, Thatha was muttering under his breath, "Kandraavi. Dirty fellow. He's not come at all. Keeping us waiting like this all day. I told your Paati on that day only - don't try and organise something at her age. She can barely walk, and she's trying to organise a wedding."

I looked up from my laptop and asked Paati, "Do you want to go check the plant and the vaadyaar in the temple?"

She agreed immediately. Ninety-year-old Thatha and a four-year-younger Paati trudged down the stairs and in my car to the Nagavalli Amman temple on the platform next to Sivaji's house. When we reached the platform, we found that there was no such temple there. There was an Amman temple, but she was of a different variety. We asked a fruit-seller, who directed us to the road behind Sivaji's house.

When we reached the road, we found no kovil. I looked around, Paati was getting a little irritated, but Thatha got down the car and confidently walked towards what looked like a house. "That's the temple!" he declared. It was, in fact, a house. Thatha tried asking someone where the Amman kovil was, but his deafness meant he didn't hear a word of what was said.

Suddenly, I saw this large hoarding for a festival at the Nagavalli Amman kovil, and hiding behind that hoarding, was the kovil - the size of ten matchboxes, adjacent to a gutter. "That's the temple!" I said. I led them towards it when loud devotional music started playing from a conical speaker above it. Thatha discovered a temple festival office just behind the temple, and Paati immediately recognised her vaadyaar in the makeshift office.

I expected this vaadyaar to be the topless, pot-bellied, bearded, severely sacred-ashed and veshti-clad. Instead he looked like an extra from Goripaalayam. Long, curly hair, almost like a Afro, a thick moustache, a gold chain, a bright green shirt with the top button off, dark green loose pants, rings on six fingers, a pair of shades in one hand and a Reliance phone in the other, and bright, white shoes. When he saw Paati, he smiled brightly and said, "Amma! So nice of you to come here!"

I asked, "So, where are the trees?" Are they still up to naughtiness or have you unintertwined them?
Paati asked, "Why didn't you come home today?"
He said to my Paati, "You see, Amma, the trees..."
And suddenly, someone increased the volume on the loudspeaker, and we didn't hear the rest of the sentence. Thatha hadn't heard a word of the conversation until then even.
Then the vaadyaar shouted out to some boy to turn the damn music off.
When it was quiet again, he said, "The neem tree, Amma... It died."
"Died?"
"Yes, Amma, the leaves all dried up, and it died."
"And the other plant?" I asked.
"Oh that," he said, "That died a week ago."
Paati was heartbroken. The vaadyaar was unmoved, "That's why I didn't come today, Amma." He walked us to a small enclosure next to the temple, right by the gutter, and pointed out the flora to us. The neem tree was just a stick standing on the ground, and the other plant was nowhere to be seen. The vaadyaar said, matter of factly, "So, if you buy two more plants and come, we can get them married off."
"But weren't they to be married off because they were intertwined?" I asked.
"You can always intertwine the new plants," he said.

Thatha, who finally heard and understood what had happened, said, in English, "I think this isn't worth it."
"Lets go, he is cheating us," Paati said, again, in English.

And that was the final word on the entire affair. We got into the car and drove back almost silently.