Wardrobe - Fiction

My friend is getting married in two weeks. It’s over a long weekend, two events a day for three days. It is important for me to be present for most of it since the groom is a close friend and former roommate. I do not possess enough decent clothes for such a drawn out affair. And apparently it’s not right to be not dressed to the nines.

Take W, for example. A man without a care in the world. He has always been successful and supremely confident. His disdain for social mores is legendary. He showed up for the graduation dinner in shorts. The lawns at college were lit up, and the rest of us were awkwardly moving about in oversized blazers, trying to match up to gorgeous women in sari’s and little black dresses. But not him. He came down in what he always did. There was no swagger to him, no point he was trying to prove. He felt no discomfort in being out of place. Anyway, he bought a designer suit. Everyone has.

I would like to. But I cant. I am out of work and such indulgences are beyond me for the moment. The despondency at being unemployed has given way to the desperation of being unemployable. To keep the misery at bay, I give myself a little project everyday. The last week has been spent fighting a cold. I get up every morning at 6:30 and have a glass of hot water with lemon and honey. Then I empty my bowels and gargle with salt water. Then I go into the living room and remove the hideous rug and turn on the television. It’s usually the second quarter of an NBA game. I curse the curtains (they have little birds on them) and the rug. I take 10 minutes for myself before my mother wakes up. This flurry of activity is meant to delay my first cigarette for as long as possible. Then I take two Septilin. If this itch at the back of my throat turns into a full-blown infection, I will have to take antibiotics. This is something that must be avoided, except at the utmost hour of need. I don’t know why this is the case. It just is.

The last twenty-four hours have been strange. I drank a lot of whiskey last night. Usually, I handle whiskey fairly well. Blenders Pride is the staple at my bar. It is a good whiskey, comfortable, like a formerly prickly sweater gone soft with age. Yesterday I drank Teachers, which is supposed to be a better drink. It certainly costs more. The experience was not a pleasant one. Three out of the five people that were supposed to show up got stuck at work. The other two were my ex-girlfriend and her current boyfriend. At one point, the evening became a subtle game of one-upmanship.

Waiters hover around me constantly, filling my drink. Their manner is endearing, the right combination of familiarity and obsequiousness. The manager makes his special beef fry for me. It’s not on the menu. Two other regulars stop by for a few minutes. One of them thinks we are still a couple and neither of us bothers to correct him. The bar itself is fairly empty, unusually so for a Friday night. The lights seem brighter than usual. The music seems softer. The boyfriend wears a look of disdain on his face. He surveys everything with a critical air and smirks ever so slightly once his inspection is complete. Each table has a rexine sofa on one side and chairs upholstered (a tiger print) with the same material on the other. The loo is on the first floor and it’s always filthy by 9 o clock. I hold my breath as I take a piss. Memories of my brother waft in as I go to wash my hands. He would always relieve himself in the washbasin at bars.

Less chance of infection he said.

Even as I am saying the words, I realise how much I will regret them the next day. The formulaic nature of the conversation/altercation is as nauseating as the shitty whiskey. It begins with the mention of my freelancer status. The euphemism is lost on no one.

I am jealous dude, said he.

Of what, said I, the unemployment or the puerile put downs of successful sautans?

And it went from there, to bitchy little insinuations all night long.

At home, I am obsessed. The wardrobe is sorted out for day 1 and day 3. Day 2 has the wedding and a big party at night. Part of me is eager to circumvent the problems of fashion and money by wearing a dhoti. Most of me wants to vomit. The master bedroom is a mess. The mattress lies on the floor, still wrapped in the sheets. I have managed to break the bedside lamp as well. Bags of moth eaten woollens smell of disintegrating neem leaves. I find the uniforms of the dead wrapped in a plastic sheet. They are well preserved and look better than last year’s woollens. The room is spinning and blurring at the same time. A blackout seems imminent. I sing loudly to myself in an effort to stay awake.
Ekta banae ja kadam kadam badhae ja

Ekta mein Shakti hai, ekta mahaan hai

Eeektaaa mein bal sada eeektaaa mein praan hai.

That’s all I remember of the school song. It goes on loudly in a loop till I pass out in the mess.

The drawing room is exactly like it used to be before 2002. Broken lampshades and a jute dari. Everyone is there – Baba, Ma, Dada and even Pomo and Jumbo. People smoke indoors and no one cares about my twelve year old lungs. I am running around with a dhoti in one hand and a bandgala in the other. Dada is masturbating into a big brass jug. It is disgusting and I am about to say something but I am hiding from my mother and looking for something to wear. Only the downstairs is available to me, Jumbo is having an epileptic fit at the foot of the staircase. His tiny dachshund body seizes, both rigid and quivering. He moves across the floor like a cellphone vibrating on a wood table, banging his head on the stair, a concoction of blood and froth oozing out of his mouth. Baba hovers over him with that smile of his. It was a loud smile, like a laugh. Ray men are never in the background. His stillness is just getting wound up to grab the room again like a spoilt three year old between tantrums. I ask him what to wear.

Did you get your unit test results?

Baba, should I wear dhoti-panjabi or your bandgala?

Don’t lie it was two weeks ago.

I don’t want to go.

Why? Is that girl going to be there, whatshername? Who keeps looking at you at the matches?

This morning I see Shiv. I am taking a short cut through the park between the temple and Japanese School. The gas pipeline people have dug a big hole right in the middle. My jacket is too warm. I shouldn’t have worn it out, but it’s December and the winter wardrobe must see the light of day, whether the weather permits it or not. The sun is just warm enough and my armpits begin to moisten. The smell of stale alcohol begins to encase me. The same smell comes up from behind. It’s Shiv. He is Nepali. His skin isn’t porcelain. It is tough and leathery, like the coolies with the jute slings you see at hill stations. His eyebrows are thick and long, almost to his cheekbones. He has the bun on top of his head. His locks are filthy, but not matted and are divided by his ears on either side. He is wearing a stained, soiled t-shirt. It says Being Human. His trousers are of an indeterminate colour. They look thick – probably started out as canvas or denim. He is short and wiry. His heels are hard and cracked. His toenails are just smidge too long. I am next to the hole when he begins walking across the park. He has wide gait and a grumpy look. For the first few seconds I marvel at the vibe this person puts out. His otherworldliness comes from the bottom.

From shit and sweat and sex and smoke,

From Booze and drugs and dirty jokes.

Perhaps it’s the weird night I had, I am still drunk at noon the next day. Sakshat Shiv. It sounds like the title of a bad TV serial. He stops for a second as he walks past me and matches my stare. I hear music as he walks away. It could be violin or cello. I know nothing of western classical music. I don’t know where it comes from. Perhaps from the black and yellow taxi on the street. It doesn’t seem so far away. Or as though from speakers. I don’t know why I assume its Chopin. It just sounds good doesn’t it? I saw Shiv today, and Chopin was playing.

Pomo Obit

For the first time since I was 12, I am without a dog. Pomo waited till I got back to town, and in the end went peacefully. I am grateful to her for many things, but most of all for being a great hot water bottle and teaching me how to be affectionate. Thanks to her, I have never been lonely when I have been sad. She was old, almost 16. Apart from childbirth and being mauled by a pack of strays once, she has never been ill till this last time. She was affectionate, and slept in my bed every night I was home. Many of my friends have woken up hungover with a dachshund's bum in their face.  She lost her appetite three weeks ago and was on a drip for a week. Liver and kidney failure in an old, small dog has no cure. She still had energy though and was going for a walk. She got really bad 3 days ago, but she waited for me to return from a trip before dying in her sleep. She was good dog, very distinguished. She looked at thrown balls with disdain - too aristocratic to fetch. She was inordinately susceptible to the cold for a teutonic creature. Here ears flopped and flapped very endearingly when she ran. She made me a much better person than I am. I will miss her dearly. 

Grandparents

A very old piece I found while rifling through the computer

I never knew my grandfathers. Commander Tapan Kumar Chatterjee, my nana, had the good fortune of dying before his failures reached their zenith. At fifty-two, he was a complete an utter drunk, hated his sons and didn’t much care for his wife. His daughter, on whom he doted in an unserious sort of way, had run off to do an IB in Canada. He had been passed over for the hundredth time, and was probably going to be forced to retire early, as a consequence of his drinking. The bloody puke, when it came must have been a happy purging before the end. He was dead within a week, and his children are fucked up in their own ways, Heroin for one, and booze for the other two.

My other grandfather, P.C Joshi, lived through every failure, and despite his place (small as it is) in Indian history, I know next to nothing about him. He was the first and youngest General Secretary of the undivided CPI, was expelled from the party for, you guessed it, being a revisionist. He was decried because he didn’t think national movement was complete hokum, and thought Gandhi and Nehru were worth admiring. No point blaming the party, they had a point. Everywhere commies have taken on social democrats as comrades, they have stayed commies no more, and end up having too many comrades on the wrong side. He didn’t take it well though, and while he was re-admitted to the party, the rest of his life was spent reconciling political idealism and organisational loyalty with a deep bitterness.  He had a number of strokes in his sixties, tried to set up a trust in Kumaon, which never worked out because he died before it could.

My grandmothers on the other hand were a distinct track in my childhood and beyond. They were both stuck with sons who were dealing with stupendous complexes about their fathers’ and despite their best efforts, they only seemed to exacerbate the problem.

Thakuma was at least as famous as her husband, one of the few women directly engaged in the armed struggle against the Brits, went to jail, became a communist, and was (and still is to some degree) something of minor folk hero in Bengal. After Kalpana Dutt became Comrade Kalpana Joshi, she was if anything exposed to a wider world both in terms of ideas , people and the actual world. She travelled to the Soviet Union, spoke fluent Russian, got a series of awards et al.  Before Alzheimer’s took her, she was still bus-ing it to work at ICCR in her late seventies. At seventy-something she fell down the stairs at our flat and broke her hip. The doctor assured her she would walk normally soon enough. She was worried about when she would be able to resume her morning skipping regimen.

Basically, she was for her time, a wholly remarkable woman.  And she left a train of fucked up souls across generations.  So her sons, born one year apart, were both supposed geniuses.  They were throwing out hints at potential, with double promotions and university-topping across Delhi (my father) and Moscow (my jethu).  This potential exhausted itself, as potential often does, before their prime.  They were good with women, as coddled Bengali boys tend to be. And for their part, within the limits of their personalities and poisons they were good to them as well.  Kalpana Dutt - wielder of guns and makers of bombs at seventeen – independent through marriage and much of what had to be pre Alzheimer’s dementia – was blind to her sons faults. More than that, she was blind to them as human beings, to their choices and their deeply warped sense of being.   

My father is thirty-five years old. He is drunk and playing table tennis at the Hindustan Times building. His mother, old already and venerable as all fuck, takes a bus from ICCR to his house in Hauz Khas heats up the lunch she has taken for him and lands up HT. He has eaten of course, and is passed out in what was meant to be a union meeting. ‘What the fuck!,’  you ask. Will this heroine of the freedom struggle, stalwart of the communist party stand for this.  

“Khokon aajke beshi khe neichelo. His friends force him you know, he is a good boy otherwise.”

Shipra Chatterjee has been carried through life, just so much driftwood flaking away with age. Her father had died when she was quite young, thirteen I think, and she had to suffer the ignominy of living in her mama’r baadi. Her sister grew up to be quite the intellectual, but she never had a chance. She trudged her way through school in Bengali backwaters. A distant uncle visited once, was impressed with her singing or recitation or something and decided to wed her to his son. His eldest son, Lieutenant T.K Chatterjee. It was a match made in arranged marriage hell. Dida had inherited her mother’s lithium imbalance and Nana, who had wanted to be a tabla teacher cowed under his father and left a white girlfriend, discovered he was colourblind and promptly became an alcoholic. Her sons, such as they were turned out to be disappointments and ass holes, in equal measure. Her daughter made choices that were far from a conservative families dream. Her nervous breakdowns, schizophrenic episodes were dismissed or explained away. Her husband didn’t beat her, not to my knowledge anyway, but it seems to be a marriage with a monotonous wretchedness as its undercurrent rather like a job you’re in just for the money. It was sometime after his death that she found something of herself. It didn’t turn out to be all that much of a self, not a Kalpanadutttype identity, but more than a lot of women with her background can find. The bosom of the Government of India opened up, and she was (and still is) entitled to a reasonable pension. They also gave her a flat. A fourth floor two bedroom in West Delhi, which was even further back of beyond then. Her children, apart from the Junkie were out of the house for the most part. 

The auto cant go any further. The road has just ends and all she can see are sprawling lanes. Babu mama is sweating and shaking. The dealer is surprisingly unshady, skinny as hell but dressed in a button down shirt and pants. Dida, still slim and only with the faintest hint of gray in her hair, scores some heroin for her puking incontinent youngest son. 

Untitled Little Moan

What if I left, just walked away? Its been ages since I cared about a weekday. I am terrible at my work, which as often as not I shirk. I have some friends in this place. They are all quitting, for a better state. 

Of mind and body.

I have nothing in hand, I have no plans. If I stay home, I am afraid. Afraid that I will watch tv shows, and eat cheese and excavate affection from an old dog who would rather sleep.

I no longer understand my city or my country. They all know more than me. Prophecy is easy for them, and television is smarter than a book or a newspaper. I barely read either anymore. 

How long could I lie? Get up in the morning and put on a (metaphorical) tie. Go to a coffee place and have chai after chai after chai. In the evening get drunk. Come back home in a funk. I could do it for a while, then someone would tell. I'd be out of money. And my bastard friends would bitch, about this little hitch. 

I'd give their little minds, a little bit of fun. A chance to feel superior, while they drink Sangria's like men drink rum. Each wanting to intellectualise, a partial friend's demise.

Is that why I stay? No I lie, I do that by the way. I like the money, I really do. I just wish something interesting would give me some too.

Narritivum

Since killing the idea of India wasn't bad enough, the PM-select has taken away my favourite thing. It is an element inferred, like dark matter. As the not-so-subtle teleological principle that permeates the chronicles from Discworld, it let me know that things work out, though not always as we foresee. The only thing us mere mortals need to know about narritivum is that it makes the million to one chance come through.

Yesterday's government has been accused of many things and it appears not even a million to one chance can save it. But its greatest fault, the one most germane to its impending loss, is the failure to recognise the power of a story well told. That is the essence of propaganda. And unlike its country cousin libel, truth is no defence against it.

Dear leader's manifest destiny has come to fruition. The money, hate, cadre, advertisements and salivating NRI techies are each a condition of possibility for the coming Utopia. None however, are a Necessary Condition. Mr. Modi recognises the importance of a story, and how beginnings determine ends. Terryda told me that narrative force is far more powerful than logic. It is here that the Man of Steel covered all his bases. He is both the return to a glorious past as well as the one to take us marching to modernity. He is the authoritarian centre as well as the federalist. He is the vegetarian butcher, the abstinent symbol of virility. In a million to one chance, he is both the million and the one.

Till recently, I thought Narritivum would save us. That when push comes to cliff we are not a people who had decency and open-ness foisted on us by the euro-centric generation of leaders responsible for the constitution. That in some deep part of us we are a decent society. And it is likely that we are.

That is why Mr Modi scares so many of us (most of 'us' are not muslims or christians). Not for what he will do as the head of government, but what he brings out in the people who elected him. Mr. Modi's Idea of India is not new. It is part of the earliest debates about who we are as a people. It is the worst of us - selfish, conservative, materialist and so so many things. An open society is a fragile thing and Mr. Modi's story has shattered it. Like the bile of a boozer long suppressed, the worst of it is on its way.

I hope I am wrong. That enough people still know what this country is and protect it. Or failing that, the next five years are the expectorant our diseased collective consciousness needs. 

Boss Chronicle Part -1

The conference room feels like its being roasted in farts. The air conditioners, liberators from the fat heat of the summer, let out fermented air slimy like the inside of a bum rash. The place is packed - chairs and people brought in from various work stations fill every corner. Too many new employees and not enough planning. The COO holds forth, while the rookie of rookies does his best not to pass out. 

He catches Shruti's eye, his colleague who has been more than kind and smiles. She had warned him about the interminable boredom of the weekly meeting.

A joke is cracked by the COO - people smile audibly - and one man laughs. Not a laugh of the amused. It is a clear laugh, goes up and down with precision. Its the opposite of when you laugh at a clown.

He looks around, the man with the laugh. Around the room his eyes go, the laugh ebbing away without the company that public obsequiousness requires. He splutters on for far too many seconds, I can't take it anymore. I meet his gaze and smile audibly. 

It is not taken as a mark of solidarity, but rather seen through for what it is. A condescending gesture, half sucking up half charity.

As his gaze passes over mine it is obvious that he realises, with uncharacteristic intelligence the arrogance of my acknowledgement. He has been used to being a sad little man for a long time now. He stumbled into this job. He is agreeable and personable, and over five years rose to a position of relative importance in a small organisation by the sheer inertia of bureaucratic promotions and raises. 

It is hard to say whether he realises the picture he paints. A chubby little man, out of his depth. Asking questions to appear intelligent and failing miserably. Surrounded by young women, clad in the latest NGO chic with twangs in their accents - some american and a few english. They are below him in the hierarchy, but listened to more. 
He does not acknowledge this to himself often. He knows that greater renumeration for what he does will be hard. In your fifties, trying to keep up with  grating little words like ideate isn't going to be easy. Difficult enough to be not worth a try. 
His department has trudged along quite well the last few years. But the whole place is expanding. Offices have multiplied and so have the people. It was only a matter of time before he got an idiot, over eager and over smart. The way the 'sir' and 'ji' roll of my tongue is far too deliberate. To him, I know I am better and calling the boss by his first name like everyone else make it far too obvious. 
The boss feels a pain in his knee and his stomach and his back. It all emanates from the mildest of paunches.  He thinks of ways to reign the new boy in.

Everything Wrong with Narendra Modi’s Speech in Delhi

1.     Apparently, as an RSS pracharak, he travelled without tickets. And the TTE is a venal cretin for not giving him a berth.

2.     “CWG  ne desh ka naam videsh mein kharaab kiya” – Of course genocide, state sponsored discrimination et al have really made an awesome impression among liberal democracies everywhere. He can’t even get a damn visa!

3.     If BJP comes to power in Delhi, all the multiple governments will vanish. So basically the MCD, the Delhi government and the centre shall be one.  Destroy division of power and federal structure - Fascist much, bitch?

4.     Ridiculously insensitive Sardar joke – 1

5.     China’s railway lines have grown at the twice the rate of India’s.  Well, it is four times the size, didn’t have anywhere near the kind of  railway system the British left us. Besides, numbers of trains, quality of stations, switching to better tracks all form part of railway infrastructure.

6.     He seems to think it’s a big secret that India is a poor country. No way Obama would have known if Manmohan hadn’t told him. Manmohan stands up for the pro people policies and marginal regulations to unhindered plunder, makes Obama agree and Modi thinks its bad diplomacy.
Can’t wait for his nuanced foreign policy. Clearly it’s a discourse of strength and virility for minorities and the poor at home, and bending over backwards for capital, both domestic and foreign.

7.     ‘Dehati Aurat.’ Dude, seriously?  Get your damn sources right. I don’t attribute Arnab Goswami quotes to you.

8.     Foreign Policy Plan (regional)– Head hunting in Pakistan. I hope all the right wing lunatics enjoy Narendra Modi’s-Macabre-Medieval-Crusade

9.     He’s angry about criminals in politics. Amit Shah, Babubahi Bokhariya, Maya Kodani.

10. Modi references the constitution - A man from the RSS (which explicitly does not believe in the constitution), unapologetic for riots, thinks secularism is an animal rights issue.

11. Dirty Team v/s Dream Team – dude, DUSU candidates have more mature slogans than that. Also, who is in this dream team? Modi and… Modi? Who will be the Chief Minister of Delhi? Ah shit sorry, forgot that we were abolishing the federal structure. So Modi. Quite the team.

12. Sardar joke 2

13. His woeful chai selling childhood. Apparently on trains. There is nothing cheaper than exploiting ones past, exaggerating it and using it to put people down. For all his faults Manmohan Singh has never used partition or the things he went through to score brownie points.

14. Tries to be secular for a bit. Ends with a group chant of Vande Mataram – just in case we thought he meant it.