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.

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.

First Poem I Have Ever Written

Three Uncles

I have an uncle

In the south of France

He drinks and he gets high too

He doesn’t eat for days

Then he eats a lot

And smilingly pukes the night away

I have another uncle who lives in Colombo

He’s rich and he’s not a nice guy

He drinks like a fish

He drives like a dick

I think he is out to kill you

One last uncle

He doesn’t drink a drop

But he’s as bad as the rest

He walks around town

With a constipated frown

Smiling at a bitch’s behest.

- Aakash Joshi

Drunken Ramblings - 3 AM.

Have you ever looked at perfect beauty and wondered at its source? I was, and still am, an anthropologist. Not one of those new fangled ass holes studying the effect of video games on teenage brats, a real anthropologist. Magic and medicine men - basket weaving hotties and snot nosed children – that’s what interests me. Sadly, no tribe containing the nascent features I desire seemed to exist in the world. I spent the first 25 years of my life looking, and white men of some ilk or the other had visited everywhere before. Where could I find my source? The origin of something essential to my life as a man? The thing came to me in the most mundane of locations, the dullest of places.  Perhaps I should embellish the circumstances of the origins of my quest to provide an academic narrative the drama of the discovery deserves. Alas, I am not a writer of blockbusters, but a scientist, a mere social scientist at that. And as such must remain true to the facts despite the lack of drama that may ensue. I saw her first in the most obvious of places. Yes, it’s a her, I shall be shoving obviousness down your throats like the bitter cough medicine of pre liberalisation childhoods. The courtyard of a sociology department – a garden filled with exotics in sub-continental proportions – and a girl. She is beauty like I have never seen. At first the remnants of the artist in me is reluctant to talk to her. Why ruin a good thing? Sleeping with subjects has always led to a lack of methodological clarity. But we are not engaged in acts of creation, of fantasy. An engagement with the facts is essential. I talk to her and she smiles. It is no ordinary parting of lips, the teeth that come through are not mere incisors and molars, the eyes shine with an honesty that none of you will ever find anywhere, in anyone. The scientific temper is gone; I am reduced from participant observer to audience. She gives me a name, a mere signifier to this collection of perfection. I vow to find her true name. To know what is already certain, we spend the next few hour together, her listening and me rambling about what I think she might like.  Destiny is not amenable to analysis, but it guides our lives all the same. Perhaps it irks us more than love because unlike the latter it is not reducible to biology. I know now with Cartesian certainty that it was destiny that made her put up with me. There is no other explanation for her continued tolerance of my company.

I know what you’re thinking. A man in love intellectualises the heady drug of his passion for a younger woman. Hold back your cynicism. I attempted methodological neutrality with all my ability as I courted her. I looked at every part of her up close and surveyed her from a distance. I attempted find fault in every word she said and tried to complete every thought she had. And it was not just I. Every man who knew her thought her perfect. As the unreality of her existence dawned on me I realised that the ordinary name she went by was in fact a lie. I began to read, like Gandalf in the libraries of Gondor, I searched for the truth of her origins.  I went through the available texts, by known authors. I began frequenting back alley chatrooms where expelled grad students spouted their drug-addled filth. After months of searching, I found nothing. She was happy in the pretence of an ordinary romance with an older man, to keep up her comfort I had to hide my obsession.

It was in the magic chatroom - part alcoholic anthropologists, part users of psychedelic drugs – where I finally heard the name of the woman I loved. At first it was untranslatable. A series of clicks and whistles from the language before babel, the forgotten sounds of the first men, a language learnt from the birds in the trees and the insects between the blades of grass. Twke%h£!a, my Maswara friend from Botswana translated it as best she could. It was an old legend, never written, but always passed down with a religiosity that would put the best evangelical to shame. It spoke of the origin of Beauty, the first of her kind. Before her, the hunters of the Great Rift Valley knew nothing except the vastness of the sky and the harshness of the swamp. There was no question of her being reborn, she permeated the tribe of the first people like the ubiquitous nose of Rushdie’s Sinais. She was the heritage of all of us. As a scientist, I must share my data and open it to the criticism of my peers. But I cannot bring myself to subject her to your gaze, to make her aware of her own deep significance to our sentience. What I have found in her arms may well alter our notions of who we are. I could tell you how she proves that heredity has as little to with genetics as love has to with sex. Alas, my selfish desire for individual happiness keeps me giving you her false name, a name by which you could recognise her. I give you the translation Twke%h£!a  gave to me, and if you so desire, you may try to find her in the multitudes that you consider beautiful. She is Boo, of the Balu clan, reborn and ever present, immortal in her aspect, both diffused as beauty in mundane objects and particularised in the name I shall not utter. And fellow beings of scientific temper, approach her with caution if you find her, for her splendour belongs to a time before our method and you must be a stalwart of our inhuman neutrality if you wish to escape her spell.

A Prologue

There were five other people on the grid. The monitor was a bit grainy, it made us look like busts of freedom fighters, birdshit streaming down our faces. Each of us had convenient labels, for those who missed the earlier segments or didn’t have the attention span to be bothered with names. Mine said ‘friend.’ The feminist had ‘Academic and Social Activist.’ There was a journalist and lawyer as well, but they were just the backup dancers. It was between her and me. They cut to a close of her face. The stammering anchor asks his question off camera. “Mandankini V-vaisan, you have gone on record to say that Sunita Bisht does not deserve the death penalty. In fact, you have been said, and I quote, “her action cannot be c-classified as murder.” Her lips parted exposing her yellowing teeth in a smile so supercilious she may as well have spit in our faces. That smile was one of her in studio techniques. So was addressing anchors and co-panelists with a formality that dripped with condescension. ‘Mr. Barua, I would appreciate not having my words distorted in front of my face. Can I have two minutes to speak? Without interruptions? Thank you. I have made no claims to Saraswati’s guilt or innocence. Only that the charge of murder is inapplicable. I think it amounts to a case of manslaughter if not culpable homicide, both of which differ from murder in one crucial respect – intent. And that’s the point here. Shantanu Ray took advantage of her. And while making false promises for sexual favours is a time honoured tradition, it is her action against the action against her that is her crime.’ She sighed, satisfied at her own cleverness. I began my perplexed frown. And her final punch, ‘In a country that practically patted Nanavati on the back, the least we can do is offer Saraswati our sympathy. Our legal system will certainly give her jail time.’ I get ready for my turn. Adding what I hope is righteous outrage to my frown. ‘An i-interesting point Mandakani. Some would say you’re blaming the victim. Aakash Joshi, Shantanu Ray was a close friend. Perhaps you would like to respond?’ No fucking shit I would. ‘Thank you, sir.’ See, I could be respectful too. ‘I think you put it perfectly. That someone as erudite as Dr. Vaisan searches for the cause of the crime in the rumoured character of the victim, rumours I know to be false, while glorifying the murderer (I say it with emphasis) as some kind of kali-bhairavi archetype is deeply disturbing…’ She interrupts, still smirking. Probably at my awesome archetype line. ‘I did not say that at all. The inability to…’ ‘Ma’am, please let me finish, I recall offering you the same courtesy. The fact is that Shantanu Ray had consensual sex, without lying about himself or what he did. They spent one night together, and on the second he was dead. To blame the victim, or the murderer for that matter, based on their class is the sort of bigotry I wouldn’t expect from so distinguished an academic as Dr. Vaisan.’ I wish my role allowed a self satisfied smirk. I settled morally offended. The lawyer and the journalist were talking, but really, I stopped listening after I stopped speaking. I fiddled with my earpiece, just so people know how uncomfortable I am with this sort of thing.