Blowfish Page 12

  ‘My phone is not working properly.’

  ‘Why don’t you buy a new one?’

  ‘I’m not well. I’ve got a brain tumour.’

  ‘Who says that Papa?’

  ‘My legs shake. I’m not able to walk properly. I can’t sleep. Someone said it’s neurological.’

  ‘Have you been to a doctor Papa?’

  ‘What will they say? I know what they’ll say.’

  ‘They can do some tests Papa. They can get a CT scan done. They will find out if you’re all right. They can give you the right medicines.’

  ‘No one can treat me now. I’m dying. I know.’

  ‘Don’t say that Papa. Go to a hospital, please.’

  ‘I will need to go in a car to the hospital. I can’t go in a car.’

  ‘Why Papa? What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Have you seen how people drive nowadays? I can’t imagine myself in a metal box hurtling at 80 miles per hour. People get flattened by a truck—flat like a tin plate. I don’t want to die that way. Do you remember Tinu? You won’t remember, you were four of five then. He was our neighbour Professor Choudhry’s younger brother. Tinu went out one morning on his blue Bajaj scooter to buy bread …’

  ‘Papa I don’t want to know. I’ve heard that story Papa, please.’

  ‘Your mummy and I saw him, he was unrecognisable, your mother fainted, his abdomen …’ his voice was hoarse. There was a morbid relish with which he told his stories of dismemberment and death.

  ‘Papa please, don’t tell me. I know. You don’t need to go in a car. I’ll ask Shankar ji to get a doctor to visit you.’

  ‘Nothing can treat me now. I’m dead. I’m a dead man.’

  ‘Don’t say that Papa.’

  ‘I’m like Rajesh Khanna. I shouldn’t have grown old. No one knew him once he grew old.’

  ‘You’re not like him Papa.’

  ‘I am. My students used to say I look like him.’

  ‘Ok, they once told you that I look like Aamir Khan. They were just trying to suck up to you Papa. We look like each other Papa, we don’t look like Rajesh Khanna and Aamir Khan.’

  ‘Hmm …’ he said. ‘When will you come and see me?’

  ‘I will Papa.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon Papa, maybe in February.’

  ‘That’s late, I’ll be dead by then.’

  ‘Don’t say that Papa. I’ll try to come sooner.’

  ‘How’s your mummy?’

  ‘She’s ok Papa.’

  ‘Does she visit you?’

  ‘Yes Papa, she visited about three months back.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s good. She’s been busy. She’s learning to drive.’

  ‘That’s suicidal at her age,’ he said.

  ‘She likes it. She’s started taking the car out in the campus.’

  ‘Which car does she drive?’

  ‘It’s a Maruti 800. She bought it recently.’

  ‘Penny wise, pound foolish.’

  ‘What Papa?’

  ‘Your mother, she is penny wise, pound foolish. What should I tell Professor Chand about your salary?’

  ‘What’s there to tell Papa?’

  ‘How much do you earn Mukund?’

  ‘I don’t earn anything Papa. I quit my job Papa.’

  ‘Hmmm … I will tell them you earn a lakh every month. Does that sound OK?’

  ‘Ok Papa,’ I said.

  Phoney Kundera

  ‘Tell me. What did she say? Did she get the flowers?’ I asked Chaddha.

  He sighed, ‘Yes, she did. I love her man; I love her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded happily.

  He looked sincere. Maybe Chaddha wanted more out of a woman than boobs. Maybe this girl had big boobs. His haggard eyes flitted around the room. He told me all that there was to know. Vanya had finally taken his call. She got the flowers. He apologised. She said it was fine. That conversation ended in less than a minute. She had been polite, he sensed sympathy. After this chat, Chaddha went to Vanya’s Facebook profile, he smiled at her list of favourite films and heaved a humongous sigh at her profile pic. Chaddha was in love; it had taken a minute and 15 seconds.

  ‘Guess her favourite film?’ he asked.

  ‘Love Actually?’

  ‘Fuck you! It’s Amelie,’ he was beaming.

  ‘Fuck!’ I said. That was worse than Love Actually.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful? I love that film: the characterisation, the plot, the cinematography—everything stands out.’

  ‘Don’t fucking go near her man,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s fucked in the head. She believes in magic and miracles and love and the beauty of loneliness. She believes in coincidences! You can’t give her anything of that, can you?’

  ‘I can love her.’

  ‘Bah! That’s never enough.’

  ‘Maybe it was not enough for phoneys like you and Nisha but that doesn’t mean it won’t be for us.’

  ‘I’m sorry man, why are you getting so touchy?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I’m in love and you don’t know how it is to be in love.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘No, phoney intellectuals don’t fall in love …’

  ‘I’m phoney? Who reads Milan Kundera?’

  ‘I do. What’s the connection between being a phoney and reading Kundera.’

  ‘I don’t know. How did you establish that I’m a phoney?’

  ‘Ha! There is nothing to establish. You talk about Kundera, what about this wannabe poster of La Dolce Vita beside your door? That and 8½ are the first two films that any pretentious idiot watches to tick “phoren cinema” off his list.’

  ‘I like that film.’

  ‘Ok, let’s forget about Fellini. How about the three Yoga books on your shelf—you’ve been talking about B K S Iyengar as if he’s your younger brother. You talk about the Bihar School of Yoga as if it’s your alma mater. I haven’t once seen you raise a leg. I guess you are in a perennial Shavasana.’

  ‘Shut up.’ I said. What else could I say? It was one of my biggest failures. I knew that if somehow I could get around to doing the Surya Namaskar I will become rich and happy instantly. I never did, I guess I didn’t feel like being rich and happy.

  We lit cigarettes. ‘So what were you saying about Kundera sahib?’ he asked. Chaddha was very sensitive about Kundera. He believed An Unbearable Lightness of Being was chicken soup for his troubled soul.

  ‘Nothing, just blabbering man,’ Chaddha had an unread copy of Hamlet on his study table that had an “often read and casually tossed to a corner” look—it was my brahmastra but I didn’t want to use it yet.

  ‘No, no, tell me,’ he was on the offensive. He thought he had me.

  ‘Well, if you look at all the people in college who were class one fakes—you know what was common about them?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  That was my cue. The knife was in Chaddha’s belly, now it was time to twist it. ‘They all liked Kundera or Marquez and they all liked some grossly overrated band like the Grateful Dead or the Doors or Led Zeppelin,’ I said.

  ‘Yaar! You’re such a jerk. Don’t you fucking try say anything about Led Zep. How about the time when you first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Bhandari …’ he shook his head and laughed, ‘you might fool everyone but I know you had no clue what was happening. You didn’t get the film at all! And now you discuss it as if you are Kubrick’s dick.’

  ‘I do understand 2001. I think I do,’ this was getting out of hand. I said, ‘Chaddha, fill in the blanks for me: Hamlet was the Prince of ___________’

  ‘Edinburgh. Fuck you!’ Chaddha did a fist pump.

  ‘Forget it,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. You’re not phoney.’

  ‘Ok Bhandari, you’re not phoney. Same pinch,’ he grinned.

  ‘Ok Chaddha. Coming back to this girl. Wh
y don’t you ask her out?’

  ‘Talk sense Bhandari! She thinks I’m a fascist. She thinks I’m Ghatotkacha.’

  ‘Ghatotkacha was on the Pandava side man, without him they wouldn’t have won the war.’

  ‘How does it matter? Can you stop showing off?’

  ‘All right, sorry.’

  ‘I think I will just keep loving her from a distance. I have done this in school, in college, at work—I’m a specialist in distant, one-sided love.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense to me. You should talk to her.’

  ‘Easy for you to say, isn’t it? What have you been doing with that Suman of yours? Nothing, eh?’

  That night, I thought of Nisha and of the day I first saw her in class. She was five rows ahead of me, reading a novel. I spent three days staring at the nape of her neck and her closely cropped hair from the back before I could muster the courage to talk to her. I was curious to know what she was reading. It was Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Ominous, now that I think of it. I thought of Suman. What was the point? Chaddha must be right. She would have someone or even if she didn’t, I was not what she would want, and even if she did, she would stop liking me later which would be worse. Why bother at all? I should just let it go. I wrote a letter to Nisha:

  Dear Nisha,

  Now I know why it felt so unconvincing unbuttoning you that night in Bombay. It was over. I was sleeping with a girl who no longer wanted me. You gave in to me out of pity that night, not out of love. I’m a loser. That’s what it means to be one.

  Bumbum is in love with a married woman and he doesn’t care that she has a four-year-old kid. Chaddha is pretending to be in love and it’s not about big boobs this time. And I? I can’t even ask a girl for her number. A voice in me talks of the futility of even trying, it says it must be a rebound, it says I’m not over you, it says in the end I’ll be alone again.

  I think I’ll get over you someday. The world can’t be that bad. I’m sure I’ll see that someday.

  Love,

  Mukund

  The Gurgaon

  Grand Prix

  Unrequited love and joblessness, Chaddha had learnt from 1960s Bollywood, invariably led a man to drink. Who was he to say no? A much-needed addition was made to his daily routine—he disappeared sometime in the afternoon and came back by 8 in the evening, sloshed.

  One evening, I spotted a rather quiet gureilla sneaking into Chaddha’s room. I shouted after him, ‘Hey Chaddha, come here man. I want to speak with you.’

  ‘Later,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Come on Chaddha. We should talk.’

  ‘Ok. Here I am’ he said and he collapsed on my bed. He stank of alcohol and cigarettes.

  I asked him, ‘Where have you been Chaddha?’

  ‘Evening exercise,’ he mumbled.

  ‘What does that comprise of, this evening exercise of yours?’

  He groaned and pulled his t-shirt over his head, ‘Do I need to tell you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m curious. Please elaborate Chaddha Sir,’ I said.

  ‘Ok,’ he said, ‘I leave home at around four. Your door is usually bolted and I don’t feel like knocking. I’m used to driving to office so I head that way. I tell myself I’ll buy just one pint and get back home. I stop at the theka beside my office and buy a Budweiser. I drive to the Golf Course road; I pass by the Genpact building—here I’m supposed to take a right to get back home—and I drive straight to Sector 56 and then to the Golf Course Extension road. By then, I’m done with the first pint. You know how quickly I finish my first beer. Anyway, so I look longingly at the empty pint gently swaying on the rear seat and I feel like having one more. I stop and look around, lo and behold, there’s another theka. I buy one more, take a U-turn. I promise myself this would be the last one and head back to the Genpact crossing. I somehow end up turning right instead of left and I head to MG Road. Up and down it goes through that hilly road. I’m through with the second bottle. I’m feeling good. One last pint won’t hurt, would it? I turn my head and I spot another theka. Yeah! It’s there right at the T where I hit MG. This time I debate if a Tuborg strong is better than the Bud I so fashionably like. A big bottle it is and I’m mumbling to myself: no more, no more, no mo, no mo, no no. I drive back and I’m grinning, my head is buzzing, my hands are shaking and I’m at 40 or 50 and then I accelerate to 90 and then go back to 60 and I’m sure I’ll get home but then I’m hungry too. Perfect, I say to myself. Pit stop, eat something, steady myself and then go home. I get to Arjun Marg. Order kebabs at Quereshis. They’ll take a few minutes. I roam around and what do I see?’

  ‘A theka?’ I ventured a wild guess.

  ‘A hundred pints to you my boy! I buy a Corona. I convince myself it’s like drinking a bloody Coke. I finish it, polish off the kebabs and smoke a cigarette. I smoke another cigarette, dump myself in the car and drive back.’

  ‘Back home?’

  ‘No’ he said.

  ‘You run into another theka?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘It’s 6 pm. People are leaving office.’

  ‘Yes, so?’

  ‘I go to Vanya’s office. I stop my car near the exit and wait for her. I watch her leave. That’s what I do nearly every day. The same bloody thing.’

  ‘Has she seen you?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound good man. You need to stop.’

  ‘I’ll try yaar, but I don’t have too much control over myself.’

  ‘What’s happening to your meditation? Is it helping?’

  ‘I quit that. I can’t follow even a single breath from start to finish.’

  ‘So you’re now into crime combos—drunk driving and stalking.’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘You must stop stalking her man. It’s dangerous,’ I told him.

  ‘I’m not stalking her. I just wait and watch her leave.’

  ‘Chaddha, she will notice you. She has seen your photo. She’ll recognize you. She might report it to the police.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I hide the car behind an electric pole and I always wear a skull cap,’ he said.

  ‘That doesn’t look good at all.’

  ‘Maybe, but it’s better than shooting birds,’ he said.

  Killing birds, drunk driving and now stalking— Chaddha’s career as a criminal was indeed taking off. Sometimes it seemed as if he was training to be a villain. At home, his favorite pastime was to enact scenes (that he improvised) from an imaginary movie wherein he played a menacing Bollywood baddy called Dhanpatlal Inderjit Garodia. He had chosen Bumbum as his co-actor. Bumbum didn’t seem to have too much of a choice. A typical Chaddha and Bumbum conversation would go like this:

  Chaddha: I’m Dhanpatlal Inderjit Garodia urff DIG, bring me my tea, bring me my tea!

  To which Bumbum had to say (Chaddha had written the dialogue): I’m Kesariya Villayati, main laata hun tea, main laata hun tea.

  At this, Chaddha would laugh out loud. The laughter often ended in a shriek and Bumbum giggled and ran off to the kitchen. It was silly but it was good to hear people laughing in the house (Chaddha did a few mildly interesting versions of this that I don’t remember anymore, he also discovered his all-time favorite Bollywood dialogue: Itni mazedaar cheez bhagwaan ke liye chhod doon? Kabhi nahi!). But with time, the laughs turned hollow and this, too, became a little depressing.

  One morning, I woke up and looked at myself in the mirror. I saw a sad looking strange man looking back at me. My beard, a byproduct of my sedentary lifestyle, looked like shrapnel after a bomb blast, my eyes were sad and yellow, and I could see the hint of the stain I had on the side of my nose (I got this when I was four, the side-effect of a typhoid drug). I ran my fingers on it. It was my war wound.

  Suman was onto something. Like her, I needed to “keep hitting my head against new stuff”; I didn’t care if it was French or salsa or fucking karate.

  I went for a taekwondo class. I
was the oldest by a wide margin (I was even older than the teacher). The kids around me were rolling around like squirrels but I felt smug thinking my time in the college tennis team would hold me in good stead. I had forgotten about two decades of incessant smoking. I got tired during the warm up itself. My session with the punching bag would mostly be described as a one-sided fight. By the end of it, I was gently waving a white flag at the bag while the bastard flung itself at me with all its might.

  French was next on the list but a trial class was a week away. I decided to give guitar a second chance. A chap called Michael taught guitar and keyboards in a gym near the Sector 14 market. I went for a demo class. This guy was nice. Like me, he had fat fingers. He played well. I felt good after the class. I thought I could learn. He said I could come for another class and then take a call. He said he’ll find me a cheap secondhand guitar. He could tell I was poor.

  A Short, Sweet Trip

  to the Gulag

  A few days later I got invited for a wedding reception. The bride was with me in college. She called. I couldn’t say no. It was a Marwari wedding.

  I asked Chaddha to come with me. He looked me in the eye and said, ‘I’d rather sit at home and count my chaddis. Bloody vegetarian, no liquor weddings! I would suggest you take a rain check.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. I secretly wanted to go. I would be meeting some of my old college friends. It didn’t seem like a bad idea.

  ‘I have a piece of advice.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s winter, they are sure to serve kesar badam milk. Drink lots of it. It’s good for depression. Get drunk on it, drown in it!’

  ‘Why would I need an antidote for depression Chaddha?’

  ‘You’ll need it. They’ll be serving paneer tikka and button mushrooms … what do they call that thing, ah yes, Kumbh ke Kebab, fucking disgusting! And then you’ll meet your college folks man—dumb fucks in McKinsey and Goldman fucking Sachs. Ugly, stinking men with sexy, steady girlfriends, double chinned bastards with fast red cars; certified assholes who’ve got flats in fucking Laburnum or some such place (they’ll mention EMIs and sigh); snot-nosed Britney Spears fans who have travelled to every part of the world and will still buy a Chivas Regal at the duty free! Bloody pedestrian whiskey! These bloody motherfucking choots will ask you what you are up to … how you’ve been? They’ll smile at you. They know what’s going on but they are not sure whether you want them to know. What are you going to tell them Bhandari? What are you going to fucking tell them, eh? You can lie and feel bad about it, you can tell them the truth and feel terrible. Make that choice but when you are done, do go to the counter, grab your hot kesar badam milk, find yourself a lonely corner and sip and shiver man, sip and shiver …’