We needed some money. Kuekuatsheu, Pacino and My Little Friend joined us as we went to the bank. They came prepared with a car, fancy clothes and a few guitars, all ready to leave for Goa. Kuekuatsheu was not entirely sure of the plan, but My Little Friend agreed to talk to him, and she managed to convince him. When My Little Friend talked, people listened.

While the rest of my friends waited, My Little Friend and I went to the teller. The guards all knew My Little Friend, so we got to skip the queue. The woman on the counter was not very cooperative, however, but My Little Friend managed to have a word with her, and she agreed to hurry up. When My Little Friend talked, people listened.

Just when the woman was handing over the money, cops arrived and asked us to surrender. The rest of my friends started panicking. I looked at My Little Friend and she looked back at me, and we both knew that she had to start talking again. When My Little Friend talked, people listened.

My Little Friend never wasted a word. By the time she was done talking, four of the cops were silent, and the rest had surrendered. We handcuffed them before locking up everyone and then left by the fire-escape. We changed out of our fancy clothes, walked across the street to our nondescript car parked in front of a public park, and stuffed the money into guitars.

Just as we were leaving for Goa, I realised that I was yet to introduce My Little Friend to the rest of my friends. As I turned from the driving seat, I said, “Say Hello to My Little Friend.”

When My Little Friend talked, people listened.

That is how I see myself now. I am at the brink of losing my oldest friend. Even if he survives this, the severe strain our friendship has suffered will resolve itself to some terrible conclusion over time, and I can find happiness for the time being only in my incapacity to see ahead into the bleak future.

We can barely look at each other now in the guilty knowledge of what we have done together, and yet, that fateful evening began in the most promising manner.

I imagine people do some particular thing they get fixated on to find solace when they feel lovesick. I eat pizzas. I had just ordered my pizzas when Rainbow called me up to announce his arrival in town. So I packed up my order and went to his house. His folks were away, and we agreed that a late night movie date would not be out of order.

We caught up with our lives over the pizzas and salads, and he proposed me for marriage. Again! To be turned down. Again! He knows I am seeing someone now, and we talked a bit about that too. The pizzas duly finished, we dusted his museum-piece of a scooter and took it for a ride, yelling songs into the night and the cold breeze. Eventually we set out for a movie armed with junk foods to round the night up with.

We went to see Yuvvraaj. I did ask him if we couldn’t go see something else, but he said he wanted to see Yuvvraaj. I was also interested in the movie because from the promos it looked like Anil Kapoor had turned in an over the top performance and I wanted to watch it, and we went in together.

I don’t remember what happened in the following two hours very clearly. My doctor tells me that it’ll be a while before the trauma subsides and I can start to remember the events after I went into shock, and he clarifies that the complete memories of the night might never come back.

But I do remember a few distorted and blurred images of what had transpired before I lost my consciousness to the criminal attacks made on my senses by the movie. I remember people rushing in to lift me from the floor and I remember the long journey from there to the ambulance. I also remember the bright red bulb on the door of the operation theatre, and I have some recollection of the time in ICU afterwards. I don’t remember anything from the movie though, and my report asserts in no uncertain terms that the merest encounter with anything from that movie in the rest of my life time might drive me a raving lunatic.

But above all I remember that one glance Rainbow and I exchanged before we slumped unconscious into our respective seats. No matter how we are going to pretend to each other, we knew that we had reached the point where we couldn’t turn our back on the tragedy of having watched Yuvvraaj together and pretend as if everything was the same as ever.

I guess all good things come to an end. Rainbow has been my oldest friend through thick and thin, through rain and sun, through dangling genitalia to spotted underwears. As I write this now, he is still common-senseless in the hospital. It has often been observed that he didn’t have a lot of common sense to start with, but the movie Yuvvraaj introduces new depths to the meaning of imbecility. Rainbow’s brain damage might be irreversible.

So dear blog readers, pray for my friend’s soul, if not for his life. And as I have often said, the night is the darkest just before the electricity goes out.

—

Note: Unedited. Pestered with exams and no time to edit! Written over a seminar on Quantum Cryptography of which I did not understand one bit (I arrived half an hour late and spent the next one scribbling this one :)). But the one on Boolean Functions was interesting, if you really insist on being told!

(2) This is not autobiographical at all. I imagined a guy very different from myself writing this; so those of you who know me, don’t think of me when reading this, because the intended mood of the story is quite different. But had this piece been any good, I guess I would have claimed autobiographical influences. :)

(3) God knows that I have had enough trouble people reading themselves into my stories! Did I mention three unjustifiably broken friendships?! All girls! And it is not even me, always. Twice, the girls read my story and broke up their friendship(!) with other people!!! I guess they didn’t broke their friendship with me because we were not friends to start with (which, I’m ashamed to say, I have been thankful for). :)

Stump
———-
It is a stump now,
Its art gone,
Its ornaments all gone.

It does not stir with spring
Nor bend like a bow when green
Nor from its flowers fly KamaDeva’s arrows
Nor in its shades are sighs of travellers heard
Or tears of lovers seen.

Only one old bird
Sits remembering something.

‭(‬Translated from the Hindi of Suryakant Tripathy’s‭ “‬Nirala‭” ‬by Vikram Seth.‭)

(1‭)

A speck of fire rose along with the pile of ash and went up in small circles until it collided with the roof above and went out.‭ ‬I was trying hard not to burn my rectangular chapati and all I could manage was to spread hot ash throughout the verandah.‭ ‬Sipa’ni and Lipa’ni were laughing nearby and Rupa’ni was still insisting that I leave it to her.‭ ‬Dipa,‭ ‬as always,‭ ‬was standing some distance away with a detached look on her face.‭ ‬She never understood what she didn’t experience,‭ ‬and being happy was one of them.

It was a quiet evening.‭ ‬There was a musical loveliness about the crackles of the burning wood coupled with the indistinct hum of the fire.

I had just baked something frightfully similar to the rags nearby when I was told of my waiting call.‭ ‬I dashed through the pond and the gate and the grass and the theatre and the salt piles and picked up the receiver.‭ ‬A dog was barking in the distance,‭ ‬and held all my attention for the moment as I listened through the receiver.‭ ‬Finally,‭ ‬I put it down on the cradle.‭ ‬I was wondering if I was going to cry when a drop of tear fell down on my palm.‭ ‬I heard the dogs bark in the distance and remembered that I was yet to roll a round chapati.‭ ‬I ran back as fast as I could.

‬Suresh ka‭’ ‬was getting married the following week.‭ ‬I don’t remember everything that I went through that night,‭ ‬but I was weeping for her and for myself at the end of that night.‭ ‬And all these years I had thought that I had gotten over her‭!

(2‭)

Waking up in her house is an elaborate affair for men and a tedious routine for the women.‭ ‬To avoid waking up into a world that I hated,‭ ‬I tried to sleep as long as I could.‭ ‬But Tapan’s offer of the breakfast was irresistible and I finally woke up.

I walked out and sat down in one corner of the verandah and lazily started turning the pages of a Wodehouse while waiting for the others to come down and join me on my way to breakfast.‭ ‬The pond in the front yard which I had always remembered for rising mists in winter mornings was now being dried in order to catch the fishes for the marriage.‭ ‬For a moment my ears filled with the sound of rain pittering pattering on the surface of the pond as I lay their remembering the times I had been there trying to push her into the puddles of mud while we raced to jump into the pond every time it rained.

Then,‭ ‬I heard a familiar laughter and stood up to turn around and see if everyone was down.

Had I been more attentive to the occasion,‭ ‬I would have realised that she shouldn’t have been there at all.‭ ‬But I was so glad to see her grinning from ear to ear that I did not remember that it was the marriage of the man whom she had come to love so much in her downfall.

I might have remembered,‭ ‬eventually,‭ ‬given enough time,‭ ‬but the inchoate realization that she might have been smiling at the cousin standing in front of me wiped out all thoughts other than the one of humiliation from my mind.‭ ‬My face felt hot and my eyes started watering.‭ ‬I turned back and sat down on the verandah in the middle of‭ ‬all the hustle bustle to continue with the book I had been reading the moment before.

I never let the smile go off my face though.‭ ‬With great weakness come great will and enough power to hide it.

Then she surprised me with an embrace and a pat on my cheek with that grin of hers still on her face.‭ ‬Her eyes shone and I knew that they had been for me all along.

Hands on our hips,‭ ‬and carefree smiles on our faces,‭ ‬we talked for some time.‭ ‬She didn’t seem to mind the marriage any more.‭ ‬So many years,‭ ‬and she hadn’t changed on the surface except for getting thinner.‭ ‬The last time she had been to see me,‭ ‬it was to give me a small teddy bear which she said reminded her of me and to tell me to go win the world and find a decent girl to make love with who could play both the violin and cards.

Everyone was invited for the breakfast except for her.‭ ‬Probably she hadn’t been invited to a breakfast for the last six years.

She was a stranger in the house that she had every right to call her home.‭ ‬I couldn’t have helped her no matter how much I tried,‭ ‬and I certainly didn’t want to do it at her expense.‭ ‬I kept my remarks to myself and had a very nice breakfast.‭ ‬These days I had excellent breakfasts,‭ ‬because I had finally lost the illusion that I could change the world around me.

She tried to lie,‭ ‬but I knew everything already.‭ ‬Perhaps she needed the assurance that I loved her as much as I ever did even though she had once brushed it aside.‭ ‬Even though it didn’t mean a thing now to anyone except for me.‭ ‬I realised that finally it means something to her too.

‭(‬3‭)

We had first met in a musical concert.‭ ‬We were playing Pachelbel’s Canon; ‬violin and guitar,‭ ‬she and I.‭ ‬She was a terrible player and couldn’t be bothered to play her violin with any amount of attention.‭ ‬But what she lacked with the violin she more than made up for by her expressions.‭ ‬She looked so goddamn serious and passionate while playing in spite of all her frivolity that she made me want to walk up to her and kiss her every time she got that stage look on her face.

‭I couldn’t help but figure out that we were distantly related.‭ ‬And then there was the rain and I had to drop her home.‭ ‬Numerous card games and dinners at her house later,‭ ‬I told her that I was in love with her to the point of distraction and that I couldn’t possibly be expected to spend the rest of my miserable life without her.

Of all the things she could have done and said in reply,‭ ‬she laughed and told me not to be a silly ass.

‭(‬4‭)

It is always like that when you are young and fall in love.‭ ‬She means the world to you and she doesn’t want to deal with it.‭ ‬I grew up with a wounded heart,‭ ‬not knowing if I would ever live again.‭ ‬I did live,‭ ‬but I was never young again.‭ ‬And love though I did,‭ ‬it was never with my heart again.

And letters from her piled up in a corner to be picked up randomly to be cried over during the lonely nights when I wake up silently from the monotony of my sleep only to be reminded of her,‭ ‬to find no one sleeping next to me,‭ and ‬to stare at the rain crashing silently against the glass windows for the rest of the night.

‭(‬5‭)

I touched her hair and listened to her and held her hand in my hand while she told me all about the marriage that happened and the one that did not happen.‭ ‬Oh‭! ‬How could she pour so much of her affection where it was not cared for‭? ‬The man did not love her,‭ ‬and she didn’t know it.‭ ‬She didn’t know so many things‭ – ‬but I spared her the suffering of knowledge,‭ ‬for all her sacrifices had been a waste.‭ ‬She had suffered greatly,‭ ‬and she had suffered for nothing.

We played cards after the breakfast.‭ ‬Everyone insisted that I be paired off with her,‭ ‬we had been great partners in the old days.‭ ‬I didn’t see how much it was going to affect me.‭ ‬Every single movement of her brows brought back to me the memories of my happiest days with her,‭ ‬which made me only sad.‭ ‬Every time her lips trembled,‭ ‬uncertain whether to part or not in the moments of indecision,‭ ‬I grew more and more restless,‭ ‬for I had forgotten all about them in these years.‭ ‬She acted with all her gracious gestures as I remembered them,‭ ‬but the spontaneity and seriousness of her adolescence had been replaced by the indifference of her maturity,‭ ‬and it made me melancholic.‭ ‬I found that I had stayed back with the girl I fell in love with,‭ ‬and life had moved on.

‭Over these years,‭ ‬I have thought less and less often of her.‭ ‬She is like a scar that doesn’t hurt any more,‭ ‬one that I remember only when I see myself in the mirror or touch it by accident.‭ ‬Sometimes I think of what would have happened had my love been answered with love,‭ ‬but it doesn’t make me very sad.

I never stopped playing cards.‭ ‬I have come across many other gracefully exasperated women playing cards,‭ ‬but I have always associated those gestures,‭ ‬the slightest of which was enough to bleed my heart at one time,‭ ‬to the one who really made my heart bleed dry.‭ ‬It doesn’t bleed any more,‭ ‬and I never see anybody but her.

‭(‬6‭)

For sometime I was lost between my cousins,‭ ‬almost all of whom are would-be engineers,‭ ‬talking about their lives,‭ ‬studies,‭ ‬movies,‭ ‬stupid profs,‭ ‬booze,‭ ‬girls,‭ ‬all the usual topics.

We went for a walk and had all the kids for company.‭ ‬Half of them didn’t even know the poor fellow who was getting married,‭ ‬which I thought was sort of funny and appropriate and nice in a way.‭ ‬Tapan displayed tactfulness for the first time in his life and took care of the children so that we could have the walk to ourselves.

I am perpetually out of cash.‭ ‬I don’t mind it that much,‭ ‬really,‭ ‬except when I can’t offer to take the girl I am so desperately in love with to a dinner.‭ ‬She is never short of admirers,‭ ‬and she has been kind to everyone but me.

I didn’t sleep till she was back from her dinner.‭ ‬I am in my bed right now.‭ ‬I could have kissed her good night,‭ ‬but that would have embarrassed me.‭ ‬I am too conscious of all that I feel and it always shows up.

I wonder what is there for breakfast tomorrow.

I also wrote some poems for him when he wanted to know how poems are written, but I subsequently used them to flirt with a girl and have to deal with my ambivalence towards them before I can put them here.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

It was a dark and gloomy Sunday. The sun wasn’t shining. Calvin’s mood was cloudy like the sky. He knew something was going to happen.

He was sitting next to Hobbes, his brother, watching him type when Rosalyn, their overweight sister, entered with a plate of khir, greedily licking the spoon. She was looking at them and laughing when she suddenly dropped dead.

The postmortem report said it was potassium cyanide.

Now, the question was – could they eat the rest of the khir?

Calvin suggested that we send it to the lab for testing. But Hobbes suggested animal testing – that they should give a bit of it to that ferocious dog of their neighbours – lovely – who often interrupted their cricket matches.

Lovely was alive after eating the khir, so they strangled her and killed her and left a bit of that khir next to her body for the detectives. The khir was very nice to eat though.

Two enemies at one shot! It was a brilliant Sunday.

I held my breath and knocked on the doors.

VB opened the doors. I didn’t realise that he was going to be there. He was an added complication, and may be a part of the reason behind the events too.

He was there. On his chair. Looking frail as ever. I knew he didn’t want to do it, but there was a hint of determination in the sorrowful expression of his old face that told me that it has all been already decided, and that I had been invited only to be told about it. They did not want to know if I thought I was suicidal or not.

It was as ridiculous as that. But there may have been some truth in that if I am as deluded as everyone thinks. Probably I AM suicidal. Probably I should indeed be sent back home. I have no way of knowing what is true any more.

As I walked in, CS stood up and walked to me. It was a broken man’s walk. It had taken every bit of his strength to decide that we should be parted, and it showed in every bit of his body and soul. VB just stood nearby and frowned. He had never liked CS’ affection for me. Everyone thought that he was the right hand man of CS, and though it was him CS would always depend on for all his affairs, and though it was him who was going to succeed him, we both knew that the only man whom CS had ever loved from the depth of his heart was me.

“So you are here. Ah, come near me, come near me. How are you?”

I didn’t answer. The question was rhetoric. We sat down on the sofa.

We looked at each other for sometime in silence, till I looked away choked with grief. He knew that I understood.

“You know I would never have done this,” his voice was half tears, “you know that. But I must do this. For your sanity. For my sanity! Oh, please forgive this old man!.”

He said all that ceaselessly, restlessly, afraid that he would not be able to complete if he took a pause to breath. VB tried to look interested in the ceilings nearby. He had recently been married, which explained his mood.

I put my hand on his shoulder. He was my dear old man, and I still felt for him. I must have cried, because a drop of tear fell on his arm.

He looked up, and it was then that he completely gave up and broke down crying, sobbing into my sleeves. VB now shifted his attention to the cupboard nearby, and his lips were pursed. I didn’t know what to do.

That was when I left. I left the empty shell of a broken man on a sofa and a rival who took philosophical interests in ceilings and cupboards on a chair nearby, and I left.

I couldn’t tell you how it ended. As I was stepping out of that door, suddenly I no longer felt interested in knowing what happened to that crying old man on the sofa. There was a momentary sense of freedom before I became depressed again, and though I am sure now that VB would have walked up to CS to console him, I am perpetually haunted by the grey images of the pair struggling through the dusk, alone in their isolation and misery long after I was gone.

The windows are open and the lights have been switched off. The few rays that manage to come in get lost behind her hair and you have difficulty in figuring out the details of her face. You are lost. Everybody around has forgotten you and you are lost.

There are a million thoughts in your mind and you can’t concentrate because you are listening to her. She doesn’t want you to think of anything. She doesn’t want you to think of anything else.

You gather the courage and kiss her cheeks. She doesn’t stop talking about her boring friends. You kiss her neck where you feel her skin to be the warmest, and she doesn’t stop talking about her teachers. You touch her lips. She still doesn’t stop talking about the stupid girl next door. Then you kiss her eyes, and everything stops abruptly. You feel the warmth of her body spreading through your own body and reaching your guts. She is tender and soft.

In that forgotten room surrounded by silence and light and darkness and a few human beings in the next room who never knew what it is to be young and kiss a girl, you believe you have been kissing her for ages and yet when overcome by the silence you remove your lips, you know it must have been for a few seconds, so touched you are by her unexpected silence. She resumes talking about that stupid bitch in her class at once.

You take a stroll on the roof together. It rains.

You feel there is something that needs to be said, or done, and you don’t know what it is. Perhaps it is something she wants you to do. You feel worried.

In the meantime, she wonders what are you going to do to her that night.

She wants you to see her new dress, a pink one. She is happy being there with you. You take her hand in your hands and look at her unusually long fingers.

Long after she ceased loving, and long after you ceased knowing what it is to be young and kiss a girl, you know the both of you’ll share an intimacy the reason for which she will not remember.

You feel sad and you look at her. She is so beautiful. You imagine what it would be like to hold her soft and tender little breasts in your hands.

You keep undressing her in your dreams but you are frustrated because you don’t know what to do next. You want to know if sex means holding her breasts in you hands, but you are too shy to ask.

Then, one day, you discover all by yourself that you can do a lot more than just fiddling with her breasts, and you feel you have grown up.

———- The Story ———-

As I lay there on the sofa contemplating about the deeper issues of life, the creamy walls of my study were replaced by a vision of pink as my pretty little sister sailed in bubbling with excitement.

“See here, I bought a Cadbury for my zoology teacher,” she did not stop for me to react, “do you think it will do?”

I couldn’t see why a free bar of chocolate wouldn’t do for anybody, but experience has taught me better than to argue with girls. In this instance, however, before plunging into the usual acts of inattentive affirmation, I took a moment or two to feel puzzled. The age-old relationship between brothers and sisters is already going down the drains anyway, without the sisters buying expensive chocolates for their teachers.

“What for?”, I ejaculated, shocked at her frivolity in not spending that money to buy my protection against my future tyranny, unscheduled but inevitable.

“Ooph, it’s the birthday tomorrow.”, she said in a voice that teachers reserve for the student who has failed to grasp the obvious. In hindsight, it occurs to me that she might have thrown a contemptuous look or two as well, which, I am sad to report, were unceremoniously lost on me.

“Lucky bastard,” I thought to myself. Nobody ever gave me chocolates on my birthday. On all my birthdays after I turned twelve, I had to be away from home and my friends on one pretext or the other. I did get a chance to spend my last birthday at home, but it only served to demonstrate what idiots I had for friends. In spite of my chronic aversion to cards of any sort, many of them gifted me the same birthday card in an effort to outspend each other.

My reverie was presently broken by the return of my sister who, before I could say anything further, again said breathlessly, “I bought this one for my botany teacher, do you think he will mind?”

I never knew if the botany teacher minded it or not, but I certainly did. I mean, what sort of people give away presents to botany teachers to celebrate the birthdays of zoology teachers? And why are brothers not included in this scheme of public charity? I again asked, choked with incredulity, “What for?”

She really lost her patience this time. “What’s wrong with you? For the birthday!”

I was amazed. So far, I had encountered coincident birthdays only in probability textbooks, where you had to lock up 23 people in a single room to have it more likely than unlikely that two of them have the same birthday. I imagine that this fact, had it been known to the victims of the black hole of Calcutta, could have been a source of some solace to them. Instead for struggling for space and air which only hastened their end, they could have spent their time more amicably inquiring after each other’s birthdays. With 146 (probably more) people in one room, some two of them were bound to have the same birthday (I am too lazy to compute the exact probability). It was a remarkable probabilistic event by any standard. But alas! We are perpetually occluded to the future, both immediate and distant, that many a times robs us of the simple pleasures of finding out the birthdays of our fellow human beings.

I speak from experience. Had I known my own fate that followed, I would definitely have made sure that I slept each night with a list of birthdays under my pillow. However, at that moment, unaware of the future tidings of hatred and disgust and physical assault about to be unleashed on me, I was busy contemplating possible shift of my research interests to the theory of probability, where I could imagine spending the rest of my life peacefully dropping pins on a rug and drawing coloured balls from urns, occasionally with the pleasant task of putting them back. I’ll probably not get a chance to lock more than 23 people in the same room; but then, one can not have everything in life.

My little sister broke in at this point, asking me what I was frowning about. I broke into a smile, said it was nothing. As an afterthought, I added that it was a curious fact that both her zoology and botany teachers had the same birthday.

While I took the beating of a lifetime, I am sure that the victims of the Calcutta black hole smiled from the heaven above on my presumptive folly in advising them to find each other’s birthday.

Keep your sisters close, and a list of their birthdays closer.

The next batsman walked in, a tiny boy not more than eight, fully padded and prepared to play those deuced balls.

Rangin said, “no way.”
I said, “welcome to India.”

Next, the boy weighed the bat in his hands, walked back, and changed it for a significantly heavier one.

Rangin said, “Is he mad?”
I said, “welcome to India.”

The boy played.
It was a good length ball slightly outside the off stump, with a late in-swing. The boy, who had taken guard on the leg stump, drew his body slightly towards the ball and cut it off the square with exquisite grace.

Both of us were stunned. We muttered, “shit.”

Rangin whispered, “Oh God!”
I said, “welcome to India!”

“AM about to flash!”

Dumb arrogance and idiocy lay hid in night;
God said ‘Let AM be’ and all was flash light.”

Some people are born great; some people achieve greatness; and some people just define themselves to be great. As past historians tell us, AM did not stop at defining himself to be great. Inspired by his newfound greatness, he went as far as spending the rest of his life trying to prove his greatness.

AM and KVPY
Historians differ on the subject of his first attempts at the justification. The first recorded instance occurs in a little known (but very fashionable in its own time) online community called Orkut, where he created a community called KVPY – a noble cause, which was dedicated to promote the greatness of the KVPY scholarship, and hence the greatness of its recipients.

AM doing his famous hand gesture,
presumably to impress someone.

AM – The Modern Casanova
Further researches have shown his desperate attempts at chatting up girls in Orkut, including two of his juniors, giving us meaningful insights into his wonderful life. Many believe that his eventual humiliation in these attempts were the deciding factors in the rest of his life where he kept on trying to prove his greatness (he even managed to convince Winnie the Pooh, eventually, for sometime, as he mentions in his autobiography, though he omitted it from the final published version), but nothing is known for certain. Some have claimed that AM_the_nemo, the blogger famous for commenting in N’s blog, was none other than AM himself, citing AM_the_nemo‘s desperate attempts to chat up N as a proof. Nothing conclusive, however, has come out so far.

Michael Jackson and AM’s Childhood
AM displayed his prodigious talents from early childhood. He often associated the fond memories of his childhood with the pleasant times he spent with Michael Jackson (probably listening to his music, but many other possibilities exist). In the Jackson memorial speech he delivered in January, 2007, before a selected crowd in front of the Hostel Canteen, he was reported to have said, “I love Michael Jackson. He brings out the child in me!” It won all prestigious quotation of the year awards in 2007.

It is known that he won many quotation of the year awards many times over. Some of his revolutionary remarks include –

There is no difference between mathematics and biology.I don’t like mathematics because it is so imprecise.

It is only by fluke luck that the sun is the center of the solar system.

AM is also known for having done something in pure sciences. But since both mathematicians and physicists have disowned him, it is hard to tell in which one of them he put in his efforts. Most likely he worked in physics, a view supported by his blog.

AM and his blog
His blog was the second most important achievement in his life. In his characteristic style, AM tried to achieve importance and meaning by labelling his unsuspecting classmates as mathematicians and then criticizing them in order to magnify his opinions (He had correctly judged that it is better to abuse a bunch of mathematicians than a bunch of undergrads).

Not only that, he also treated the reactions of his classmates towards him as the standard way in which mathematicians behave, very conveniently avoiding the fact that they treated him disdainfully only because they didn’t like him personally. But he described the public irritation for him as the way mathematicians behave so that he can attach some meaning and importance to his own reaction to the reaction of his classmates. He achieved this end by using all sorts of provocative names to describe mathematicians (naive, arrogant, etc etc).

This photograph was taken a month
before AM invented the Roly Poly drug.

AM – the Father of Roly Poly drug
His most significant invention, for which he’ll remembered for a long long time, is no doubt the drug called Roly Poly. Nobody knows now what this famous drug is supposed to do, but at one point of time it was a favourite topic for lengthy scholarly discussions in various intellectual institutions.

It is a little known fact that the actual inventor of the Roly Poly drug was Sri(vat)sa and K(shit)ij. However, since almost all the work in the field had been done by AM, the invention was attributed to him.

AM – A Premature End
His illustrious career came to an untimely end when he was doped by an unknown substance and brutally gang-raped by a group called K*** – a noble cause. The identity of this group remains one of the most important unsolved mysteries till date.

His house was later made into a museum that houses among other things a collection of his favourite photographs. Nobody has been able to figure out what these photographs mean – a true mark of his genius.

AM might not be among us anymore, but as long as the earth keeps spinning round the Sun, his ideas and his Roly Poly will keep us inspired to achieve new heights of greatness.

———————————————————————————————-
The Author thanks N for not suing him for using her blog as a source. Thanks are also due to V for valuable feedback.
———————————————————————————————-
Disclaimer: Though the quotations from AM has been quoted exactly as he said it, his life, as depicted in this biography, may not represent the exact truth. I have tried to reconstruct his life as accurately as possible. But owing to his rather obscure life, a lot of gaps had to be filled in with fertile imagination and reasonable guesses.
———————————————————————————————-