(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.

Note 2: To those who received the drafts – The reference to Robert Kolker was incorrect, which I discovered after going painstalkingly through his mammoth book again in an effort to quote him exactly (it contains the whole of GRE word list many times over). That would explain the delay. He said some nice insightful things though.

Note 3: This story, and its prequel, are officially declared to be ficticious accounts incorporating no characters inspired by anyone living or dead.

The Interview with the Professor

I didn’t understand the conclusion of the movie Micky One when I saw it for the first time. In fact, I didn’t understand it till I had seen almost all of Arthur Penn‘s defining works, till it occurred to me that violence was the underlining theme in his movies, violence overcoming a distance of some kind – distance created by blindness in The Miracle Worker (this is one reason I considered Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black plagiarised, he lifted this motif from Penn’s movie), impotence in Bonnie and Clyde (the doggerel was the immediate cue), paranoia in Mickey One (if you never understood the movie’s ending, this is the clue), the list goes on.

If one were to look at the underlining theme behind my fateful interview with Professor SS the next day, he would have discovered Mad Max, women, dope, James Bond, gang rape and Professor KV, all in that order.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me begin at the beginning.

To put it without much ado, I have never been the man for the bright sunny mornings, partly because I have never been an early riser, but that was a day well worth making an exception for.

I was up early for a consecutive second day. There was sunshine in my heart and there was sunshine on my face, and it made the world outside look more than it was worth. My heart swelled with the scent of the early morning breeze, cold and generously sprinkled with the dust from the construction sites around C**, and when my heart could hold it no more, it spilled out and became music for my soul. I joined it and sang with gay abandon, though my hostel mates later gave a different description of the events, but that might have been due to the quality of my singing. Nothing could get me down that day. Well, almost nothing, till I remembered my appointment later on that day with Professor SS.

That was my mood when I proceeded to the breakfast table. In retrospect, I think Ni(ved)ita and Pad(mav)ati might have been giving me murderous stares on that occasion, which, I am sad to report, were completely lost on me. An(irb)it did cast the hostile glares in my direction as usual, but that he did always anyway; except when he was mad with anger at me, in which case he took extra pains to be friendly with me and flashed all of his white set of teeth at me at every opportunity. Every time he did that, I would grab someone nearby and ask him to take our photographs together. Two old friends dining amiably. Two old friends looking at each other amiably. Two old friends smiling at each other amiably.

But this is not about that.

I took my usual place next to An(shu)l, Sou(men)dra and Riya on the breakfast table. After some moments of uncertain silence, Sou(men)dra spoke.

“You know what, I have a solution that will solve all your problems at one stroke.”

An(shu)l observed nonchalantly that the last time someone had said that, he came up with the nuclear bomb.

This made all of us contemplative for some time, at the end of which I asked Sou(men)dra about his solution, which turned out to be a bunch of excuses, brilliant and intricate but convoluted excuses, to evade the responsibility for my mail. I like to face the consequences of my actions, however, mostly because they are funny, and Riya supported me in this.

“You realise what you have done, right?”, she asked.

I was going to answer that yes I did, but then I remembered the last time I had said that. I asked what had I missed, and was made devastated in return.

To cut a long story short, SS had thought that my remark was intended for the girls, who also happened to be a minority (only three in the entire undergrad program). It wasn’t until much later that Shree[vat]sa remembered what was to us the only known abuse of Rolypoly, and it was a boy who had been the victim. Had this information come out in time, I could have been saved, but the smart chap who observed that comedy is all about timing forgot to notice that tragedy is all about mistiming irrespective of its Greek or Shakespearean or modern origins. Such is life!

I finished my breakfast and started for SS’ office with a heavy heart dragging my heavier feet.

When I coughed and said my slurred “ess-use me” to SS in his office, he was busy checking his e-mail. He looked back with a questioning glance and I introduced myself. He turned off the monitor, wheeled his chair towards me and rolled his sleeves.

“So you are that Mad Max character, eh? What the hell do you think you are?”

I couldn’t say that I was not pleased by that comparison, but etiquette demanded that I look guilty and sorry.

“You think you are smart huh? You think you can get away with this? What did you mean by that letter?”

I thought it was an invitation to explain myself. I am perpetually in the habit of committing this error. I mistake rhetorical speculations for literal questions and proceed to answer them.

“Sir, I think there has been a misunderstanding, I wasn’t thinking of the girls at all when…”

“Shut up,” he roared, “enough,” he paused for breath, “I thought what anyone in his right mind will think reading that disgusting mail, and you have no excuses to defend yourself. You have behaved very very irresponsibly, and you better be ashamed of it.”

He softened a bit at this point, “You see, women are a minority here, and we have to make them feel safe. What you have done is not only demeaning and insulting, it might also scare them,” his temper seemed to rise at the thought. “What are you, an egomaniac bastard? Do you think you are James Bond or something? Do you think you are so sexy that you can insult any of these girls?”

Again, I was flattered by the comparison and the compliment, but couldn’t thank him for it. He went on bellowing at me. Inspired by the excitement of the moment, he even stood up from his chair and started moving towards me little by little as he continued shouting at me. I thought it might be safer to stay close to the door and started inching towards it as he tried to corner me. At the end of ten minutes, we had both moved on to the corridor, and he had moved on to the gang rape part of my mail.

“And how, how could you write about such a sensitive issue like that? You think joking about rape is funny? Do you think gang rape is funny?” From there on, he went on to talk about something related to Dalits and Gang Rapes and the social problem that it is. He must have yelled “sex,” “dope,” “rape” and “gang rape” at least a dozen times within a span of a minute, at the end of which Professor KV, whose room was next to that of Professor SS, came out of his office to take active part in the discussion.

He listened silently for the next five minutes as Prof SS cruised through me. And then came the conclusion, “One should never do such irresponsible things. I think an apology mail should be sent.”

Finally seeing his chance to participate, Prof KV intervened timely, “Yes yes, I think that will be appropriate. You should immediately send a mail apologising.”

Except that he said it to Prof SS.

I was stunned for a moment. So was Prof SS. Then he recovered his speech and started yelling at Prof KV. “What do you mean I should send a mail? Why should I be sorry? What are you talking about?”

As the explanations and arguments grew in length and intensity, I decided that it was time I gave them a slip.

Everyone lived happily ever after.

And gave birth to that greatest of all date rape drugs?

Sweet Rolypoly, make my inbox immortal with thy presence.

It was one of those rare mornings when I stepped out of my room after a night of peaceful slumber and not a night spent in doing whatever it is that idle hostellers do while not sleeping in the nights while fitful gusts whisper here and there outside among the bushes half leafless and dry, and while stars look very cold about the Chennai sky. Keats, sonnet IX.

I am a bit fanciful as far as the outside world is concerned. I spend almost all of my time in tiny rooms, so I feel excited whenever I have a chance to step outside. My brain might have been culturally preprogrammed, but I like the feel of bright warm sun on my skin, and I like the way my hair feels when the wind brushes past my neck and my ear.

As I stepped outside, the coolness of the morning breeze filled my lungs. The almost dewy air touching my cheek felt like pricks, but they softened the sight of the bright sun rays. It looked almost as radiant as that bright morning scene in a Tim Burton movie where the hero, pronounced dead in the Vietnam war, had returned to kiss his betrothed. It was my first morning sun in two months.

To many the best part of waking up early in C** might seem to be the beautiful mornings. But as beautiful as the mornings are, to a more discerning mind, no doubt it is the breakfast in the mess which would be the best part, particularly when one didn’t have it in the past two months in spite of being charged for it. I guess all undergrad hostels are full of such optimists who plan turning a new leaf in their lives starting with regular breakfasts, but never wake up in time.

Since I had neither been pronounced dead nor was I engaged to any girl waiting for me to be kissed, not that I mind kissing girls I am not engaged to, I proceeded towards the canteen.

As I was making my way, I spotted Riya in the distance. The basket in her hand was full of Jasmine. Her white dress and the white flowers and her wet hair filled up my head, and I yelled to ask her if the spring had arrived. She stopped near me while passing and like always, bent her head slightly, looking at me from the corner of her eyes with a nice smile that always demands reciprocation. Usually she speaks coyly after this ritual acknowledging my existence, “Yeh tum ho kya (Is that you)?” But today she only offered me a flower and went away. I wanted to stop and tell her that she had made me a fine day, or a fine morning at least. After a moment of hesitation, however, I decided that not missing my breakfast was more important.

The first hints of grey clouds appeared in the horizon when Jay(ant)h stopped me while I was entering the mess and exclaimed, “What were you thinking?” I was going to observe that that he looked incredibly handsome, but he did not wait to hear the compliment. I realised that the question had not been literal. It meant there was something I did not know, something I should have known, something I must know at once.

I finished by breakfast as soon as possible and went to the lab to check my mailbox. There was only one mail waiting for me there. It was from Professor SS, who had no business sending any kind of mail to me. I opened it anyway. It had two lines, and all the letters were capitalised. It ran thus -

WHO IS THIS INCORRIGIBLE INTROVERT?

REPORT TO ME AT 9AM SHARP TOMORROW.

I noticed that the mail had been CCed to all undergraduates. It was true that I had attended only one of his lectures that semester, but that was not reason enough for such a rude mail, particularly when one considers my attendance in other classes. To the best of my knowledge, he didn’t even know who I was, because he had once chastised A(cha)l mistaking him for me.

Then I checked the mail it came in reply to, and my heart sank.

An(irb)it, whenever he is inspired to be kind to his fellow human beings, sends them spam. On the previous night, he had sent us a spam about some phoney Date Rape Drug called RolyPoly, and had warned us that someone might want to try it on us.

I found the suggestion extremely ridiculous, of course. For one thing, a significant proportion of the population wouldn’t even mind being date raped (yes, scarcity of girls can do that to you. it’s all hormones.). And who in his right mind would want to dope and date rape a C** student anyway?!

Before going to sleep, I said as much in reply to his mail -

Who in his right mind would want to dope and date rape a C** student anyway?!

For some inscrutable reason, An(irb)it’s recipient list had included SS, which I did not notice before hitting on the “reply all” button. That explained the state of the affairs that far.

My mail had been an instant success. Everyone who had considered me a waste of space before now wanted to give me all sorts of advice, and assured me that even though he lacked that thing called temper, SS was fundamentally a nice man. I couldn’t go through the corridor without being interrupted by people who wanted to know all about the affair. I was an instant celebrity.

I tried to live up to everyone’s expectation for a while and tried being miserable. After being miserable for some time, I went on to join An(shu)l in watching a movie in his room. That night, I went to bed early so that I could wake up in time to meet him. With a curious sense of foreboding, I fell asleep.

To Be Continued… (very soon)

I am an awkward man. I have struggled with myself for some time trying to decide whether to write you this mail or tell you in person. I have not been much of a conversationalist, however, so I decided to write this mail.

Forgive the folly of a man who doesn’t talk much about himself when he finally talks about himself, for this mail is going to be long.

I am aware of the impression I have made on you and those around you in general. My apparently apathetic and indifferent disposition, however, comes from my own innate paranoia of rejection, the fear of not getting talked back to, the fear of not getting a smile back. It’s not an air I intend to put on, it’s just how I come across after my over-active imagination compensates for my lack of confidence.

You were one of the few to smile at me first in spite of what has been described as my unfriendly appearance (it happened early in college, you probably don’t even remember). I wasn’t in love with you back then, but still you made a deep impression; very few people ever smiled at me without having known me for some time first. It was a nice gesture from you, one that had made me immensely happy, because I didn’t consider you as a friend back then. It’s just a silly irrelevant detail, but this is probably my only chance to tell you what a big difference it made.

Inartistry in the name sensibility would be no fit tribute for you, and though much less I must say than what I mean, much more I must mean than what I say, for what is the man who insists on calling a spade a spade but a farmer? I am no farmer, but the want of sensibility and the risk of being mistaken for mockery with my flattery restrains me.

Bad literature, more often than not, is an expression of genuine feelings. That alone couldn’t have stopped me either, but the social cynicism fashionable in this place ties my tongue.

Besides, I don’t think I could do enough justice to what I have to say no matter how long I prepared for it or how sincerely I said it.

So I’ll simply say this – you are the prettiest angel I have seen in my entire life, and I love you. I have loved you to distraction, with all my desperation, to the point of utter misery and bitter happiness from which I never made it back. You have been the woman of my life.

I am hopelessly in love with you.

I barely know you, it is true, but it has been too long to give any name to what I feel for you other than love. Idiotic, I know, but love is such a blind fool!

I had a hope, for some time. I hoped to know you better. I hoped to spend some time with you. I don’t know if I tried enough or not, but all I could manage to do was sweating profusely in front of you while nervously waiting for others to finish their conversation. To my relief, you have always smiled at me, and at times I have felt that that is more than I could ever take before being overwhelmed and melting at your feet. You have no idea how much your smiles have meant to me.

Time has run out, I guess, but not before I finally told you of what I felt, and I am glad for that. I have probably made a colossal fool out of myself!

My only excuse for writing this letter is my faith in the epigram that women forgive adoration. Please don’t be offended, all I am offering you is my admiration, and I am not asking you anything in return. I have been thoroughly miserable all these years being in love with you, and I assume I couldn’t ask for any more happiness than that given our
circumstances.

Please don’t get mad at me. And anyway I won’t have the courage to come before you after this ever again.

So goodbye, and good luck in whatever you do in life.

Truly yours,
Incorrigible Introvert

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 boys were back from Kalpakkam for the weekend, and were down in the dinner table after having toiled their day through endless et sessions. The following conversation followed between A(cha)l and A(rna)b -

A(rna)b: So, what are (Jaya)nth and P(adm)a doing at IGCAR?

A(cha)l: (in his usual bored and detached drawl) Jaya(nth) is screwing P(adm)a, what else?

A(rna)b: (incredulously) But how could he do that? Only a professor can screw her!

Nobody at the dinner table could figure out for a moment what he meant by this, much less how to react to it. When we finally understood, we couldn’t decide what was more appalling, his remark or his presumed innocence (but we laughed hard anyway), which, as I have remarked earlier, I doubted upon. In any case, A(cha)l decided to explain to him the meaning of the word “screwing.”

A(cha)l: umm … , Do you know what screwing means? Do you know who can screw whom?

A(rna)b: Kyon, pataa hai naa. I can screw R(avi)tej.

I laughed for a long time at this, prompted by A(cha)l’s choking next to me. And then there was peace, having come in terms with A(rna)b’s peace finally.

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.

In those days, I was a mere mathematics undergrad in C**. Confused and without a direction in life, I no longer looked for depth and relevance in ideas and ideologies. What I was really looking for was a simplistic view of life, universe and pretty much everything else, and a conviction in it which could occlude me from the trivialities of the daily struggle to keep clinging to my principles.

Some writers in the habit of stereotyping every walk and every aspect of our lives have remarked that exactly one big thing happens in the college life, no more, no less. It is not the matter of one incident being the biggest among a lot of big incidents. Something happens, so huge and influential that it we tend to look back at everything else in terms of that one incident. There comes a day, when the naivety and the ignorance of our yester years are torn away with one swift blow of fate, and we are left naked before our mind’s eye before we can rebuild the layers and layers of self-defenses so that we can call ourselves mature.

I am talking about the fateful rendezvous that had followed the invention of the RolyPoly drug.

The way the RolyPoly drug was invented is a little known story, my sole claim to which happens to be the fact that the inventors of the drug were two young chaps from my own college. I can remember to this day the sad events which led to the whole controversy.

In our days, there used to be a very popular spam which warned the users about a date rape drug called Rohypnol. Three undergrads, still green about the ways of the internet world, were taken in by the spam.

Little needs to be told about their adventure when they used the drug on their respective dates on the same night (and the drug failed to work). K(shit)ij spent two weeks in the hospital, and Shree(vat)sa had to be sent to MIT for special surgeries. A(rule) had to be sent to the special care phd unit of the Mathematics department of Princeton, where he died five years afterwards.

Disillusioned, K(shit)ij and Shree(vat)sa vowed to avenge their friend. After years and years of hard work, they finally came up with a new drug called RolyPoly which did what Rohypnol was originally supposed to do (according to the spam).

Eventually, A(nir)bit was credited as the Father of the RolyPoly drug. This was done in order to preserve Stigler’s law of eponymy. Many interesting stories have been told about the role A(nir)bit played in the invention of the drug, but this is not one of them.

The invention of the RolyPoly drug brought a radical revolution to the world of men. Being a keen observer of socio-economic evolutionary processes shaping our society, I can’t help but see it in the context of the evolution of the human species.

Looking back, we find that the early caveman had the simplest of tasks, a bulging bludgeon and a cornered cave woman often did the job. Though the props and the stage of the scene changed, the basic idea remained the same for a very long time. And then, women came up with a brilliant retort. Feminism! Ever since, life has not been the jolly old affair it used to be for the modern man.

A lot has been said and done and thought about what a man should do to solve this problem. Some men write poetry to that end. Some give up heaven and kingdoms and some go on and fight wars. Hitler even started a world war to impress Eva Braun, when all she wanted him to do was to shave off that ridiculous mustache.

At one end of the spectrum, some believe in spending half of the monthly salary on unresponsive dates. Some others insist on extreme measures, going as far as declaring that the only cure for a feminist is a long dick, but we’ll let those indecencies pass. Some of us try very hard, and some of us try not at all.

But after RolyPoly arrived, very little was left to the time-tested method of trial and error (except for statisticians).

A revolution was at the steps!

(To be continued…)

Coming soon… The Rolypoly Revolution – The Final Chapter

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.

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The Author thanks N for not suing him for using her blog as a source. Thanks are also due to V for valuable feedback.
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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.
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