Portraits - III

And just when you think you've seen it all.

Near where I live in Bangalore, there's a Muslim neighbourhood that comes to life at dusk. Little hole-in-the-wall eateries turn on yellow lightbulbs and fire up charcoal grills. Sheek-kabab skewers lie on these grills like pyres at a cremation ghaat. The smell of charred meat cuts through the air, knifing the day's pollution.

The tea-house culture in these neighbourhoods, where they serve syrupy tea in tiny glasses, helps dissolve the ills of the world into the sorrow-hole of the community, and the joys of life are passed around like saltines.

The story began at one of these tea-houses, when an elderly gentleman walked in and plopped himself onto a chair. He was flushed and out of breath, but spared a genial smile for the boy that brought him his tea. Judging by the regulars' askew glances, this was the man's first time here. Each little clique exchanged salaams with him and went back to their conversations. Even as the gentleman's glass of tea clattered to the ground, it's possible that some in the crowd knew he'd had a heart attack. Credit this to that brief lag between knowing something and realizing it.

A search of the old man's pockets revealed nothing. A party of men was sent in different directions to see if anybody could help identify the man. Meanwhile, the neighbourhood Imam who'd been called in declared the man dead and instructed that the body be moved away from the crowd. And so it was, the body was carried to the back of the tea-house so that business could resume. As dawn approached, it was time for the tea-house to close, but there was no news about who the person was or where he came from. Had he relatives in the city? No one knew.

It was customary for the body to be buried within a day of death. It was beginning to stiffen, and would start to rot not long after. The police weren't going to be called in. The owner of the tea-house had had his share of run-ins with the law, and the body wouldn't help matters. All he cared about now was getting rid of the body, and he wasn't about to spring for a hearse.

An autowala who'd slept the night in his vehicle in the next bylane was woken up by the ruckus from the tea-house. Something about a body needing to be disposed of. A couple of voices demanded the body be buried, but a louder, gruff voice said he'd have none of it. More than the noise, it was the crassness, like a draft of cold air, that woke him up. The autowala made his way groggily to the shop. The situation was plain - there were rituals and rites to be performed, but there was no one that'd shoulder the responsibility or the body.

The driver carted the body onto his shoulders and into the back of the auto. It lay propped up awkwardly between the seat and the floor, wedged into place by a sack of potatoes that the driver found outside the tea-house. The autowala knew he couldn't afford to bury the body himself either. Custom called for the body to be washed by relatives first before being wrapped in a shroud. The next problem was going to be arranging for a grave site, which needed to be in a Muslim cemetery, not just because of what it would cost, but because the autowala would be harassed about who it was that he was burying, how died he, about obtaining a death certificate, and then getting an Imam to recite the janazah prayers.

And he couldn't just ride a dead body in an open auto through the city - the police would swarm all over him. It wasn't just that the law wouldn't let him pass, even the culture of our country would be offended. Death is scary, possibly impure, and definitely confusing. The populace won't accept death easy. They'll question, they'll argue, they'll fight, even though it's no business of theirs. That's probably why dead bodies are transported in processions in India. Strength in numbers. If you have a problem with such and such person being dead, you can take it up with the procession collectively. That might also be why we make such a racket with the drums and the dancing when escorting the body to the ghats. A war cry to scare off not just the malevolent spirits, but also the uber-curious public. Here the autowala was by himself, weaving his auto through the city.

You've seen Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. You know then that the only way to transport a dead body through a city is to dress it up, cap, goggles, unlit cigarette, the works. Moreover, if you've seen an autorickshaw driver in Bangalore, you've probably sensed the frustration that his khaki uniform causes him. These accessories are consequently always on hand for when the opportunity presents itself. And none more apt that this. So the old man's body, ridiculously outfitted, stared soulessly into the traffic as it was chauffeured to the outskirts of the city.

The driver stopped the auto at one of the lakes that dot our city's boundary. There were three hindu families there, each with a dead relative of their own. Three pyres had been built along the shore, and the bodies were being hoisted onto these. The solitary priest there was sprinkling ghee on the first of the bodies. A fourth pyre, unattended, was still aglow, all embers and ash. An earlier body must have burned there not minutes ago. That was probably the instant that religion and frugality melded into one. How petty this obeisance to rites and rituals within religion, when stacked up against a last sacrament, against a sincere farewell to the dead? Win who then, religion or humanity?

The autowala left his vehicle metres from the pyres and walked up to where the priest was chanting his mantras. A metal bowl containing sandalwood paste lay not far. The paste had crusted over.

Three years later, as the caretaker of the crematorium-by-the-lake, the autowala chanted shlokas and istirja, as he sent another body from this world to the next.

                                                   main( )

                                                              {

                                                                 printf ("hello, world"); 

                                                               }

I used to think I'd perfected it, this business of meeting with the world everyday, but lately, my smoothness had started to slip.
-----------------------------

A world ago, when I was at university in montreal, I woke up one day realizing I was screwed - I wasn't going to be able to make rent for the next month. I was two days late paying tuition for that semester. Canara Bank had taken their time wiring me my loan, and the university had fined me a percentage point of my course fees. This threw my carefully budgeted finances out of time.

I had a few options in front of me - I could borrow money from one of the Dubai kids that studied with me. My roommate too was pretty well off and often offered me money. He thought nothing of spending $70 on a date, like he did the night before. On a girl I liked. $70. That’s two weeks’ dinner – 14 big macs and fries. I should have taken the bastard’s money.
I suppose I had some sense of pride.

Instead, I posted an ad on my university’s bulletin board. There were others too like mine, but I thought I came off decently in those 50 words.

“I think foreplay is huge fun. I can listen, or tell you stories and sing you songs. I will work incredibly hard to make sure your evening is a memorable one. My french is terrible, but I will love your accent. You can make fun of mine, at no extra charge.
 
Asking: $50/evening
 
Call 514-833-8285 so we can see if we click.”
 
I got 3 calls that very evening. One of the callers was a guy. I figured I had already put myself well out there, into escort land, so why start to draw lines now? He sounded like me. Genuine-ish. I decided we weren’t going to bring my sexuality into the picture just then. We met at his place two days later. I remember walking home around dawn, when the street lights, no longer needed, brought some warmth to the deadness of the city.

It wasn’t long before I gathered the courage to head to the intersection of du Parc and Laurier, Montreal’s best known business area for the fille de joies. This effectively stripped me of any euphemisms, like escort, listener, or the evening’s entertainment. I would wear a long kurta, and a wooden bracelet. I’d bring my guitar with me for effect. An adolescent misstep. The ladies on that street seemed amused. I was upset that they didn’t think me a threat. Yes, gigolos do not walk the street like hookers do, and yes, I was probably coming off rather cute for my impudence, my naïveté, but I was still there to make money. I consoled myself that it was because our markets overlapped but minimally - not enough for me to be considered competition.

It was still going to be a few weeks before I understood how god-awfully pretentious all of this was, so I began to sing for the womxn. That first night, I did the only two french songs I knew. By the week after, we were doing Bengali songs, and an older lady brought a cajon to play along. By the end of each night, I was invariably the last one on the street. It was on a Tuesday during my third week there, that I was told to fuck off. It was fun they said, but I was neither cute enough for them to continue paying off the cops for me, nor serious enough about prostituting myself that they should respect me.

I wish they’d told me earlier about this business of having to pay the cops. I counted out fives, and twos and my last ten till I had $50. I stuffed the money into the palm of the one that told me to fuck off.

I was out of the street-walking business. My pride about matters financial was still intact.
--------------------------------------
During my Ph.D at a state school in the southern united states, I’d been running simulations on a computer for three nights straight. I was part of the photonics department and I’d come there to research and develop cutting edge lasers for optical data transmission. Also perhaps for cancer-cell blasting.

I got up to get myself some gummy worms from the vending machine, and as I walked past the laser laboratory, I found one of the newer lasers we’d bought pointed right at the glass entrance door. I punched in the security entrance code and walked in. This particular laser operated in the blue range of the colour spectrum. Blue is such a brilliant colour, when it concentrates itself into a ray. ‘Brilliant’, I whispered in my head. I couldn't bring myself to say it aloud but it bounced around the walls of my skull. It vibrated against my inner ear and formed a residue on my tongue that I just had to spit out.

I spent the night arranging the lasers, red, blue, violet, carefully. I pointed them at mirrors, and the mirrors at themselves. When I’d finally flip the switch, the darkened room would be awash with crisscrossing beams of light. I suppose I also knew that it would be only a moment’s spectacle, because the lasers would fry each other, the way I’d aligned them.
I was ejected from the University a week later. I imagine some of my friends in India were pleased with the news. I had now become that much easier to outpace.
-------------------------------------
This tussle between apathy and a need to fit in has helped center me. It’s held my life taut against the expectations, against my own failings.

 
I’ve tried to find patterns in my life to figure out what next will trigger a tumbling of my card house, but it’s been more random than my math can predict.
 
I’ve begun to feel a detachment from myself. This is where I’ve probably been headed all along. This prime spectator's view. No longer simply the actor, now I was becoming the ghost that straddled the end of the stage, loosening the rivets from my actor’s body and coalescing into the seats, front and center.
------------------------------------
I started a business of my own not long after. It doesn’t really matter, the chronology.
I sold large Indian double doors in Kampala, real estate in Toronto and sushi in Bangalore. The idea was to seal vacuums as soon as I spotted them.
-----------------------------------
Once, on the mysore-ooty highway, in the dead of night, the headlights of our car caught a flash of ivory in the distance, off to the side of the road. I don’t think my friend who was driving had seen it. I had though. I left the conversation and turned to watch this movie play out in slo-mo. The pitch of voices and laughter and music and beer dropped low. I saw the elephant move toward the road. I didn’t want to miss a moment. So it was especially infuriating that I needed to blink right then. My eyelids never felt more unresponsive. They closed like the shutters of a Bengali sweet shop at noon, slowly, but with clarity of intent. Then, for what seemed an hour, the shopkeeper had his little siesta, and finally opened the eyelids again. By now, the elephant, moving drunkenly, had stepped onto the road.

Our car was Bharat IV certified. Very quiet, save the idiots inside the soundproof, a/c-ed cabin.

It wasn’t like I thought it would be. We simply glanced the tusker’s right front foot. Somewhere above the knee. The car slowly careened off to the side of the road. I was happy to see the speedometer at a 110, on this narrow road, where the signpost clearly said 70. If we were going through with this, it wouldn’t do to underachieve.

Anyway, we glanced his foot. I turned my neck to watch him through successive windows. He stood there staring into the night, his face like a taxi with doors open. Then his hindlegs buckled. I could’ve sworn he let out a trumpet before he hit the ground. But I left that part out of the police report. It would have sounded facetious. My friend, the driver also died. The other two were taken to a hospital. Naturally, I went too. It wouldn’t do to walk out erect from the crash after we’d just felled an elephant.
------------------------------------
Sometimes, when I’m done writing, or thinking, which is usually late evening, I pour myself a rum and diet coke. I often wish I was sophisticated; perhaps a drinker of scotch or some fine liqueur, but one’s unpalatable and the other’s spelt liqueur.

It’s usually the time that my neighbours come home too. All of them, the one across the street with the benz, the one to the right with the pool, and the one on the left without. They work for an IT company. They tell me they are important people at work. They take a bus home, and it drops them at the gate of our compound. They carry briefcases, and their shoes make a feminine clickety-clack sound on the pavement. I suppose they are important people.

They are men of sophistication. I can see them through their windows, and over my headphones, and if needed, on my laptop. They discuss the mundane with their wives, and tend to their children. They also tend to drink. When drunk, they meet at my house. Here, they discuss swapping wives, but only in jest. Their wives would beat the living crap out of them. My house is a safe place.
-----------------------------
I’ve learnt how to make small talk. When I meet people, I’ll quickly ask them about their happiness quotient on a scale of 10. The question will disarm. And because it is so personal, but short of prying, they will start up their mental abacus, moving beads in response to the flashes of memories of recent events. They will typically go back up to a week, take stock of everything good that’s happened (+1), check if anything terrible has happened (-1, or -2), and divide by some number that represents the general pall of gloom/ray of sunshine at work or home.

Once they’ve told me the number though, they’re more exposed than they thought they’d be. Now, I could use the opportunity to give them my own HQ, but I prefer to right things. So the conversation still remains about them. Initially abstract hypotheses about why that low score quickly funnel into detailed conversations about the bad performance review at work, or that half-wit of a husband.

I enjoy righting things.
-----------------------------
I had devised ways to charm. Such as listening intently. Speaking first when a silence got too awkward – This attempt at lightening mood is never polished, but still appreciated for effort.

Detachment before I seemed too interested. Callbacks to a previous minute detail you thought I missed when you’d mentioned it.

I also did self-deprecation. Jokes about my social awkwardness, weight, ethnicity. I did, however, make note of those in the crowd that laughed loudest.

Lately though, my smoothness had started to slip.

Lay Low

Years ago, as a journalist for that intrepid fortnightly, The Intrepid Fortnightly, I had occasion to interview the executive committee of The Great Indian Laughter League (GILL - a trying-too-hard acronym, but I hypothesized that it was probably crafted this way for numerological reasons).

Word on the street, i.e. Cubbon street - beside where the club met every Sunday, was that the club's numbers were dwindling. Surely this must've been of concern to their executive board.

I showed up towards the end of that week's session of GILL on a yellow-gray Sunday afternoon in Bangalore, expecting to have a few words with John Joseph, the club's president. The sound of a hundred different people laughing can be a little unnerving - the low rumblers, loud guffawers, the shy gigglers and the high cacklers together make for an unearthly cacophony, but if you listen closely to the cycles, punctuated by when they pause to fill their lungs with air, you can tell that the old birds are generally having a good time.

The median GILL member was about 80 years old, middle class and of uncertain gender (perhaps smarter to say that GILL didn’t discriminate based on sex). I rode with them to their premises in a small office building in Indiranagar. I'd had no idea that they were this official. Three of us walked through a dimly lit corridor. I could hear strains of Adnan Sami's "Mujhko bhi toh lift karadey", but the music was so low that it might've been my imagination.

John must've been 80, but was still a giant of a man, so he had to crouch as he entered the little conference room. There were a couple of chairs at either end of a stretched-circle table.

'Shalini, your good name, correct? Very common name' said John.

'That's right', I replied. 'On both counts' I said, but this time using my inner voice.

'You have come for interview purpose?'

'Yes, I wanted to learn about GILL. I've heard that you've lost 15 members over the last two months. Is the charm of laughter therapy decreasing among Bangaloreans?'

Muthu, who was the treasurer of GILL, had been quiet all this while. He had lively eyes, hidden under the bushiest, whitest eyebrows I've ever seen. His mouth was twitching. I wasn't sure if this was because he wanted to speak, or just general loss of muscle control. I decided to turn towards him, hoping to find a friend.

Turned out he did want to speak. 'See, people actually do not understand laughter therapy. What happens no, it actually does not do any good for your heart or anything. No heart benefit, no intelligence benefit, not even sex benefit. Still, we are okay. We like to laugh. When we laugh, stress is gone. For a short time only, but it is gone. Sadness is gone. Only happiness. Tough, very tough to be sad when you are laughing like that.'

'I see', I said. I hadn't been following the latest studies on laughter therapy, but I did imagine it was all a bit of fluff, like Muthu had explained. 

'Is that why you're losing members then? Are they realising that simply pretending to laugh will not solve their medical issues?'

Muthu looked over at John. John in turn was staring daggers at me. My impertinence hadn’t done me any favours.

'Muthu’, John growled, ‘I said that time only, we are not requiring this interview business, ma. Why you called her?'

Muthu blinked from under his eyebrows. He rubbed the back of his hand against his white stubble while squinting at me. He turned to John - 'She is Lila's granddaughter'.
'Oh', said John. In that moment, I felt his gruffness leave the room. His eyes suddenly became warm and he leaned forward in his chair. I could feel a gentleness diffuse through the room.

My grandmother's name was indeed Lila. She had lived a full life - colourful, adventurous, never still and never short on love. In fact, she loved as ferociously as she was loved. If you wanted sunshine today, you headed over to my grandma's. She was never more alive, more positive about life than when she moved into a senior's home three years ago, where she had made a number of friends. She died in her sleep a couple of years ago, peacefully, and as we were told, happily.

'No, actually, we are having a waiting list. Too many people are wanting membership. Every month we become more popular'. John's voice had grown unmistakably loving.

'I don't understand. Why are some of your members leaving then?'

'They are not leaving our club. They are leaving this life.'

I was surprised to hear this. It was true I hadn't bothered to check where the members were leaving to. All I was interested in was why the number of GILL members that showed up every Sunday at Cubbon park had started to drop off so steeply. I suppose I was also surprised because though I didn't believe laughter therapy did you any good, I didn't think it killed you off either, advanced years of these members notwithstanding.

'See. Firstly, please you turn off the recorder, ma', John said, and I complied.

'Laughing is good when we are together. But afterwards, when we have gone home, that time?'

I felt the weight and pause of this question. This wasn't rhetorical. I knew. I usually chose to ignore, but I knew. The curse of old age, its ills and banes, valleys and trenches, I knew. I'd visit the odd elderly relative perhaps once a month. I'd bring him some sweets, ask about his health. Then when he was midway through his answer, which was this immutable drone of soft complaints to god, I'd cut him off by telling him the latest on that ne'er-do-well nephew, or about the plans I had for my career and where I was going to travel. It was like walking the dog. Surely that was entertainment enough. 

And even as I'd leave, I'd feel relieved that he wasn't asking me to stay. I knew he would like it if I did, but then I also knew that he would feel awkward about it, and so he wouldn't. I relied on that awkwardness. 

Worse, I knew what his life would be like until I visited again. I knew the bleakness. I would see it in his smile the next time I visited. In its benevolence. That smile would say 'Thank you for visiting. Thank you, thank you, thank you.' And yet, it'd have a measure of restraint so as not to pressure me into staying longer than I wanted to. Or committing to visit the next time sooner than I realistically could.

'That time, how we can able to laugh? If we laugh, we will be sounding like fools ' said John.
'And not because there is nobody to laugh with us, but because there is just nobody', added Muthu.

He continued - 'Two years ago, we were in the same home as Lila. She was a very joyful person, no doubt. Every night at the mess, she would sit down to eat and ask us to pray with her. Same prayer every time "Hey Bugvaan, mujhe lay low". Everyday we would laugh and then eat. One day she told me "You know Muthu, I am not joking about death. I miss my husband. I miss my children. I cannot remember your name or anybody else’s name most of the time. Every day, I am having thirteen medicines and then dialysis. It is too expensive. And for what? I have seen everything I want to see. Now, I just want to go." '

I didn't know where to look. We had obviously failed her as a family, but she didn't let it show. Or perhaps she did, and we chose to ignore it.

'That is when we are formed our club', said John. 'We first started with only three members - Muthu, Lila and myself.'

Muthu joined in - 'We would meet every day to discuss options, like psychiatry, or telephoning your family to explain the problem, but Lila made us understand that she had lived a full life.’ 

‘Then one day, we read one article about euthanasia', said John.

He didn't have to say more. The Laughter League was a front, a call to bring in those that needed help. I looked at them, helplessly, and thankfully – the founders of the Great Indian Lay Low club.

The Revolution Begins

Cast:

1. The pantheon of Full gods

2. Devikas - Regular Full apsaras, that lined the courts of the Full gods

3. The pantheon of Lesser gods  - including Half-Shiva and Half-Brahma

4. Laukikas - Lesser apsaras, some of whom were ex-Devikas, that courted the Lesser gods

As one of the Lesser gods, Half-Shiva had many good things going for him - his godly body, a near-perfected vibhuti trick, the ability to teleport himself (short distances only) and that sly wink that he could do with his third eye, among others. The demi status suited him fine, because with lesser powers, came lesser responsibility. For the most part, this meant he had time on his hands to do as he pleased with his groupies. All that held him back was a frustration that stemmed from being but a lesser god.  It damaged his sense of self-worth, creating a ragingly low libido.

The Laukikas, that second-tier entourage of apsaras that had to make do servicing only the Lesser gods, were not doing well as an enterprise. A faction of them had just been made homeless at the dawn of Half-Brahma's personal kalyug. Half-Brahma's popularity among humankind had all but tanked over the last few centuries, so H-B decided to renew an oath of chastity. He hoped this would endear him to the overtly pious, as also to those that weren't getting any. Fifteen of the lesser apsaras were sent back to the Laukika quarters, wages paid in full.

The Full gods, together with the Devikas, had a good chuckle about the whole affair.

"Enough is enough!", said Urvashi, the leader of the Laukikas, to herself. This battle between the Full gods and Devikas on the one hand, and the Lesser gods and the Laukikas on the other, had gone on long enough in favour of the former. The contentedness of that lot  rankled her. The Full gods had busy, action-packed lives what with the millions of disease-ridding, milk-drinking, new-car-inaugurating wishes filling up their inboxes. The Devikas, in turn, received lavish gifts for simply stroking the egos of these gods. Basically, their damn cups runneth over.

Indra, a Full god, in an attempt to use dialogue, explained - "Our sense of self-worth is tied closely to what we do, and to the prayers of our devotees. We are paid every morning in pedas and bananas and silk clothes and ganga dips. As a result, there's not much frustration for us to take out on the members of our apsara harem." What he was getting at was that the Full-god lingams and the Devika yonis made love long time.

The Lesser gods, on the other hand, were neither prayed to, nor particularly busy. The lubricant of self-esteem was low. The nights were lonely, and they had been playing a supporting role to the Full gods for so long now that their lives felt like old socks, crispened by the many cycles of human birth and death, yet ignored by those very humans.

Urvashi and Tilottama, who had been ejected from the harems of several Full gods, met one evening to discuss the situation the Laukikas were in. They needed a PR boost if they wanted to get back in the game. Else, they stood to lose even their Lesser god clientele to the Devikas (i.e. the Lesser gods that could afford it) or worse, to more oaths of chastity.

They met with Half-Shiva in one of the back-alleys of Amravati.

Half-Shiva: "You want me to do WHAT?"

U and T:"It's easy, all you have to do is host an orgy with the Laukikas"

Half-Shiva was both excited and terrified by the prospect, for obvious reasons. 

U and T: "It's okay, the Laukikas are going to get busy with each other, you just need to arrange for the bhang. When it's over, all that people will remember was that Half-Shiva held an orgy, and that it was epic." U and T then high-fived each other for that last choice of word.

Half-Shiva stared long and hard at them. He did this partly because he wasn't sure how much they knew about his muted tandav in the bedroom, and partly because this was the only way to use these adjectives in the context of Half-Shiva. They patted him on the back. "It's okay, this sort of thing is common." Especially among the Lesser gods.

And so it came to pass, the orgy was held. Half-Shiva made sure the bhang was free-flowing, and the Laukikas turned up, resplendently gaudy. It rained for five days and five nights as the orgy plumbed new levels of debauchery. Debashree, one of the more mature Laukikas, had invited the divine paparazzi to photograph her in various bendy positions with Half-Shiva, Urvashi and Tilottama pouring bhang over the naked bodies. Several blurry videos were leaked, as were reports of how finally, on the fifth night, in a state of maddened frenzy, a new Ganga burst forth from Half-Shiva. 

All of this press did wonders for the Laukikas. Overnight, inquiries from the secretaries of various Full gods started pouring in - "Are you available in the next Yuga? Full Vishnu is currently committed to the Devikas, but definitely interested"; "How much for one millenium?"; "If we take twenty, any group discount?"

Half-Shiva himself was being considered for promotion into the Full god pantheon. Again, a prospect that both excited and terrified him.

He met with the other Lesser gods. "What do you think? Should I accept?"

Half-Brahma nodded, sagely. "It's time, H-S. This was meant to be. The revolution will begin from within their own ranks. Soon, they will be Full gods no more."

(To be continued. Unlikely though)

A throne's tale - I

"Listen to me. I didn't slip up yesterday. I called them off. They were going to club you to death. I called them off."

"The sun is blinding. Just turn me around, let's talk. We can figure this out. C'mon let's talk. Like we're kids again. We can figure this out."

"You can have it. All of it. The money, the game, everything. Take the whole goddamn city. They deserve you. You were always baba's favourite."

"No, come on! This is not how I want to go. I know I didn't miscalculate. There's good in you, ma would simply say it, but I believed it."

"How you've fallen. I loved you. I still do. I thought you were better than this."

-----------

There must've been love. How could there not? He was the most adorable little thing. How could you not want to pick him up in your arms? Cheeks that chubby ki you just wanted to squeeze 'em, but yes, I couldn't see him cry, so no, not that hard.

I was always very protective of him. I wasn't four when he was born, but I feel like I knew exactly what my role was going to be. I was going to be playmate, teacher, tormentor. He was going to be my scapegoat, my ball of wet clay.

See, we were going to inherit the city. Or one of us was, anyway.

My father was in jail. Had been since before I was born. My brother was born of a conjugal visit. I learnt that baba ran his matka empire just as well from his cell as he did from his rooftop office in Malad before the pandus took him away.

The routine in jail was the same. Every night, at 11pm, he would draw three cards from a freshly opened deck. All the while surrounded by prominent politicians, sundry filmstars, and always the jailer. Do a straight add of each card, and that's the number that in seconds would be transmitted to every corner of the city. Phones would fall off their cradles getting the numbers across to the bettors, pagers would beep, and the bets would start to pour in.

Never did he draw the second hand a moment before midnight. By then, crores of rupees would have crossed the tables of the dalal network he'd set up throughout the city.

And then my father's bookies in every alley would begin their payouts. Promptly and accurately. The intoxication here was the crazy odds that he offered. Guess three digits out of a possible 8, and take home two and a half times your bet. No bet too small or too big.

Today, they say he had an elaborate mechanism to figure out which numbers to draw on his second hand to reduce the payouts. Statistics collated instantly from the corners of the city and transmitted through the bars of his cell, whispering digits into his eardrums. Hah. A likely story. There existed no such technology. There still doesn't. And even if he pulled off this voodoo to figure out those numbers somewhichhow, tell me about the second draw. He was still watched by those veinshot eyes. His each move, the single flick of each. How was he to draw these magic numbers? I mean, forget the how, just imagine the balls it would take. But then again, if I had this figured out, I'd probably have kept the crown of matka pasha. Baba made more money each night than the chief minister made in a month (relief funds included).

My brother and I were born to the same mother. She did not favour me over him, nor ulta. He would reach for my hand when we needed to cross the road, and I would fold his tiny fingers into my palm. I spent my pocket money on those candy cigarettes for him, bought him his first guitar, fought off kids that bullied him at school.

It wasn't always as sunny between the two of us - I would lose my temper on occasion, when the duffer wouldn't get geometry, or physics. But what was there not to get? I'd smack him then. He wouldn't protest. He could see how much I wanted him to be a better version of me. A handsomer boy, a more talented poet, sportsman, musician. Over the years, he did grow up to be that accomplished. I learnt later that what drove him was spite.

He must have been 13 the day he understood the stakes of the matka kingdom. I was 17, and leaving home for the first time to go abroad - Switzerland. I was about to leave for the airport, when news arrived that our father was not going to be carrying out the matka that night in prison. No further word as to why not. A large crowd had assembled outside the gates of our house. They demanded to know what was going on. They were there because they'd become addicted to matka.

Have you ever read a crowd? They say before Hendrix got on the stage at Woodstock, the otherwise raucous crowd suddenly went quiet. If you looked into a single, mellow bandana-ed soul, you'd gather nothing. No one individual could tell you what was about to happen. If you could read the pulse of the collective though, you'd know they knew. Their unified consciousness knew that a storm was about to tear through them. Hendrix was going to make it rain.

It's a good thing though that I had no such crowd-reading abilities. Not because it wasn't a handy skill, but rather, because the instant dread of that reading would likely have rooted me to the floor. Today, I imagine that if I had only looked closer into the membrane of the crowd, I'd have been able to see through the pores and the confusion, that spectrum of emotion would have crystallized into my gut, and told me what to do next. Amidst the curiosity-filled eyes, there were others that twitched nervously. Amidst the mutterings of prayers for matka pasha, there were quiet tongues within hardened jaws. Some of them were coming off large wins and the drug was in their system. Others must have owed large monies and it was only matka that would save their skin. That, or dakaiti.

We should have fled. Instead, as the head of the house, I stood there dumbfounded as time screeched into quiet. My mother was at my side. I could tell she was agitated, but I was mesmerized by the crowd. She was screaming my brother's name when the first stone crashed into the bay window on the second floor. I saw the darwan drop his stick as he ran past the house, away from the entrance. I suppose it was just as well. The iron gates would have crushed him when they fell.

The TV in the next room should have been drowned out by the crowd, but like it would happen again ten years later, the news seemed to lift itself to that annoying notch, the pitch of the mosquito, where despite the cacophony, the caster's voice cut through the curtains of noise - the Matka Pasha had hung himself in his cell, and the city was going into curfew immediately to quell any unrest.

It would be atleast 20 minutes until the police got here. By then we could have been burnt alive by the crowd, such was the sudden unreason in their eyes. My mother clutched at me, and we looked around for my brother but he was nowhere to be found. I ran out onto the balcony to see if he was there. The crowd was now charging down the garden path, men, women, the well-heeled and the troddowns.

I froze for the second time in the space of a few minutes - my brother, in his shorts, was walking out the front door and towards the rampage. He had a matka in his hands.

The sight of this sliver of a boy was like the firing of a water cannon. It brought the crowd to a dead halt. Perhaps his defenseless form triggered some spark of humanity, and they lowered the stones they'd picked up on the road outside.

I've seen standoffs in movies. They'd always felt comical. Sure, the gunslingers were sweating, knotted brows and all, but the sheer idiocy of the situation, where there was this formality to the duel despite how in a flash it would turn so primitively savage, always made me chuckle. I felt none of that idiocy in the air today. I needed to pull my brother back into the house, behind the oak doors. This lull was only a moment of reasonableness. Any second now, that blind fury would resettle behind the eyes of the mob, and they would trample him to death.

That's when he lifted that matka above his head and brought it crashing down to the ground. The hardened mud pot fractured into tiny pieces around his feet.

He sat down on the ground and pulled out a deck of cards. He had his toy megaphone with him. He called for five people from the crowd to step forward, and asked them to put down a thousand rupees each. He then shuffled the cards, and read the crowd the new rules of Matka. The Matka Pasha might have passed away, but "Flash Matka" was born that afternoon.

Construct this man carefully

We're going to have some fun today.

Trap a man in an unholy pit. In the deepest, darkest recess you can conceive. Let the pit be the very belly of the earth. Cavernous, with no start and no end. Make certain that when the pit is sealed, there is no way out, and no way in. Nor light enter, nor breath escape.

Construct this pit carefully. Here is what you need to do:


Turn up the temperature, until it hits a dry boil. Three days in, when most creatures in that hole have died, fashion a tiny, shallow puddle of water in the very innards of this pit. Allow a drip to fall on to that puddle, a drop every hour. Let the sound of this drip echo through the cavern. Remember, one drop every hour. When it is the sound of water, trust me, it will hit every animate eardrum. Every creature alive will daredevil maps of the cavern in their heads. They will bore toeholds and finger-ledges using muscle, and skin, to reach the water. Five days in, turn the drip into a slip of a stream. Steady and gurgling. The man might have given up trying to find perches to climb to, but this should start him up again.

Make it so that there is no way to reach that puddle.

Now, construct this man carefully:

Fill the man with fire. For this to work, the fire needs be red. Not the golden glow of hope. Also not the amber shade of courage - much too meek - courage allows a man to wait it out on the top floor of a burning building, in the hope that a fireman or some watergod will come. It will not make him the demon he needs to be to escape this hell.

So, no. Make that fire red. It should burn him if he can't put it out. It should torch his blood and glass his eyes from the inside if he does not scramble fast enough.

One does not start this kind of fire with kindling and air. At best, that sort of fire burns blue at the edges with a cabin-warm shimmer at the centre. No, instead, start with fury. Add hate or add love - I'll leave that to you and the sort of morning you've had today. Don't just season though. Flood his core with it. It will be adding spirit to the fury. Let the mixture explode in his heart. Again and again. Valves should burst and veins should throb. If his body cannot carve a toehold in the rock to reach the next ledge, he should strip his foot of skin, flesh, muscle and ligament to expose bone, and again begin the battle against rock.

Make his bones brittle.

I hope you enjoy the fight.

Finish it with mercy. That's what we do.

I expect that after a while, he will lie there,  broken. Send in the black dust I'd left by the stove. You could unseal the pit, by a hair's width and slip in the dust. His breathing will be heavy (for he will be broken only in body), sucking in large amounts of air, and expelling it before it can reach his lungs, but the dust only needs to enter his windpipe. The moment it does, it will seep through his pores and reach his bloodstream. This dust will put out the fire and end his fight.

-------------------

See, my project should've ended there. You were there. You heard the instructions. Light fire, watch him fight, put him out with the dust.

But it didn't work out that way.

I descended into the pit and watched him as he inhaled the dust. He broke out into a violent cough instantly, stretching his arms to the rocks to pull himself up... but it wouldn't help. It was too late for him. He stopped after a minute. His body turned still. I thought he'd turned to stone. His skin, black, now turned leaden. I expected he would keel over. Instead, his stiffened legs folded..elegantly..and he sat back down, tucking the bloody, bony foot under him. His eyes, just now bloody, suddenly shot open. I looked directly into them. They were two balls of ash floating in a white-hot liquid. For a moment, I thought he could see me.

At that instant, I became conscious of how cold it had suddenly become in the cave. I looked back at the man. He was glowing red hot. As though he'd drawn into himself all the heat of the cave. What new divinity was this? I heard a rumbling underneath me, and suddenly a slab of rock split open where I stood. From it gushed upwards a flaming jet of gold. I looked around, and out burst another fissure, and another. Sprays of lava shot up, some reaching miles high, upto the very seal of the pit.

As I turned my eyes upwards, I saw that the man was now ablaze. A red plume of fire. There was no distress, no agony. Just a calmness. His burning body shuddered for a moment before shooting into the void above, splitting open my pit-seal. The molten rock under me turned into a massive geyser as it followed him out. For days it flowed out the sides of the pit, and I watched in amazement as it razed fields and animals. What a sight, what an incredible notion that I could do this - create a mountain out of a cave and fire a man into the stars.

Mad Men

Mad men

On a hot, dusty evening, a man fell to the ground beside a heap of rotting garbage. He skinned his knees and the side of his face as he hit the asphalt. His tattered pajamas did little to hide his modesty.

He lay there, sucking in short, sharp breaths. He was supposed to feel an emotion, but which one? Perhaps anger… or was it shock?  He tried to play dead, hoping the boys would move on to some other prey. Like bears. But he couldn’t stop his gasps of breath. The more he tried to stifle them, the more his body jerked. He was conscious of how his body had started to writhe again, uncontrollably.  

Today he was a stupid man, stripped of intelligence, stripped of sense. He was so stupid, he couldn’t even play dead. So when the pelting started again, could he blame them? He curled his beard in front of his face and put one hand over his eyes, the other over his genitals as the men laughed.

Mad men

As far as he could see, the world was a remarkable place. So many shades of sunshine. If he closed his good eye, he could only see the white hot light glinting off another bauble at the trinket store. And when he tried on another pair of sunglasses, the world was suddenly bathed in blue. The shopkeeper didn’t mind. It cost him nothing to keep the khyapa amused. 

And when khyapa smiled, it was so weightless that for those few moments, every customer at that roadside shop would feel themselves unplugged from the world and its cares.

Smiling comes easy when you’re in step with your world. When people do as you do, you smile. When the light looks just right, when the shade is cool enough or when food is found, you smile. When sleep comes easy, and you wake up because you’ve slept enough, you smile. When the body does what the mind tells it to, you smile because you’re harmonizing. 

And then when you can play with the world, that smile becomes a laugh. When a child comes and sits beside you, you can laugh and help her laugh too. When another day goes by, when you didn’t have to lie, about where you’ve been or what you did, you can laugh. If they’ll give you a roof for the night, where you can make your bed in plain sight, you can laugh, even if it’s in your head. When the rules line up neatly with what you were anyways planning to do, just laugh.

Mad men

So today was a good day. After an arresting conversation with a friendly constable (both of them parted, step-in-spring intact), he figured that the imbalance he struggled with, wasn’t so bad. Sure, he didn’t see why people needed to walk around as though wearing straitjackets, nor really why their up was down, and their down up, but as long as everyone got along, did it really matter?

When the shopkeeper had had enough of him, he’d give khyapa a fiver to send him on his way. The money meant little, and khyapa would later give it to a beggar, but he understood this signal - It meant ‘enough now, leave’. See? He knew what was what. 

Now, as the sun blustered in the evening sky, khyapa had grown thirsty and hungry. The buildings all seemed to slant in the wrong direction, so no cool shade was on offer as he looked for food. He knew better than to knock on doors, and some sense of esteem prevented him from sitting on the road to beg. 

That’s when he stumbled upon an open garbage pile. A maid from a nearby colony was dumping the kitchen waste. There was bound to be food there – homemade, at that. The promise of solid pickings started him on a clumsy dash towards the garbage, drool dripping instantly from the side of his mouth.

He perched himself on a brick and lunged from his squat towards half a boiled potato, nestled among some broken egg shells and cauliflower stems. How people could waste perfectly good food like this he didn’t know, not that he minded. 

A laugh rang out somewhere in the distance as he was about to bite into the potato. The next moment, he felt a sharp pain at the back of his head, and immediately after, a sting in the recess of his knee. The stones were sharp, almost as sharp as the taunts that accompanied them. A man broke away from the group, ran up to him and kneed him in the back. On that hot, dusty evening, a hungry man fell to the ground beside a heap of garbage. Mad men we are.