Marginal Man
Page 6
“Six hundred,” was her reply.
“Two hundred,” he said, and the bargaining began in right earnest.
“Did you come here with money to buy fish or two empty pockets and a mouth full of crap?”
“Ah! Damn you! You can keep your bloody fish!” Ismail retorted, moving to the next vendor.
“Fine! Three hundred. I’m settling for that pittance only because you’re a regular.”
“Two fifty?”
“Well, how about you try your luck at the other stalls? If you get two barracudas for that price, come back to me and I’ll throw in these two for zilch.”
Ismail moved on, saying that one should not tarry long at a particular stall, and that all of them should be visited. At one, he bought some Bengal carp for thirty and at another, he bargained outrageously and bought two sharks priced at eight hundred rupees for three hundred.
On the way back, he stopped at the stall where he had bargained for the barracuda and asked the woman, “Now what do you say?”
“Five hundred.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Just a little while ago, you said three hundred,” he reminded her.
“That was a while ago. Now it’s five hundred.”
Finally, the deal was concluded. The fish were sold for three hundred rupees.
We took the fish we had bought to another group of women whose task it was to scale and slice the fish. Ismail handed them over to the woman who usually did the job for him, but her knife was rusty and she was struggling to get the job done. I felt sorry for her. In Nadukuppam, scaling and slicing was a man’s job. They had big and sharp knives that accomplished the task in a jiffy.
“Why don’t you use better knives?” I asked one of them.
“There are too many tosspots here,” she said. “If we get sharper tools, there’d be four deaths a day.”
My legs and hips began to ache. There was a slight drizzle and we could hear the roar of the waves. Fishermen were on their boats, unfazed by the giant rollers. In the distance, I could see the faint outline of several ships. It began to rain. Ismail opened his umbrella and held it over the woman. Folding up his lungi, he squatted beside her as she worked, talking about fish and life in general. I couldn’t stand in one place for long. It took the woman more than an hour to cut the fish. Besides, the auto driver was still waiting.
“I thought you sent him away,” Ismail said.
“If I had, it would have been difficult to catch another to get back home.”
Buying fish from Nadukuppam was preferable to buying it for three hundred after a two-hour long wait. I made a mental note to tell Perundevi that all the money in the world could not compensate for those two lost hours.
As I was late, Perundevi had made a radish gravy for lunch. I felt miserable: all this fish at our disposal and I had to eat vegetables! Suddenly I spied Ismail at the gate. I told him we were out of onions, so he’d brought some. “It’s okay. Lunch has already been prepared. Thanks.” He was about to leave when I added, “Once your gravy is cooked, would you mind sending some across? Just a little…” When I went back inside, I saw that the maid had begun cleaning the fish. Normally, I am not satisfied unless I do this myself. If I am too occupied, Perundevi does it, but as a rule, we never let the maid clean fish.
Ismail’s fish gravy was simple yet tasty and I wondered what had gone into its preparation. The next day, Perundevi took out some fish from the freezer and made a curry – it was heavenly! Her cooking was guided purely by olfaction, for, being a Shri Vaishnavite, she was a vegetarian. Though she didn’t eat meat, she prepared it fantastically. She never did allow me to bring mutton and beef home. I didn’t want to anymore either because I no longer had the heart to eat it. After Madan had eaten, he announced, “I will never eat fish again for the rest of my life!” He did not care for meats and apparently, the fish hadn’t been scaled properly. The woman in Nochikuppam hadn’t been thorough and neither had our maidservant. I never visited Nochikuppam again.
13 – Brownie
Not long after I had made Whitey’s acquaintance, he came home with another dog in tow, a brown one, and I promptly named it Brownie. The two had starkly different canine personalities.
Whitey understood that patience is a virtue and would wait for hours to get his biscuits. Brownie couldn’t wait. He probably had bitches to chase and important conferences with other local dogs to attend.
Whitey would accept biscuits from my hand. Brownie would rather I put them on the floor.
When I touched Brownie for the first time, he seemed to tell me that I was the first man to ever do so.
“Probably the last one too, dear,” I thought.
14 – The Wife-Mother
Perundevi did what no other woman in this world or any other could have done – she lived with me and endured me. Perhaps I might have been a desirable man, a good husband, if I wasn’t a writer.
It was ten in the night when my friends knocked at the door. They were all in high spirits and wanted to drink with me in my house. I agreed. Perundevi made chapattis and chicken curry for us. Our drunken revelry ended at four in the morning with glasses, bottles and bodies scattered on the floor.
This was not a one-time occurrence.
There was a poet-friend of mine who spent a whole day in my house – drinking. He spent the next day sleeping on the verandah. He woke up to retch, and who would clean the reeking puddle of puke but Perundevi? He woke up every thirty minutes with a request for a cup of buttermilk. Perundevi uncomplainingly obliged him. She stayed home that day to nurse him.
There were two things I did that many wouldn’t dare to do.
Seventeen years ago, I married Perundevi without having got my divorce papers. My illegitimate marriage could have cost me my government job, but I did not mind losing it. Besides, there was a fat chance of ending up in a dingy prison cell if someone decided to slap bigamy charges on me. I had braced myself for that turn of events as well.
Even when I was fastening the mangal sutra around Perundevi’s neck, I felt apprehensive, anticipating the cinematic arrival of the cops who would haul me off in handcuffs as my bride stood and watched helplessly.
We were married in Mylapore’s Kapaleeswarar Temple. The priests would not agree to marry us without the production of proper documents. It was Krishna who saved the situation by exerting his influence. Many of my friends did not attend the wedding as they thought I was pulling an April Fools’ prank on them. Besides Krishna, there was only one other happy guest at the wedding, our son Madan.
We arrived at the temple at 6:30 in the morning for the marriage that was to be solemnized at 8. The place was empty, save for the officiating priest. Perundevi swept the mandapam clean. Later, when she appeared as a bride, the priest was taken aback. Not a soul from Perundevi’s family had come for the wedding.
My parents were delayed and they happened to be in possession of the mangal sutra. Just as Krishna was about to send someone to buy one from one of the jewelry boutiques near the temple, my parents arrived.
I married Perundevi within fifteen days of meeting her. She was a unique breed of woman. She bought, preserved and cooked meat for me despite being a brahmin. She dried fish herself as she knew that fish loaded with salt from the fish stalls would send my blood pressure skyrocketing. She took to cooking snail curry for me when she was told it was helped to cure piles. Any other woman who was a vegetarian would have drawn the line at chicken, but Perundevi was not just any other woman.
15 – The Bait
The murrel is available in Nochikuppam only on Sundays and only one person sells it. By the time I reach the place at 10 a.m., all the big fish would have been sold, so I would call the fellow beforehand and tell him to keep one for me. During my trips to the market, I got acquainted with a person called Murugesan. He would buy the kind of fish I liked and also cut it into neat slices. One day as he
was cutting the fish, I heard the knife strike metal. The tip of the knife had become blunt and a close scrutiny revealed that a bait was lodged in the fish head. I love fish head curry and if I had eaten the head without chewing it I would have swallowed the bait. Nervously, I wondered what might have happened to me if that had occurred. As it was a Sunday, the market was very crowded and four or five of us were standing before Murugesan. He sent some of them to other vendors but even with so many people crowding around him he was able to discover the bait only because he was good at his job. If he had been careless, the bait wouldn’t have been visible, so pleased with his efficiency, I gave him an extra hundred rupees.
On reaching home, I excitedly told Perundevi what had transpired but she became annoyed. ‘It’s because of people like you that workers are getting spoilt. He was only doing his job so why give him the extra money?’
‘Isn’t my life more precious than the hundred rupees?’ I asked. ‘What are you trying to say?’ I relapsed into silence.
16 – Whitey Again
Did you wonder about what happened to Whitey after I left for the Himalayas? I had given a lot of thought to it, in fact. People who are into spirituality are a bit dense so I decided to target Raja’s Achilles heel. One day I told him that I was going to the Himalayas to retreat and at once he fell at my feet. I pulled him up and said piously that Baba had appeared to me in a dream and asked me to give him a message. Eyes brimming over with tears, he asked me what it was. ‘Baba said, ‘Your neighbour Raja will take care of Whitey’,’ I said.
Astonished, he asked me why Baba had not appeared in his dream. ‘For that, you need to evolve further. If you want further proof, Baba also said, ‘Ask him to read page number 333 of my sacred autobiography.’ It’s the same page that describes the incident about Baba’s visit to a devotee’s house in the form of a beggar and a street dog. Need I say more? By this time, I expect Whitey must have shed his proletarian identity and become a bourgeois.
17 – Les deux belles noires
I am seated on the lawn of the India International Center in Delhi. A Chinese poet is reading a poem. Suddenly a cat, which resembled a Pomeranian more closely than it did its own kind, materializes from somewhere and snuggles into my lap like we go back a decade. It promptly falls asleep. This little tableau plays out for four days.
There were debating sessions in the conference room from morning to noon. Later, at six o’clock, there were reading sessions on the lawn. I usually sat myself down there at five-thirty. The first time the cat approached me, I was both surprised and amused. Over the next few days, it seemed to have a preference for me over everyone assembled in the lawn.
As for me, I’ve never seen such a beautiful cat before. I would run my fingers through its soft, velvety fur and when I stopped, it would look at me questioningly.
Soon, it was the last day of the conference. The springtime evening was pleasant and mild. That evening, Asma, a poet from Algeria, was observing me and the cat from a short distance. On the first day, she’d tried to lure the cat out of my lap, but the creature clung to me like a babe to its mother. She’d tried to pick it up, but the cat showed her that it was clearly not wanting to be picked up. Disappointed, she seated herself at a distance and contented herself with watching us.
On the fifth day, she walked up to me and, eyeing my pastel green t-shirt, remarked, “The colors complement each other rather well, no?” She was referring to the contrast between the cat’s glossy black fur and my shirt. In a mellow voice, she said something in Arabic to the cat that looked up at her, ears twitching. With an air of condescension, the cat left my lap for hers. Not long after, it tired of her and sauntered back to me.
That evening, Asma and I drank ourselves silly. When it was time to part, she embraced and kissed me.
“Je ne t’oublie pas, le chat noir aussi,… vous deux,” she whispered tenderly into my ear.
18 – Men and Women
“One of my friends was staying in a ladies’ hostel in Chennai. One day, a man entered the bathroom, but managed to escape before he was caught. A little while after the incident, my friend was sitting around with a couple of roommates, eating apples, when the intruder barged in, bolted the door and grabbed the apple-knife. He threatened the other two girls at knifepoint and asked my friend to strip naked. She didn’t. Enraged, he held her in a chokehold, the knife pressed to her throat. My friend didn’t try to save herself. For her, death was more welcome than humiliation. He asked the other two if there were people outside. They lied that the coast was clear. He walked outside, leaving the knife behind. Big mistake. The girls who were standing outside caught hold of him and beat him up. When they took him to the hostel warden, she let him go scot free. When the shocked girls demanded to know why, she replied, ‘I’ve taken his picture. What good is it going to the police?’ She then showed them the picture she’d clicked on her phone.
“But the real horror was not the intrusion. It was the discovery of a tiny installed camera in the bathroom. It soon came to light that in every bathroom was found a camera. Goodness only knew for how long they’d been there. What were the odds their pictures were not being flashed on some porn site that very hour? Robbed of their peace and their dignity, they cannot sleep, they cannot think straight. This is the life of Indian women,” said Puja.
I said, “Men suffer too, Puja. I’ll tell you a story Kannan told me. As you know, he works in the software industry. One fine day, when he turned up for work, he found a woman sitting in his chair. Before he could get one word out of his mouth, she authoritatively told him to find himself another seat. When Kannan yelled at this bossy bitch whose ass-cheeks were barely covered, she had the nerve to complain to the boss that he was harassing her. The story was soon picked up by his colleagues who actually suspected him of doing so, but his boss – who was thankfully not a fool – debunked the complaint and saved his ass. But he lost face in the office and there was nothing he could do to clear his reputation.”
Chapter Two
1 – Caverta from the Side-Street Sexologist
One of the “regulars” I meet in the park during my morning walks is Ranganathan, a friend of Santhanam’s. He prefers listening to our conversations to taking part in them. Frequent work travel means he is able to make it to the park in the mornings only once or twice a week. A great Perumal devotee, he is quite handsome – tall with an enviable physique, glowing complexion and a charming smile. His lack of a moustache seems only to enhance his looks. We would sometimes see him walking with a woman in tow, and on such occasions, he studiously ignored us.
“Do you know why this chap frequents Madhava Perumal and Kesava Perumal temples?” Santhanam once asked me. “He does so to befriend ladies who come there.”
I remembered these words of Santhanam whenever I saw Ranganathan in the park thereafter.
When Santhanam failed to turn up one day, Ranga and I were walking in an eight-formation between two trees as it is said that it was better than walking in a straight line.
Ranga, a man of few words, surprisingly began the conversation.
“Were you out of town?”
“No.”
“Oh, I thought you were.”
“Wait, sorry, I was. I went to Goa.”
“Did you get it in Goa?”
“No, the BJP has Goa in a chokehold. Not much they can do in that position. Liquor is freely available though.”
“Who’d go all the way to Goa for liquor when Pondicherry’s just three hours away?”
“True that.”
After few minutes of silence, he asked,“Do you drink daily?”
“I can’t afford such luxuries daily, so I drink weekly.”
“Scotch?”
“I prefer Rémy Martin.”
“Ah, Rémy Martin! My favorite. Do spare me a bottle if you happen to find two.”
“Of co
urse.”
“Does a full bottle cost three thousand rupees?”
“No, six thousand now.”
“The last time I bought a bottle, it was three. If it’s double, I don’t want it. How many pegs do you usually have? Two?”
“Six.”
“Oh, you can down six pegs?’
“I can, once a week.”
“I’d like to join you sometime.”
“Be my guest, Ranga.”
After an hour, we parted ways. I cursed myself, “You hopeless fucker! You son of a bitch!”
I was cornered by Ranga again on another day when Santhanam was a no-show. As usual, it was he who began the talking.
“I need to tell you something, but you need to promise to keep it to yourself and not tell Santhanam.”
“Alright.”
“Last month, my boss and I went on a ‘business trip’ to Bangkok. He arranged a real dish for the pair of us. Twelve thousand a night. He asked me to go first, but the moment she touched me, everything was over, the way a gun goes off when you touch it. And like that wasn’t mortifying enough, she went out and told my boss about what happened and he ticked me off for wasting his money. I was so ashamed that I could have put a bullet through my brain. Do you know of a remedy? I’ve sired two kids, but sex… the mere thought of it sets my mind and body on fire. I have a feeling you can help me out here, but again, don’t tell Santhanam.”
“I know of an effective pill.”
“Is it Viagra? They say Viagra’s risky.”
“Viagra is risky and not easy to come by, but there is Caverta. Twenty-five milligrams will solve your penile problems.”
“And it’s not risky?”
“If it was, you think a drug store would shelve it?”
“Have you tried it?”
“No, I eat haritaki daily. I don’t need Caverta.”