Marginal Man

by Charu Nivedita

  His name kept popping up in my mind the whole time. I couldn’t read or write. I realized that madness is not limited to the “common man” and the reader. Even the writer is susceptible to it.

  A group of writers was having a discussion, and I felt like an alien among them. They were all talking with deep sentimentality and with sighs of nostalgia about their respective hometowns, going on and on like a song in a Bharathi Raja movie, not inclined to stop. The places they were waxing on about so eloquently were – in simple, unexaggerated, “common man” terms – total shitholes. If, by some stroke of misfortune, you find yourself waiting at a bus stop in any one of the towns these mouthy men were so reverentially praising, the stench of urine would make you wish you’d been born without a nose.

  A writer described Mayiladuthurai as a glorious place, and another spoke glowingly of Tirunelveli, romanticizing the stink of piss and the sight of shit, the potholed, rubbish-flanked roads and the open gutters. All this seemed wonderful to the writers just because they had been born in those places.

  Dear God!

  Anjali was standing at the window. She was on the phone, talking to her husband, Suresh. No, wait, scratch that. She wasn’t exactly talking to him. All she did was respond with a “hmm” from time to time or she would respond with one of the following:

  “Yes, go on. I’m listening…”

  “No, no. It’s nothing like that…”

  “You were saying?”

  “When are you returning?”

  “Sorry, come again?”

  I was standing behind her as she was talking to him in this fashion. I brushed her hair back with my fingers and nibbled her earlobe. Foreplay with this woman when she was talking to her husband aroused me, so you can imagine what making love with her did to me. I lifted her up and lay her on the bed. I stripped her and kissed her naked body.

  Her “hmm” sounded different now, alive. She bit her lips, closed her eyes and arched her back, stifling her moans of pleasure so as to not arouse her husband’s suspicion.

  I could hear him clearly.

  I licked her opening and she became wet. That was when I heard Suresh ask, “Didn’t you say that the walls have become damp and are leaking? Did you complain to the municipality?”

  “Hmm…”

  As I slid my “pipe” into her crevice, Suresh asked, “Did the plumber come?”

  It amused me to hear his questions, the poor man. It was almost like he half-knew that someone was fucking his wife in their marital bed.

  I began to move inside her. She tried as hard as she could to control the moaning, not wanting to make any noises that would give her away, but when she climaxed, she gasped.

  “You sound strange,” Suresh said.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” she lied, “just a stomachache.”

  The phone conversation finished when I did.

  Frenziedly, she jumped on me, growling, “You rascal!”

  And the feral cat began to wildly bite my neck.

  2 – Some Spiritual Business

  Nathan told me, “The guru’s satsang is going to be held in Chennai. You must make it a point to attend. It’s a rare opportunity.”

  The “guru” my old friend Nathan was talking about was a fellow called Kushaldas. I disliked the man not only because of his half-baked discourses but also because of his habit of making renunciates out of young women. How could a girl in her twenties renounce her sexual nature? Even if she found it possible, was it healthy? I had my doubts.

  It so happened that a twenty-five-year-old woman – a friend of a friend – got obsessed with Kushaldas and entered his ashram to become a monk. There, they chopped off her long hair and made her wear saffron robes. But what irked me most of all was the manner in which Kushaldas paraded about in clothes that made him look more like a pop musician than like a spiritual teacher. I wondered why such an extravagant person who owned more clothes than the entire population of Mylapore forced young girls to wear plain saffron robes.

  The twenty-five-year-old girl I told you about was the only child of her parents. Before she entered the ashram, she was working in a software company and earning a fantastic salary. Her parents lamented that they were like orphans after their child left, but Kushaldas’ company – yes, company – will insist that they do not let people join without first obtaining permission from their families. This girl threatened to commit suicide and her parents were forced to give their consent.

  Whenever I looked at Nathan, my curiosity about Kushaldas was stirred. Everyone considered Nathan to be a lost soul. Before he met Kushaldas he was forever in the drunk tank, but ever since he met him, he didn’t drink even a single drop. Now, he is well settled with a good job, a good wife and a child. He often goes to the mountains, practices meditation, and leads a peaceful life in general.

  “According to our guru, you must be a little mad to fully experience life,” Nathan told me. “Kazantzakis’ Zorba told Basil the same thing. He told him he had everything but he lacked one thing. When Basil asked him what that one thing was, Zorba told him that he lacked madness. Guru says, ‘Don’t think about life, just live it,’ just as Zorba tells Basil that he should try living life instead of writing about it.”

  Nathan admitted that Kushaldas and Kazantzakis had like minds, but in his opinion, Kushaldas was better than Kazantzakis.

  “Guru is an expert,” Nathan continued. “He knows what he’s doing. He teaches meditation, but he first teaches us why and how it is used as a tool to discover the truths of the universe. You casually told me once, Udhaya, that when you close your outer eyes, your inner eye opens. If you wish to have a truly spiritual experience, you need to meet my guru.”

  It is my opinion that all these “gurus,” are just Osho’s dummies – and Kushal is by far the worst of the lot. I couldn’t bear to think of how he was poisoning the minds of youngsters.

  Kushaldas spoke like a religious fundamentalist.

  “You people are in love with America,” he once said during a speech. “Do you know that 45% of the American population is on drugs for mental illness?”

  In all my life, I’ve never heard such bullshit.

  India in its present state can be compared to Europe in the Dark Ages. The kind of economic disparity and injustice seen in India cannot be seen anywhere else. Politicians siphon millions and claim that they are below the poverty line while in Chhattisgarh, people are dying like flies. Smut masquerades as film. At voting booths, actors and actresses throw tantrums because they have to stand in queue. The kith and kin of politicians enter the film industry and get paid astronomical sums. The poor and the non-influential have to lick the feet and kiss the asses of the rich and the influential if they want their children to be admitted in schools that discriminate on the basis of looks, caste and wealth. Not a day goes by that a rape does not happen in every Indian state. And we poke fun at America!

  What the so-called expertise Kushaldas claims to have is something I’ve had ever since I was twenty. There is a yoga exercise called nauli which I mastered at the age of twenty. It is one of the reasons why I’m able to live like a happy-go-lucky youth at the age of sixty. There is yet another exercise called uttiyana that will help make nauli easier.

  Here’s what you have to do: keep your legs wide apart and bend forward keeping your hands pressed to your thighs. Exhale slowly and pull your stomach inside and tighten your gastric muscles which have relaxed.

  When you tighten the stomach muscles, the two lateral portions of the stomach will become concave and the middle portion will stand firm like a log. Stand in this position for a few seconds, then relax the muscles and inhale. You can do this twice or thrice. Press your hands firmly on both thighs and move your bowels to the left and right.

  Uttiyana and nauli help regulate bowel movements and the flow of semen. It deworms the stomach, increases your appetite and redu
ces acid formation. It also relieves one of ulcers and stomachaches.

  If I decide to become a yogi this very moment – an English-speaking yogi, not a Tamil-speaking one – I will become as famous as Osho in three years. Growing a beard like his might be a problem, but oh well, I don’t think J. Krishnamurthy had a beard either.

  I haven’t read Osho’s books or heard his speeches, but those who follow him are often surprised by the parallels between my writings and Osho’s teachings. I don’t read Osho because I don’t want people saying I’m influenced by him and that I’m his shadow. Osho and I are shadows of the Buddha who was himself a shadow of those who came before him.

  Kokkarakko likes Osho. Once, when I was browsing through his collection of books, I came across a book by Osho called Books I Have Loved. In that book, Osho had listed all of his personal favorites, and one of them happened to be Zorba the Greek.

  In Tamil Nadu, only characters like Kushaldas can become spiritual leaders. Now you might come and ask me why I didn’t go ahead and become one myself. I’ll tell you why. The answer is simple: I am not interested in spirituality. Also, I don t like human beings. How can a hater of human beings conduct discourses surrounded by millions of people?

  If I decide to live like Osho, my name will become a brand after I die, won’t it? How can I allow myself to become a brand and a company when all of my writings are against business and authority? Besides, spirituality has become a third-rate business – another reason why I want to have nothing to do with it.

  When I saw Kushaldas’ disciples, I felt that even politicians’ aides were better off. Kushal’s followers are more like slaves. What kind of spirituality is it that creates slaves out of human beings? I think it’s better to be a crazed fan of an actor than to be a slave of Kushaldas.

  Kushaldas has a slave-making strategy which actors don’t have. And he tells people to “be happy.” How the hell can a slave be happy? Kushaldas can be happy because he is a dictator who enjoys his position.

  In India, a woman cannot venture out after dark because there is a 99 per cent chance of her getting raped – gang-raped. Here, the people are content to live like gutter rats while their rulers live like kings. Can you call such a pigsty a spiritual land? Travel in one of those trains that transport people to the suburbs of Mumbai and you will see what this country actually is. At least a body could be found on the Mumbai railway tracks every day. Women cannot travel alone in trains as they get raped and thrown onto the tracks. Our corporate gurus compare such a country to America and declaim against the latter, calling it corrupt, evil and rotten. A huge number of people in India are living like animals, but are told by the corporate gurus that they have better lives and lifestyles than Americans.

  I paid five thousand rupees to take part in a program conducted by Kushaldas on the premises of a Chennai college. As I was a writer, I was given a front row seat that cost eight thousand. On the first day, the crowd assembled at six-thirty in the evening to listen to Kushaldas who would be speaking in an hour. He prattled on till nine-thirty and all I learned from him was nothing. He kept harping on middle school ethics class clichés like “Be good human beings,” “Plant trees” and “Be happy.”

  Sixteen thousand people attended the program. The price of registration ranged from 1.5K to 8K. If we assume that the average cost of registration is 3K, then Kushaldas and Co. would have made fifty million. Fifty million in three days! Now you see what a huge business spirituality is. Is there any other business in India that rakes in such huge profits?

  But this is not what I meant to tell you. His sermon, which began at 7:30 the next morning, was also an inane affair. There was no yoga – only shallow talk – and when we were given a twenty-minute restroom break after two hours, I thought of slipping away. Screw the five thousand rupees. I couldn’t endure another minute of Kushaldas’ torture. When I tried to escape, the guru’s people who were standing guard at the gates refused to let me leave the place. What right did they have to confine me against my will? I tried reasoning – even pleading – with them to let me go but to no avail.

  “If you leave, others will follow suit,” one of the fellows said.

  “So let them!” I said. “Why do you want to stop people who want to leave from leaving?”

  Very gently and politely, they refused to let me go.

  I lost my patience. In all my life, no one had ever dared to confine me or restrict my movements. I pushed them aside and moved towards the gate but they pulled me back. After a good struggle, I managed to get out of there. After all that pushing and pulling, my shirt was drenched with sweat. Wrestling with those six fellows built like bouncers made my chest hurt as I’d undergone bypass surgery a few years ago. My pulse rate skyrocketed and it took an hour to return to normal.

  How can such cruelty be allowed by those who preach love and spirituality? What happened to me also happened to another woman I knew. Kushaldas failed to impress her too, so she tried to leave at eight in the evening but was forbidden. She told those bouncer dudes she wasn’t feeling well but they didn’t care a hang. She told me that she’d argued with them for an hour and a half.

  On the first day of the program, you should have seen the pushing, shoving and jostling to get out of the place through one small gate. There were sixteen thousand people, it was nine-thirty at night, and the place was poorly lit. A woman caught in that madding crowd started screaming in agony. If one person had to stumble, there would have been a disaster. I’ll never understand how the government allowed such a huge crowd to congregate in such a small place.

  Above all, isn’t it illegal to hold a person against his will and forbid him from leaving a place? My departure wouldn’t have affected whatever Kushaldas had going on in any manner. For holding me back against my will, Kushaldas’ bouncers should have been booked under Section 342 of the Indian Penal Code and made to spend a year in prison. They also caused me physical hurt when they were wrestling with me. What if I succumbed to the pain in my chest?

  The manner in which the bouncers were marshaling that horde of sixteen thousand was just obscene. What Chennai witnessed upon the release of Enthiran was nothing compared to the wild manner in which Kushaldas’ program was being advertised in the streets. Posters of him defaced all the walls, and his adorers conducted campaigns wherever they could find a crowd. They would start somersaulting like circus performers while young and attractive ladies handed out leaflets. They succeeded in convincing the public that not attending the program would be a tremendous loss. They must have spent at least twenty million on newspaper and magazine advertisements alone. But they weren’t losing anything. They would have mopped up fifty million at the end of the program thanks to all the gullible attendees.

  Chapter Three

  The Story of Pakkirisamy

  My name is Pakkirisamy. Some months ago my name was splashed across the front page of all the national dailies and I was even something of a celebrity on local and national television. It was an act of mine that led to this fame – or notoriety – call it what you will. No, I didn’t win an Olympic medal, nor did I bomb the Parliament House. I just took my own life. Many people commit suicide but their names don’t make it to the front page. So why me? Well, I was a minister’s close aide, and that minister was mired in one of the biggest ever corruption scandals that shook the country.

  But I didn’t commit suicide to save the minister’s life. I did it to save the lives of two people I loved – my wife and my five-year-old daughter. If I hadn’t killed myself, they would have both been murdered. The newspapers described my death as a homicide, but that’s not what it was. It was definitely a suicide, but come to think of it, instigating someone to commit suicide is akin to murder. Much worse than murder, in fact.

  At one time I used to be a real estate agent whose job was to find tenants for vacant houses. Twenty or thirty years ago, a one-ground plot cost thirty thousand Indian
rupees. Today it costs ten million. As house rents rose to stratospheric heights, the commission I made on my deals rose in proportion and the money I made was more than enough for my needs. The house owner and the tenant each had to pay me a month’s rent. If the house rent was pegged at fifteen grand, I would earn a commission of thirty grand, and if I sold a house or a plot, the owner would pay me two per cent, and the buyer one per cent. Thus, if I sold a client’s house for ten million, I would get three hundred thousand rupees. But if the owner was a gullible sort, I would adopt other tactics. I would negotiate a rate of thirty million for a house that was actually worth sixty. With an advance payment of five million, I would transfer the power of attorney to my name, and after six months, I would sell the house for sixty million, then hand over twenty-five million to the owner.

  Life was coasting along smoothly till the day I was asked to suggest a “good bit of property” for a minister who hailed from my area. The mere mention of a minister’s name made the owner agree to sell without a murmur. Two grounds constituted the land which belonged to an old Brahmin. The minister was delighted when I managed to negotiate a price of ten million for a property worth one hundred million. Truth be told, any one of his underlings could have rendered him the same service, but a man who extracts honey from a hive will no doubt lick his fingers. He would have made a commission on the bargain and his boss would have ignored it. But my style was different. I didn’t like to make my commission in an underhand manner because my eyes were fixed on the bigger prize. And in the course of time, things worked out the way I wanted them to.

  A house built during the British era and located in the heart of Chennai came to my notice. It was a house where three generations had lived at one point, but now, the sole occupant was an elderly lady. A background check revealed that she was the third wife (read “mistress”) of her husband. The other two wives had died, and between the three of them, they had produced more than twenty offspring. Though only the old woman remained in the house, all the children had rights over the property. What worked in my favor was that there was no proper will or legal claimant to the property which consisted of six grounds. It was a property under litigation and worth two hundred million at least.