“How so?”
“That’s something you can find out only when you meet her in person.”
I was drooling. I spoke to her on the phone a couple of times after that and she told me stories that no other woman had ever told me. Hardcore porn films would pale in comparison with some of her stories of her sexual revelries. Every word out of her mouth felt real.
She would wake up my little man by telling me how she loved to give blowjobs, and describing a few she’d given.
One day she said, “My partner once asked me for a blowjob but I couldn’t give him one.”
“Why not?”
She told me the story of how she was riding a bullet bike. It was her first time at the handlebars and she was piss drunk to boot. Of course, she crashed the bike and lost four teeth. She had no option but to get dentures. Due to gingivitis, that day, she didn’t wear her false teeth which was why she was unable to give her partner a blowjob.
All this seemed even better than sexual fantasy but I lost interest in her after a while. I’d never been interested in pen-friends and phone-friends one bit. To me, anything meaningless and purposeless is a waste of time. Besides, my writer’s profession does not allow me to waste time on insignificant people and inconsequential things. Truly I tell you: writing excited me more than sex.
Most Tamil writers are only concerned with composition and the process of writing, giving a damn if their writings don’t reach far and wide. I greatly admire a poet called Dharmu Sivaramu. Around one-hundred people in Tamil Nadu might be aware of this man’s existence. Those one-hundred people are diehard lovers of literature who can only be compared with religious extremists for they don’t care about anything if it isn’t literature and it doesn’t matter to them in the slightest if people read their works or spit on them, or if they understand them or give themselves a headache trying to make sense of them. They frown upon societal recognition and royalty from the public and the publishers. But unlike them, I don’t want to die unknown and unsung.
Every assistant film director in Kodambakkam has but one dream – to make it big as a director, no playing second fiddle. If you direct a blockbuster, you will become more famous than Mahatma Gandhi. You can make an address at the UN; you can turn into an overnight expert on counter-terrorism, the moral hollowness of capitalism, sub-Saharan poverty, and social anthropology; you can claim to be able to root out corruption in a day; you can thunder in front of enraptured TV audiences that you would bring peace to the Sri Lankan Tamils and frogmarch the fascist Mahinda Rajapakse naked across the length of Mount Road; you can even launch a political party. All it takes is a hit Tamil movie. Such things happen only in Tamil Nadu.
Mala had been forgotten not very long after. Some days later, Balu and Kittappa went to Masinagudi with a woman called Nisha and I tagged along. There, I was shocked to find Nisha talking on Balu’s phone in Mala’s tone. I realized then that the three of them were a team. I gathered this was a prank they’d been playing for years. Only now, the intended targets happened to be the new friends they made.
It all begins with honeyed whispers. “Ma puce, mon chouchou, ma chérie…” There is nothing like the tenderness of her voice when she says these words to me. In sexual congress, we move like serpents in a mating ritual. It goes on and on, an endless dance. I cover her with kisses from head to toe, smother her in them. I move inside her, unleashing waves of desire. She moans and screams in pleasure and pain. Perched on the edge of emotion, she would keep uttering the words Oh God endlessly as we rode together into an oblivion that we craved more than life.
oghad oghadoghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad oghad
We writhe in ecstasy. As the pace quickens, she screams, “Fuck me deep, deeper! Tear my pussy!”
“’The pipe is sweet; the lute is sweet!’ say those who have not heard the prattle of their own children,” says Thiruvalluvar. But to me, the sweetest words I’ll ever hear are the ones that issue from her lips when she says, “I’m coming! I’m coming!”
There is more, much more, but if I put it on paper, Tamil culture will be imperiled. It’s not that I fear opprobrium. In other countries, transgressive writers are usually thrown into prison or exiled by the government while the wider society stands for them. But in Tamil Nadu, the public would brand the writer a pedophile. Probably with hate-slogans, angry protests and public book-burning, they’d press the government to toss him in prison. The media, which calls the shots, will accuse, try, convict and sentence you. The writer will be remembered for all eternity for being a crazed sex-maniac who sexually tortured an eighteen-year-old girl who tried to say hello to him.
The girl gives her statement to the media. “I said hello to the writer on Facebook. His immediate reply was, ‘Will you sleep with me?’ I got scared. When I said hello to him the next day, he said, ‘Will you let me fuck you?’ I was speechless. I’ve said hello to him ninety times and each time he asked me whether I would consent to sex with him.”
“Such things are not new to Udhaya, the psycho writer,” says the media. “Our findings tell us that this beast of a man has harassed not one but ninety women. When we contacted him for his statement, he brusquely said, ‘I don’t have time for chatter.’ Thirty of his ninety victims are now undergoing rehabilitation. Should this beast be allowed to live among men?”
This came from the Tamil front. And what about the English media?
‘Tamil writer embroiled in sex scandal,’ screamed the headline. They concluded with: ‘We contacted the writer. All he had to say was, ‘I trust in God and my wife trusts me.’
The bombshell followed later.
‘The city police commissioner, on enquiry, informed us that no complaint had been registered against the writer, nothing to get him chucked into prison on a trumped-up charge for fifteen years.’
How’s that!!!
Have you watched Tom Twyker’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer? In it, Grenouille, who has murdered many women, is taken to the gallows. The entire community bays for his blood. It is a striking illustration of the kind of violence that lies dormant within the collective unconscious of the society – a constant urge to kill someone or something. This kind of mindless violence is often seen in India where there are glaring economic disparities and gruesome inner conflicts.
Under such circumstances, how could I possibly include Anjali’s love rants in this novel?
I couldn’t.
2 – Couscous
I’ve been craving a Maghrebi dish for quite some time.
“How about preparing some couscous?” I asked Anjali who promptly consulted her cookbooks, flipping through them until she found the recipe.
COUSCOUS
Ingredients:
1 tbsp butter
1 cup onions, coa
rsely chopped
2 capsicums, coarsely chopped
4 garlic cloves
1 ½ cups water
1 cup couscous, cooked in extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
Black pepper, freshly ground
Directions:
Melt the butter in a saucepan and sauté the onions, capsicums and garlic for 5 minutes. Add water and bring to a boil.
Add the couscous, cover the pan, and remove it from the stove.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
As the couscous was cooking, we were dancing to Lara Fabian’s Je t’aime, Anjali’s hand in my hand, her head on my shoulder.
We were so lost in the moment that we’d forgotten about our couscous that had burnt.
Anjali called me out for my inattention to detail later that day when she spied my written record of the dance.
“What have you written, Udhaya? You always get the finer details wrong. When we were dancing, both your hands were around my waist and both of mine were on your shoulders. I was singing the song into your ear and you were repeatedly moaning the title into mine. Remember now?”
I wrote my first French poem that day.
Notre amour est rempli
de bises,
de gouttes de larmes,
de douleur,
d’extase,
de colère,
de conversations douces.
Nous ferons l’amour
durant la journée,
durant la nuit,
sous le soleil,
sous la lune.
Je coupe ton souffle
quand j’entre ton caverne
comme un serpent affamé.
Tes jus jaillissent,
goûtant comme le lait de coco.
Je pense à vous
tout le temps.
Je t’aime,
je t’aime.
Oh, comme je t’aime !
“Has there ever been another who has spoken of love so movingly?” I asked Anjali.
“We’ll know once you’ve read what I’ve written you.”
Je n’ai jamais goûté l’amour jusqu’à ce que
je l’aie goûté avec toi.
Je n’ai jamais rêvé d’amour jusqu’à ce que
j’en aie rêvé avec toi.
Nos souffles sont les mots,
nos mouvements sont la poésie.
Peut-être c’est folie,
Peut-être non.
Ton amour me calme,
ton amour m’agite.
T’es le premier homme
et le dernier homme
qui j’aimerai.
Mon cœur a trouvé, enfin,
un autre cœur à aimer.
Quand je ferme les yeux,
je vois ton visage,
j’écoute ta voix,
je sens ton corps.
Dearest,
I called you in the morning as my schedule and my situation have conspired against me, leaving me with no time or room to breathe for the rest of the day. I just wanted to let you know that you fill my every thought. I am so truly, madly and deeply in love with you, but words are poor conveyors of my love. I want to scream your name in ecstasy; I want to be under the sheets with you – me beside you, you inside me. I am aching for your warmth, for your electrifying touch.
Before you came things were just what they were:
the road precisely a road, the horizon fixed,
the limit of what could be seen,
a glass of wine no more than a glass of wine.
With you the world took on the spectrum
Radiating from your heart: your eyes gold
As they open to me, slate the color
That falls each time I lose all hope.
With your advent roses burst into flame:
you were the artist of dried-up leaves, sorceress
who flicked her wrist to change dust into soot.
You lacquered the night black.
- Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Yours always,
Anjali
I crave the warmth of you, the sight of you.
I felt your hands on my shoulders, pushing me down,
I felt hot tears spill from my eyes,
but the pain soon metamorphosed into pleasure.
There was solace in your presence,
warmth in your touch.
You know that it’s unlike me to break into verse like people spontaneously break into song in the movies. I am more comfortable with writing than with speaking although I am no grand poet. My heart just opens wider when I write.
Dispel all your fears, let your guard down.
All you ever have to be with me is yourself.
You came into my world with the force of a wind.
You are my mother,
my child,
my saint,
my slut,
my everything.
Give me what you will –
poison or nectar –
and I will take it.
I fuck myself, daydreaming of you in my bed,
and I fuck you, like a dog fucks a bitch, in yours.
I doubt anyone’s sex-life is as interesting as mine at this age, Anjali. I am celebrating the best moments of my life. That’s probably why they throw slippers, tomatoes and eggs at me.
This thing we share –
it is not love alone,
but bliss,
enlightenment.
Pourquoi suis-je heureuse quand le téléphone indique ton nom ?
Pourquoi mon cœur sursaute lorsqu’il entend ta voix ?
Pourquoi ta chaleur amène une telle extase qui était inconnue pour moi ?
Pourquoi suis-je en larmes quand je pense à toi ?
Pourquoi tu n’es pas là, mon cher, pour répondre à tous mes « pourquoi » ?
Chapter Six
1 – Wholly Screwed by a Holy Screwball
My mailbox is rarely a recipient of publishers’ cheques. It’s just a receptacle for phone bills, electricity bills, water bills, the faithful correspondence of my haters, and not to mention the occasional legal notice. I felt the need for a spiritual anchor to deal with this scale of derision. Even though I identified as an atheist, I loved having engaging conversations with monks and mystics. And when I became a believer, my curiosity about these men of faith had turned into reverence.
Jymka Saamiyar claimed to be an avatar of God. My friends questioned my sanity when they saw that I believed him. I do not fault them for this, for I am a gullible man.
It wasn’t too long before the film on my eyes got peeled off. Jymka was no god; he was a crooked godman. I was decided on this even before a video of an actress giving him head surfaced. It all started when I noticed him trying to filch my wife. He wanted her to join his ashram and renounce the world. Perundevi was easy prey – the ascetic life had appealed to her since her childhood. She was only a few days shy of joining Jymka’s fold when the sex scandal popped up. It was not the holy man’s sex-life that concerned me. I was livid that Perundevi had swayed under his influence, nearly leaving me behind to disappear into the woods with that serpent. To exact revenge, I wrote a series of critical pieces on Jymka for a leading magazine.
Jymka was no ordinary adversary. He ran a spiritual empire worth several million dollars. And here, I was up against money, muscle and political might. My articles provoked a barrage of legal notices from him and the actress who – shall we euphemize? – was filmed worshipping his Holy Tool. All that said, I was being sued for 100 million for defamation. One legal notice I received ran into almost a thousand pages. I needed a battery of legal eagles just to keep track of the number of such notices. Jymka wanted a public apology. I thought a “fuck off” would suffice.
His sexual shenanigans would
not have provoked me in the slightest had he not tried to lure my wife from me. I feel like branding myself in the forehead for respecting – hell, even worshipping – this culprit, believing he was “enlightened.”
It was a fine morning when I received a legal summons from the Hyderabad High Court. If I didn’t answer it, I would have to cough up 100 million and face criminal charges. I boarded a bus.
In the good times, I’d visit Hyderabad to pub-crawl on Banjara Hills with Kannan. This trip was painful. Bus journeys are tedious especially when an adult male has yet to master the art of bladder control. SPN, the coach firm I had opted to travel with, operated a vast fleet of Volvo buses. They are, by and large, relatively more comfortable than regular buses. And only last week, an SPN on the same route with thirty-odd passengers skidded off the road and crashed. I hopped onto this one with praying lips.
The bus set off an hour behind schedule. To make up for lost time, the driver drove like he was on trial for a Formula 1 team. Two hours into the brain-rattling journey, he lost control and rammed into a tree. It was a miracle that all of us escaped unhurt. The driver’s diagnosis was that his drop in speed from 100 kmph was what led to the accident. A fellow passenger sallied that if that was indeed the case, we’d be having this conversation in heaven or in hell.
Kannan accompanied me to the High Court complex in Madina Circle. This was only my second visit to a court of law. My maiden visit was when I was getting divorced from Nalini.
In the case filed by Jymka, I was the first accused, the magazine editor was the second and the publisher the third. The second and the third accused were no-shows. The editor, who was my friend, told me he would appear the next hearing and had arranged a lawyer for me. The man to whom my defense had been entrusted was vertically challenged, spoke a Telugu-Tamil-English pidgin, and had the manner of a property agent. He seemed keener to part me from my money than to secure my liberty. I was told that I would have to produce proof that I owned property in Hyderabad to post my bail bond. Kannan immediately volunteered to hand over his property documents to me without even consulting his wife. This gesture of his astonished me. My lawyer snatched the three thousand I had on me. A little later, we were told that the judge was on leave. The lawyers swarmed around a clerk who was sitting in the judge’s chambers to fix another date for the hearing. At that moment, a sightly woman in a black sheath dress entered the room. She looked around for a few seconds until she found who she was looking for. She came up to me and said, “You must be Udhaya.” When I responded in the affirmative, she introduced herself as the godman’s lawyer and went over to the clerk along with my lawyer. The clerk fixed a date for the hearing but altered it when she raised an objection. The hearing was adjourned for two months. Even though this didn’t resolve anything, it still gave me time to cool my brains.
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