The Manju-Kokkarakko love affair eventually ripened to the point that Manju was ready to dump her boyfriend. She had fallen for Kokkarakko, and she had fallen hard. She started pestering him to marry her. That, according to Kokkarakko, was one of the reasons why he was evading sex with her.
One day, Kokkarakko showed me a text message from Manju. It read: “Poda MP!” So Manju had graduated to overt smut-speak. She was calling her lover mutta pundai - a stupid cunt. I was gobsmacked.
“You’ve turned me into a dirty little bitch,” she told him. “I surprised myself when I mouthed and typed the word ‘MP.’”
“Hah, but you’ve only used the word in abbreviation and that too in a text message. Let’s hear you say it out loud,” Kokkarakko teased. Manju couldn’t say it.
“Us men worship pundai and never pass up the opportunity to use the word every chance we get,” Kokkarakko informed her. “Pundai, for us, conveys every human emotion.”
A person who talks meaninglessly is a pechchu pundai (a blabbering cunt). Is someone staring at us? Vedikkai pundaya, poda...(watching us, cunt, get lost). A fellow who shows attitude is a kozhuppu pundai(arrogant cunt). Someone from a bank calls and tells you to take a loan, you say, ‘oru thevai pundaiyum illa, un velai pundaiya parthuttu podi ‘(don’t bother cunt, mind your own business). And if some other bank fellow calls up to remind you about late payments, enakku vantha koduma pundaiya paaru...(what a fucking cunt I’m). Someone goes on talking about America’s greatness, periya athisaya pundai (What cunt greatness?)
Once I was supposed to meet Udhaya at six p.m. but when I reached the appointed place, it was eight. He asked me angrily, ‘Is this six p.m.?’ ‘Bloody time pundai... poda... you are enjoying yourself here... but I had to make my way here in Madras traffic... Take that brandy pundai, let’s drink,’ I said. Kumar and Sekar were also supposed to join us that day but they didn’t turn up. Then I said, ‘That Kumar pundai and Sekar pundai didn’t come...’ Like this, we use the word pundai to refer to people too. The word is used to express class distinctions as well, like,’he is a bloody rich pundai ‘. If the communists had used this technique, they wouldn’t have failed internationally. We even refer to literature as ilakkiya pundai (literature cunt). There is a noble Tamil writer who thinks it is a sin to drink and lust after other men’s wives. So I call him ‘virtuous pundai’.
One of Udhaya’s readers wrote something he called a novel, made a present of it to Udhaya and asked him to write the foreword. He frankly told him, “You’ve written a novel pundai. Take your pundai rag and get out of my sight, mutta pundai.” There are some who reckon that “novel pundai” is the highest pundai-expression.
When we worship pundai, why are the very creatures with pundai so ashamed of that word? God shouldn’t have given all you females genitals if the whole lot of you are so repelled by the sound of pundai.
“Alright Kokkarakko. I’m so sorry to have to push you out of the spotlight for few minutes. I’m just curious. When this novel is translated into English, how will the translator translate pundai? Will she leave pundai as it is? Will that be alright?”
Kokkarakko said, “Oh Udhaya! What a justice-seeking pundai you are! Retain pundai so that the English-speaking pundais will have a chance to enrich their vocabulary.What is the pundai problem in it?”
When a woman falls in love, she gives in to her lover’s wishes and changes in so many ways, but her lover doesn’t change at all. He just pretends to. Kokkarakko later said that women don’t affect men the way men affect women.
Andrea was twenty-nine years of age. She was as fair as day and her face reddened at the slightest touch. Upper middle class. Married with a five-year-old child. Her husband, another Suresh, approaches her only once in three months. He has no energy to pump or thrust as he works all day and returns home at midnight. When there’s a holiday, he and his laptop are inseparable.
“He might as well be married to his laptop,” she told Kokkarakko. “Are all these IT guys the same? I don’t even remember the last time he touched me.”
“Have you screwed her, Kokkarakko?”
“Well, it’s complicated because, you see, she feels she’s doing something wrong. She says that her obsession with me is hindering her from focusing on her daughter. She wants to go see a shrink. I told her I’d counsel her myself.”
Once, Kokkarakko and I were sharing a room when we’d gone on a trip. I overheard his phone conversation with Andrea. It surprised me to hear him talk to her the same way I talked to Anjali.
Kokkarakko: Can I kiss your cunt?
Andrea: [moans]
Kokkarakko: Lift it.
Andrea: Oh, come on! I can’t do that. Stop it!
Kokkarakko: Why? Is your cunt temporarily unavailable? How can I kiss it unless you lift it?
The dialogue continued in this vein for a good thirty minutes. Since Kokkarakko had a cheap Chinese phone, I could hear both sides of the conversation loud and clear.
“At last!” he sighed after the call was over. Then he said, “Udhaya, how do you manage to talk to Anjali with such intense passion? When she doesn’t call you, you call her. I simply can’t fathom how you do it. The biggest problem with women is that they expect you to keep making small talk with them for hours. I’ve never known any woman to be an exception to that.”
Abinaya, twenty-seven, fiery rebel and activist infused with all the traits of a revolutionary, non-believer in marriage, does not consider sex a taboo act or subject, takes off all of a sudden to carry out extensive research on adivasis and write newspaper articles about them, travels all the way to Delhi to protest against the government, rides pillion with Kokkarakko on his motorbike, aware that Kokkarakko has multiple girlfriends, doesn’t give a shit.
Ranjani, twenty-four, software engineer with film-star looks. Love has freshly blossomed between her and Kokkarakko and it is very interesting to think of how it came about. They used to chat and slowly got around to meeting for coffee, and then one day, she called him in a very agitated state, saying that an auto driver had squeezed her butt as she was walking down the road. She has noted the number of his vehicle and wanted him punished.
It is common knowledge that the public hates and fears cops more than it hates and fears thieves. If you lodge a complaint with the police, they will harass you and call you at brothel hours and you will never go to them again – ever! However, Kokkarakko thinks that the problem lies with the public who don’t know how to approach these exemplary law-upholding men who have a tiresome eighteen-hour workday.
Kokkarakko instructed her in talking to the cops. The most important thing, he said, was to use a decent mix of both Tamil and English. On entering the station, she was to wish the cops respectfully (this would create a good first impression as no one bothered to do this) and say that someone – anyone, even her wastrel uncle – had sent her (the cops always approved of women who were sent by someone). Then, she was to say, “I need your help, sir, but you look busy. You must have a tight schedule. I can come tomorrow.” This, according to Kokkarakko, was all it took to become the honeybunch in the police station.
After one visit from Ranjani, the auto-driver was cooling his heels in prison and she was more in love with Kokkarakko than she had ever been. This sounds very much like the plot of every Tamil movie. But Kokkarakko added, “The poor girl doesn’t know that within a month, I’ll squeeze her butt harder than the auto-driver did.”
When I told Anjali all about Kokkarakko’s love-life, she said, “Why does he want to stop at just four when he can have a whole harem of forty? He is such a desirable, appealing man. It’s no wonder women are queuing up for him. Tell him he has my blessings.”
“Sure, and I’ll just look at his harem and sigh.”
“I swear I’ll fucking kill you! Come straight to Paris or move here for good!”
“Oh darling! This is what I love most about you – how f
ucking possessive you are of me.”
(I first drafted this novel in 2011. I am rewriting it now, three years later. It looks like Anjali’s blessings are really working. Kokkarakko now has fifteen lovers and fifteen girlfriends!)
A little more than a decade separates the present from the events I am about to narrate.
I speak of a time when my friends Gopalakrishnan, Krishna and I made monthly jaunts to Salem where Krishna had a farmhouse.
Now, in order for you to appreciate what is to follow, I must acquaint you with Gopalakrishnan, the friend who reminds me of Kokkarakko. He was the kind of man who did not necessarily fall short in terms of physical desirability. He was well-proportioned, standing tall at six feet, and was the possessor of a smile that hardly ever ceased to be. He was a holder of government office by profession and a hockey player by passion – fortes that caused his desirability to take on new dimensions.
He was slow to anger – in fact, if my memory serves me right, I do not recall the man ever being angry. However, flaws are just. They spare no one. Gopalakrishnan comes from the mold of a Jane Austen character – a much-hated one, the autocratic Lady Catherine de Bourgh. And where there is a high-and-mighty De Bourgh, there ought to be a servile Mr. Collins, and what a perfect Mr. Collins Gopalakrishnan found in Krishna!
Friends contented themselves with frowning upon the master-slave dialect, while one of Krishna’s girlfriends contented herself with a verbal lashing: “Those two, so questionably attached at the hip! Has Gopalakrishnan twisted a nerve in Krishna’s brain or made jelly of the whole thing? Whenever I try to make an arrangement with Krishna, he is engaged with Gopalakrishnan. Urgent affairs, he tells me.”
Verbal lashings, however, struck Gopalakrishnan with the force of a domestic cat’s tail.
It was during one of our customary morning walks on the Marina Beach that I tried to diplomatically cut him to size. In the end, I had earned writers a low blow delivered in the guise of a joke. Not quite what I was hoping to achieve.
I will be leaving you with only a half-portrait of Gopalakrishnan if I do not address his libertine lifestyle.
His preferences in terms of women were quite peculiar – they were mostly prostitutes whom he euphemized as “lovers.” He nosedived into numerous risqué relationships, but deftly sidestepped commitment in all its forms.
One day, I ventured to ask, “Say, how many ‘girlfriends’ do you have?”
The word had the effect of sour cream in his mouth.
He said, “They are merely ‘lovers,’ Udhaya. Flings.”
I played along.
“If you say so. How many ‘lovers’ have you had, then?”
Gopalakrishnan’s face was at its contemplative best.
At long last he answered, “A hundred or thereabouts.”
I allowed myself some amusement at the thought of Gopalakrishnan trying to arrive at a convincing number.
It so happened that our Casanova one day launched into the details of his encounter with a village prostitute in his home state of Andhra Pradesh.
“A friend and I were repairing to a lodge when we saw a most mesmerizing woman approach, fire in her eyes and the wind in her hair. She was possessed with something divine, ethereal, something that almost brought me to my knees. And then, with the gesture of a hand, she beckoned us. My pansy-friend stayed put, sheepishly refusing to approach.
“Her voice effused all the warmth and familiarity of a long lost childhood playmate with whom you were once accustomed to sharing table and bed with when she told me, ‘I have a room available. Why do you want to pay here?’
“We ended up boarding at her place for three days. She performed equally well in the kitchen and in the bedroom. Our appetites for food and lovemaking were greatly satisfied.”
Gopalakrishnan described his sexual adventures in Andhra Pradesh with the mien of a soldier describing his war adventures in Afghanistan.
“There was another woman in Chennai,” he recommenced, and I wasn’t surprised. Truly, I wouldn’t have been if he’d told me he’d spilled his seed in a backroom in each of the twenty-eight states. “It was her time of the month when I went. So I just slept in her bed the whole night and in the morning she refused to take money from me. However, I thrust the money in her hand when she asked for my phone number. I gave and I dismissed it from my mind.”
“Two weeks thence, she touched base. When I went to see her, she mentioned that she’d never had a ‘client’ treat her as well as I did. She went red in the face when it occurred to her that she might have given offense and was profound in her apologies.
“Then she bashfully told me that it was her birthday.
“I bought her a saree and treated her to dinner, after which I dropped her home. I didn’t spend the night with her.”
“How come?” I asked, knowing full well that his ego was wounded by the girl who called him a ‘client,’ not a dashing Romeo, not her soulmate – a ‘client,’ a man with a weakness for prostitutes.
“I was in no mood for sex,” he said quite simply like he was stating a universal fact. “Just so you know, she’s been my ‘lover’ for five years now. She’s smitten with me.”
Truth be told, the man had the pride of a peacock and the brain of a bathroom flea.
At nine the next morning, we – now a group of four, courtesy of Aditya’s company – left for Coimbatore in Krishna’s Cielo which Gopalakrishnan was driving. I was accorded the honor of riding shotgun.
Not long after we hit the road, Gopalakrishnan’s phone started ringing. He shot a glance at the number and tossed the phone to me.
“Hello?” I said testily.
I was greeted by a cloying female voice.
“Is Gopalakrishnan around?” she asked.
I shot him a look and he shook his head in the negative. In that moment, he reminded me of a wet dog shaking itself dry.
“When will he return?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Where has he gone?”
“He never told me.”
“And who might you be?”
“The manservant.”
“Manservant?”
“Yes, I work at his house. I cook and clean his bedroom.”
The woman hung up. My witty closing statement earned me a clap on the shoulder from Krishna and a round of applause from Aditya.
Gopalakrishnan’s phone rang again at half-past-nine. He urged me to answer in his stead once more.
I exchanged hellos with the same woman who had called earlier.
“Is Gopalakrishanan back yet?”
“I wish he was for your sake, but unfortunately, he has urgent affairs to tend to.”
The line went dead.
The woman was maniacal. She placed calls incessantly.
As for me, I had to play the part of secretary cum manservant cum unhelpful telephone operator.
She tried new numbers and new voices and when her patience was worn thin, around the time of the thirtieth call, she resorted to expletives.
Pangs of jealously gnawed at us. The ardor in that woman’s voice haunted me. She was smitten with Gopalakrishnan after all.
Gopalakrishnan was once more behind the wheel for the following drive when history decided to repeat itself.
The phone announced the woman’s call, and I realized that Gopalakrishnan did not plan to relieve me of my middleman duty.
I greeted her with thirteen syllables instead of the customary, clichéd two: “Please don’t hang up with expletives like the other day.”
She wasted no time in informing me of the intelligence she’d gathered.
“You’re not the servant. Gopi told me who you are.”
“Gopi?”
“Go-pa-la-krish-nan,” she said, stretching every vowel out for a good two seconds. “Where is he?”
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“Still out of town.”
“Your game’s up trickster. I know you’re within kissing distance of each other. You have a way with words. You’re both smooth operators, you know?”
“Lady, put the weapons down. Someone with a voice as beautiful as yours shouldn’t be spitting poison darts like grape seeds.”
“For the last time, where is Gopi?”
Gopalakrishnan, her Gopi, bid me come closer. I did.
“Tell her you love her,” he whispered into my ear.
I replied that I already had a bad reputation and was not willing to compromise it further.
“What does he say?”
“Lady, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve told you. He’s not here.”
There was venom and resignation in her voice when she spoke next.
“You should be ashamed of yourself, whoever you are. I hope life screws you over.”
“There, there! Why are you so generous with curses, you beauty?”
“Oh, who told you I’m beautiful? Gopi?”
“Nope.”
“Who then?”
“Your voice suggests you have a beautiful face, you know?”
“Oh, so you fancy my sick voice? I have a cold.”
“You want to know a good remedy for a cold?”
“What is it?”
“Brandy!”
“Brandy? There’s no way in hell I’m drinking brandy.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like brandy, simple.”
“How about beer and wine?”
“Of course not! I don’t even drink sherbet.”
“So you don’t drink brandy, whiskey and wine even with Gopalakrishnan?”
“Chi! He drinks that bilge but I don’t even touch it.”
“How can you hate something you haven’t tasted?”
“I don’t know, but I won’t drink. I’ll get into big trouble at home.”
“Home?”
Marginal Man Page 19