Marginal Man

by Charu Nivedita

  The mast tree is the sthala vruksham of the Kapaleeswarar Temple in Mylapore where I now live. Legend has it that when Ambal prayed to Siva, he appeared before her standing under a mast tree.

  In the seventh century, there was a man called Sivanesan who lived in Mylapore with his daughter Poompavai. Sivanesan was keen on marrying his daughter to Gnanasampanthar, a great devotee of Shiva. However, before his plans of marriage could materialize, Poompavai died of snakebite. Sivanesan kept her bones and ashes in an urn which he presented to Gnanasampanthar along with an explanation upon his return to Chennai. Gnanasampanthar meditated on Kapaleeswarar and sang eleven sonnets. When he had finished the last sonnet, the urn exploded and Poompavai emerged from the ashes. Sivanesan lowered his head and fell on his knees in gratitude to Gnanasampanthar and requested him to take Poompavai as his wife, but he was met with refusal. Gnanasampanthar reasoned that he, by virtue of having given her life, was a father to her. Poompavai remained unmarried and spent the rest of her days serving Lord Shiva.

  There was a ya tree in Nagore’s palm grove. Ya’s delicate barks that the elephants strip and eat due to their high moisture content. Though the ya has a life span of seventy years, it flowers but once in its lifetime; the flower is quite large and can be smelled from afar. Most ya trees are ardhanarishvara – androgynous.

  Durga is the presiding deity of palai and her flower is the payini, the flower of the ya. There is a poem in the Kurunthogai (37) in which there is mention of ya.

  The heroine who is worried that her lover has not returned to her is consoled by her friend: ‘During his journey he will see a male elephant stripping the bark of a ya tree so that the hungry female elephant can drink from it. On seeing this won’t your love’s heart be touched? Then he will remember you and come running to your side.’

  Seven years ago, we moved into the house we are now living in. It was rather old when we got it, but we could have got worse. There were a number of trees around the house, a portia and a gulmohar among them. I was thrilled to have these two trees growing outside my house as I was seeing them after twenty whole years (I last saw them in Ngaore). I remember my mother using the steamed leaves of the gulmohar to ameliorate knee pain and backaches. To me, the tree looked like a peacock with its tail fanned out. As for the portia, if you stood under its broad shade, you wouldn’t feel the heat on a hot summer’s afternoon. Inside our premises, we had a jackfruit tree, two mango trees, a guava tree, a hibiscus plant, a coconut tree, a curry leaf tree, a papaya tree and a few neem trees. Monkeys would sometimes come over and treat themselves to a few mangoes. A considerable population of squirrels, bats, parrots and cuckoos also lived with us. But fate is vagarious; I was forced to cut down my two most dearly beloved trees – the portia and the gulmohar. Let me digress a bit before I tell you why.

  A Chinese girl who was my classmate at Alliance Française had her phone robbed one day. She was certain she had it when she entered the building, so it had definitely been stolen by someone within the premises. She told me that it wasn’t the loss of the phone that upset her as much as the fact that someone had taken something which did not belong to them.

  Even when there is a traffic accident, there are slimebags who make off with the dead person’s purse, cellphone, jewels and other valuables before the cops arrive on the scene. So, if the accident badly disfigured the person’s face, identification would be a task. What breed of scumbags do such things? And just so you know, the folks who steal at the scene of an accident are not always poor.

  Now consider this incident. In Toulouse, Gunaratnam, his daughter Dharmini and I were returning to his home after an outing when we spotted a bulging purse lying on the road. Inside it were wads of cash, a keychain, several bank receipts and a passbook. Clearly, this purse belonged to someone who’d just recently been to the bank and withdrawn money. We took the purse to the bank and were told by an officer that an elderly woman had come to him a little while ago to enquire if her purse had been seen. We decided to wait at the bank until she returned.

  The old woman came back shortly afterwards and was delighted to get her purse back. Out of gratitude, she took out a hundred franc note from her purse and offered it to Dharmini. Confused, Dharmini refused it. Throughout our journey home, Dharmini kept asking us why the old woman had offered her money when we’d just returned to her what was rightfully hers.

  Here in India young boys kidnap their own friends for ransom just so they can buy themselves a pair of Adidas shoes, a geared bicycle, an iPhone or an iPad. Consumerism has made maniacs and fools of a lot of people. Santhanam told me that he’d gone to the hospital when his sister-in-law delivered. When he entered her room, the television was on full blast and the woman was engrossed in a Velukkudi Krishnan speech. The woman was so proud that her twelve-hour-old infant was listening to Bhagavata Upanyasam. This is how our poor Indian children become addicted to and enslaved by the television.

  Okay, now I shall tell you the story behind the felling of the portia and the gulmohar. As the tress cast an expansive shade, auto and taxi drivers would park their vehicles underneath them and take a nap. I could tolerate sleeping and snoring, but they got bolder with time – they’d bring bottles of cheap liquor, drink and break the bottles under the trees before leaving. This worked up Perundevi who stopped attending to the housework to keep vigil. She had sharp ears and whenever she heard the sound of a vehicle, she would go to the door and shout at the driver. When I asked her why she was so obsessed with trying to ensure propriety, she said, “Try picking up shards of glass and you’ll know why.” I felt sorry for her. Some drivers paid heed to her while some retorted. “This is government land,” they’d say. “Who the hell are you to complain?” She used to call the police a lot and this earned her the nickname “Crime Branch.” There were some fellows who parked their cars under the trees overnight. The car provided a convenient cover for them to drink and the darkness for them to defecate.

  The stench of their shit defied description. Although I grew up in the midst of the odor of other people’s waste, I was left nauseated. These drivers eat truckloads of food and leave behind mountains of shit. If my fulminations have got you thinking I’m a discriminator, you’re dead wrong. The food one eats is responsible for the smell of one’s body and, of course, one’s shit. If you eat a plate of beef and a pot of rice all cooked in rancid oil, your shit will out-stink sewage. Cow dung doesn’t stink because it’s just grass and cotton seeds.

  I’ve heard a number of Indians ridicule the ass-cleaning practice of the westerners as Indians who travel abroad have a personal problem with the use of toilet paper to wipe the filth off their backsides. As they eat food with an over abundance of masala, they will find it harder to clean their asses, and they will need bucketsful of water.

  Perundevi’s first task in the morning was to dispose of the mountains of shit in front of the house after covering them with mud.

  One day, unable to bear the sight of her cleaning up what had come out of another person’s hole, I told her, “Just cover it with mud and leave it there, won’t you?”

  “Okay, but what about the glass shards? Won’t my feet get cut when I draw the kolam?”

  I said no more.

  Santhanam told me he’d fixed a plastic kolam at the entrance of his house. While this is a convenient solution for people living in apartment houses, it wasn’t for us because we had the road in front of our place and Perundevi had crows to feed.

  She finally came up with a solution to stop the drivers from using our place to defecate once and for all. The trees had to be felled. Once there was no longer any shade in that spot, no driver would want to park his vehicle. So, I chopped the trees and ever since I did, no motherfucker has dared to shit in front of our house.

  No amount of explanation will make the sordid ways of Indians comprehensible to Westerners. When I visited Kutralam recently, I discovered that the mountain path to Shenbaga De
vi stream had been closed off to tourists and could only be accessed with permission from the government. The path was closed because the visitors usually ran amok. No amount of police surveillance could stop people from drinking there and littering the place with bottles. The sage Agathiyar lived on the mountain that was being profaned with litter because no wino gives a flying fuck about a sage. Although the path to the stream had been closed, the temple below the stream was still open. To visit the temple, many young men would tie yellow dhotis around their waists and climb the mountain. Their hysterical shouts make the entire forest shudder. I will never understand the logic behind screaming like a lunatic monster to express enthusiasm. They piped down after a warning and a sermon from a cop. One of the cops told me that the rule was imposed to prevent the deaths of drunk people who often lost their footing and fell into the stream.

  *Translated by A.K. Ramanujan

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hum Tum Ek Kamre Mein Bandh Ho

  Johnny Mera Naam starring Dev Anand and Hema Malini; Sachcha Jhoota starring Rajesh Khanna and Mumtaz; Kati Patang and Aan Milo Sajna starring Rajesh Khanna and Asha Parekh; Purab aur Paschim starring Manoj Kumar and Saira Banu; Safar starring Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore; Kab, Kyon aur Kahan starring Dharmendra and Babita Kapoor; Dastak starring Sanjeev Kumar and Rehana Sultan… and this ‘70s litany, like Rose’s heart in Titanic, could go “on and on,” with the infinite permutations and combinations of hero and heroine, lover and beloved, Romeo and Juliet, and… I think you get the picture.

  Another thing you should “get” is the fact that these Hindi films usurped the throne of popularity down south with the likes of Aradhana, Kati Patang and Bobby riding high on celebrity and running to full houses. And what could this upsurge of Hindi cinema’s popular appeal be attributed to if not the dwindling appeal of Tamil cinema? The ‘60s and the ‘70s saw the lure of homegrown films hit an all-time low. The brightest stars in Tamil Nadu’s thespian-galaxy, M. G. Ramachandran and Sivaji Ganesan, were beginning to lose their luster.

  M.G.R.’s Ulagam Sutrum Vaaliban received more ridicule than relish on its silver jubilee as the spectacle of an old geezer (miscast in the role of a young Romeo) prancing around with a young lass in full bloom was far from being amusing in the slightest.

  Following the dissolution of the partnership of music duo Vishwanathan and Ramamurthy in 1965, Tamil cinema was relegated to such a sorry place that folks would rather walk out for a smoke than suffer through a song.

  The most unforgettable year of the ‘70s for me was 1973 – the year Bobby hit the screen. At that point in time, the number of films I’d seen was exceeded by the number of film songs I’d listened to. Bobby, unlike its inferior cousins, was not a film to be watched just once. The hype over the film spread like a contagion, and my peers and I happened to be among the affected. We would faithfully attend screenings of Bobby like Sunday services. Friends of mine from whose barrels no paisa could be scraped would stand outside the theater during the shows.

  In Bobby’s glory-days, a 29 paise ticket got you a bench with no back, a 58 paise ticket afforded you a seat with comfort guaranteed to both your back and your backside. Much like the modern-day college, entries and exits were proceduralized. It would have been ticket for out-pass if you wanted to get out, and out-pass for ticket if you wanted to get back in. The early birds got the best perches in terms of seats.

  Bobby’s maiden screening was at Aruna Theater in Trichy. After having run there for a staggering 175 days, it was picked up by Gaiety. Yaadon ki Bharat was also abreast of Bobby in terms of popularity, having enjoyed a year-long run in the latter.

  It was customary to keep the windows open so that the dialogues could reach the masses assembled outside the theater. I remember being among them.

  The playground of Bishop Heber School – sadly a playground no more – is another space I associate with the Bobby craze as the songs of the film were a staple during the school’s football matches.

  The chief of several reasons behind the film’s popularity was eye-candy in the person of Dimple Kapadia. Her first appearance in the film had her clad in such a manner that very little was left to the hyperactive male imagination. Folks would flock in droves to the theater just to catch a glimpse of her well-displayed assets.

  Another topic of great interest, aside from the eye-popping, jaw-dropping shape of Dimple Kapadia’s body, was the color of Rishi Kapoor’s lips slash lipstick. How red were his lips? How red weren’t they? And this man’s curious lips – that had people swooning – incited debates that ran into hours.

  Popular films yield popular songs as is the case with Bobby and Mujhe Kuch Kehna Hai, where we see that Dimple Kapadia has graduated from short skirts to bikinis. Toying with the assumption that your 20-something-year-old ‘70s South-Indian boy was an inexperienced virgin with no knowledge of the Kama Sutra, one can only imagine how Dimple Kapadia’s boobs and Aruna Irani’s back would have jerked his dormant libido awake. Wait, during the song Beshak Mandir, Dimple was shown gloomily lying in bed, one leg folded and in a slightly inclined position. There were many boys among us who saw that movie 16 times just to see if anything more could be seen under the skirt that rode up her thighs.

  From all that has been said, we can very well understand how Kapadia and Irani contributed to the furthering of the young man’s knowledge of the female body (Boobs? Check. Butt? Check) and his vocabulary thereof (Panties? Check. Bra? Check.).

  The music and the visuals shared a point of similarity in that they could both be described as having been “stirring,” though each in its own peculiar way. Narendra Chanchal’s Beshak Mandir was one such “stirring” song that caught on in Tamil Nadu, and it went on to become a much-performed number, surprisingly by people who couldn’t speak Hindi. Hindi was unknown in entire Tamil Nadu. In 1965, students had set themselves on fire to oppose the imposition of Hindi. But a mere eight years later, Hindi movies were given a rousing welcome.

  Translating the songs as a service to my friends proved to be an interesting task as they were keen on speculating the meanings of words and overanalyzing metaphors. Take for instance the line, “Hum Tum Ek Kamre Mein Bandh Ho/ Aur Chchabi Kho Jaye.” I would tell them that kamra meant “room” and chchabi meant “key,” and they would claim that these were just symbols and that there was an underlying sexual innuendo to them.

  We ended up deifying R. D. Burman and assigned divine status to Laxmikant-Pyarelal too for their soundtrack par excellence to the Bobby film.

  Yaadon ki Bharat was full of music and relatively empty of aphrodisiacal visuals, featuring pieces by names such as Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar, Asha Bhonsle and R. D. Burman. Every aspect of the music seemed to be of semiotic import, exemplifying free-spiritedness, revolt and revolution. The rollicking song Aapke Kamre Mein Koi Rehta Hai turned the theater into a dance floor. Dance and music had such a liberating effect. We would sway and jump for ten minutes as the song played. Tariq and his manic guitar-playing exemplified freedom for us. Burman’s booming voice and Tariq’s frenzied tickling of the fretboard were like a revolt against narrow convention. Once Dum Maro Dum concluded, we’d leave the theater in ecstasy. At this juncture, I invite you to think of the role and the reception of these movies and songs at a time when there were hardly any pubs in Tamil Nadu.

  R. D. Burman injected western-ness into Indian music and became a craze among the ‘70s youth. His music helped me understand and appreciate western musical forms like jazz and blues.

  The beautiful Dimple who had every man slobbering over her did not appear in any more movies. It was my friend Naseem who told us that Dimple had married Rajesh Khanna even before the release of Bobby, and that Khanna had forbidden her to act thereafter. Our fury boiled over when we heard that Dimple was all of sixteen when she tied the knot with then thirty-year-old Khanna. We felt a murderous fury towards the man. We were sorrowful to know that her fir
st movie was to be her last. Nobody could replace her in our affections whether it was Asha Parekh, Rakhee or Mumtaz.

  Sharmila Tagore’s name was the first to appear in the titles in most Hindi movies of the ‘70s, before Rajesh Khanna’s. I don’t know if any other Indian actress could boast of having her name appear before that of the “first superstar” of Indian cinema. It was in 1975 in the film Chupke Chupke that the names of both Dharmendra and Sharmila Tagore were equally billed, but I doubted even Sharmila Tagore could fill Dimple’s shoes as the former’s movies were mostly tearjerkers – Aradhana being a typical example. Khanna’s character, Arun Varma, falls in love with Tagore’s character, Vandana. Not very long after they fall in love, Varma dies in a plane crash, leaving Vandana with child. Vandana now has the reputation of a loose woman and has to face humiliation from Varma’s aunt. Varma expressed to Vandana that should the child be a boy, he should follow his father’s footsteps and join the Air Force. The white-clad widowed Vandana goes on to work as a housemaid. Prem Chopra, like in most of his movies, played the villain whose main task is to rape the female lead. Vandana kills Chopra when he tries to force himself on her and she goes to jail. She is sentenced to fourteen years but is released in twelve for good conduct. Though the movie is a sappy tearjerker from start to finish, R. D. Burman’s excellent score made the film worth watching.

  In Daag, Khanna escapes from prison after murdering Prem Chopra who attempted to rape Tagore. After his escape from prison, Khanna disguises himself by sporting a drooping moustache.

  No male member in Santhanam’s family grew a moustache, so he, in his eighteenth year, began sporting one, ignoring the remonstrations of his family members. He was obsessed with Rajesh Khanna’s moustache in the movie Daag. However, his moustache was short-lived, for his wife-to-be made it known to him on the day of the janavasam that she would like his moustache removed. So, his wedding day saw the end of his whisker-days.