Saamy lived alone. He had no family and no relatives ever sought him out. He cooked his own food and earned a lot by way of tuitions. As he charged a hefty sum, only Muslim boys from rich families went to him. He walked with a stoop he said was the result of an injury while serving in the army. Other than this, he spoke nothing else of his personal life. He would often call me and my brother to the house to talk to us.
One day, a boy who had studied in the same school as I did came up to me and asked, “Whatever is the problem between Saamy and your family?” I couldn’t understand what he was talking about.
“Saamy saar is a good family friend,” I told him, puzzled.
My friend then revealed that Saamy would rant about my family for at least an hour to all the boys who went to his house for lessons. I also learned that some boys had stopped going to him because they couldn’t stand the annoyingly boring tirades he’d unleash against my family.
For the first time in my twenty years, I experienced the pain of betrayal. Saamy was the one who used to call me and my younger brother to his house to talk. He used to ask my mother to give him some gravy to accompany his meals and he would have lengthy conversations with my father. While we considered him to be a family friend, he was busy badmouthing us to everyone. Seething with rage, I went to his house and gave him a bashing. My mother came and dragged me home before anything untoward happened.
Saamy filed a police complaint. Luckily, the police inspector was a nice chap. (The one who’d beaten up Maraikka Vaapa had been transferred to some godforsaken desert after a few months). The inspector told me that once a police case was filed, I wouldn’t be able to find employment anywhere and my name would be added to the list of rowdies. So, he didn’t file any case and let me off the hook.
In Serfoji College in Thanjavur, I didn’t attend even a single class. I never wrote a single exam either. I spent all my time in the library. Oscar Wilde was one of my favorite writers then. I affixed bold and bright posters with his quotes to the outer walls of the hut on Venkatesa Perumal Koil Street – the one with the roofless toilet.
I would change the quotes every week. If it was “The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married” one week, it would be “Women were created to be loved; not to be understood” the next week.
I hadn’t outgrown my shyness so I was still friendless. Most of my waking hours were spent at the college library, the Brihadeeswarar Temple, the government library across the temple and the Saraswati Mahal Library inside the palace. I’ll let you in on a little secret. I took refuge in Wilde and in the libraries only to escape from women. But ironically, Wilde’s writings, instead of helping me keep women locked out of my mind, kept my thoughts fixated on them and triggered my interest in them.
People usually have many devices like friends, gossip, games and studies to keep loneliness at bay. I had no one and I had nothing. All I had was faithful loneliness that accompanied me wherever I went. I was confused about the idea of love, and women. I was too shy to approach a girl and talk to her, but at the same time, I was eager to fall in love with all the girls I met. My mind started spinning out of control.
To free my mind from its demons, I frequented the temple. The Venkatesa Perumal Temple was just across the street from my aunt’s house and I used to go and sit there for hours on end. But even that didn’t help. Even as I stood before the idol of the god, I could feel lust raging through me like a fire, threatening to devour me. I decided I needed to purify my mind if I were to continue visiting the temple.
A little later, I befriended a girl called Bhuvana quite unexpectedly. At the end of the college year, there was an inter-collegiate elocution competition in Thanjavur and I decided to register in the English category as I was desperate to try something different, something I’d never done before. But after submitting my name, I felt rather foolish. I’d always won at elocution competitions wherein I had to make my speech in Tamil. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull off a speech in English. I’d heard that it was a girl called Bhuvana who always bagged the first prize in the English category. It probably had to do with the fact that she was a student of English Literature in a women’s college. We’d never met before and I had no idea of how good a speaker she was. I reconciled myself to the possibility of a fiasco and remained indifferent about the final outcome.
We had to speak on the suitability of a democratic form of government in India. I firmly believed that it was not suitable, but I knew full well that only those who argued the opposite would win. When I heard that Bhuvana had taken the opposite stand I’d taken, I was surprised. Why was Bhuvana, who always walked away with the first prize, unaware that her stand would threaten her victory this time around?
A small spark of hope flickered in me, but what would I do without knowing English? Then, I had an idea. I wrote down my arguments in Tamil and asked a friend who was fluent in both Tamil and English to translate them for me. Then, I learned the speech by heart.
Another surprise lay in waiting. It concerned the identity of Bhuvana. She turned out to be the beauty who lived down my street. I’d seen her countless times and desperately yearned for a jiffy’s glance or a tiny smile from her. I tried a few attention-grabbing stunts, but she never once noticed me. Her skin glowed like cream satin in the moonlight and she was perfectly and amply proportioned. She had a mesmerizing gaze and the sight of her moist lips could inflame any man’s passions. She was a girl who ruined the sleep of many young men like myself.
Now I became determined to win the contest for I couldn’t afford to fail or make a clown of myself before someone I was madly in love with and desired so intensely. I rendered my speech in such a manner that obscured the fact that I’d simply memorized it. I had everyone believing I was speaking extempore. I spoke with perfect pitch and modulation; I never faltered even once. When I walked off the stage after finishing, Bhuvana came running to me excitedly like a child and shook my hand.
“What an excellent speech that was!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been hiding yourself?”
“At the Hanuman temple near your house.”
Her peals of laughter reminded me of the tinkling of silver coins.
“I’ve seen you around a lot,” she said. “That El Par shirt suits you well.”
“I thought of talking to you many times but I lacked the courage,” I confessed. “I was afraid that such a beautiful girl might not want to talk to someone like me.”
“Oh my!” she said shyly.
“What?”
“You sure have what it takes to sweep a girl off her feet! And your performance in the competition was nothing short of brilliant.”
I was surprised she noticed I was wearing an El Par shirt more than anything else. It was quite the rage among young men in the ‘70s.
We continued to talk to each other in a corner of the room. I confessed to her that I wasn’t fluent in English and that I’d memorized my speech. This was how a friendship sprung up between the two of us. The very next day, I told her I was deeply in love with her only to hear that she was in love with someone else. She still said we could be good friends. Till the end, she never accepted my proposals and I never found out who her lover was.
The Central Government used to recruit employees through the Staff Selection Commission. Passing the exam could get you a job in Delhi’s local administration. The shorthand exams weren’t as tough as the exams conducted by the other recruitment agencies. All you needed was a typewriter. A North Indian would dictate a passage for ten minutes. This passage had to be typed within a certain time period. I cleared the exam on my first attempt and got a job when I was still in college.
(Don’t assume that passing the exam guaranteed you the job of your dreams. Take Santhanam, for instance. A clever and knowledgeable man like him did not deserve to be languishing as a postal clerk. When I asked him if he’d taken the UPSC exams, he told me that hi
s life had gone off the rails as he couldn’t get hold of a typewriter in Bangalore. After passing the written component of the UPSC exam, he had to type ten sentences. The examination center did not provide typewriters which meant that the candidates had to bring their own. Santhanam managed to get hold of a small portable typewriter with his brother’s help, but he was used to typing on a bigger one. The handlebar of the portable typewriter didn’t function properly and he was unable to type even a single sentence correctly. In my case, I faced no problems, thanks to Bhuvana. She went to an institute in our part of Thanjavur and asked for a typewriter. Who could refuse a beautiful girl like her? The owner of the institute personally brought the typewriter to the examination center and collected it himself when the exam was over!
I told Santhanam that he would have been a deputy secretary in the Central Government if only he’d been able to get a functional typewriter.
Santhanam then asked me if I’d watched the movie Sliding Doors. It’s a movie about a woman who goes to the station to catch a train. We are shown two versions of events – one where she catches the train and one where she misses it.
In the “caught-train timeline,” the woman gets hit by a vehicle after declaring her love to a man and dies. However, in the “missed-train timeline,” she has it rough for some time but ultimately ends up happy. It’s always better to be alive, no matter the circumstances.
Now we return to Santhanam’s life.
I was permanently being shunted from the house of one relative to another when I was studying in West Mambalam High School. After the DMK came into power, my school was rechristened. It came to be known as Anjugam High School because Anjugam was the name of the mother of M. Karunanidhi, the head of the DMK who was also the chief minister of the state at that time.
At one point in time, I was staying with an aunt who lived near my school when I was in the seventh grade. There lived a boy called Sadagopan in the neighboring house. He regularly failed his exams and was constantly scolded by his parents for it. He was street smart though. I was always among the top three in my class whether I exerted myself or not. Anyway, Sadagopan and I became friends during a game of gilli-danda with the neighborhood boys. It was my first time playing the game and my first time playing with these boys as I was new to the neighborhood. We were playing on Rajagopala Iyengar Street, a barren wasteland. It was a Brahmin ghetto like Nanganallur.
I was intently watching the game. When Sadagopan took his turn to bat, he accidentally hit me on the forehead. The wound started bleeding and he rushed to my side, apologizing profusely.
“I’m really so sorry. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
I replied, “We’re neighbors, and there’s nothing to feel sorry about. You didn’t do it deliberately.”
“Please don’t tell anyone. I already have more problems than I can handle at home.”
“Forget it. I’m not going to tell anyone.”
He was still panicky.
“But how are you going to explain the bruise?”
“Well, I’ll just say I tripped and fell. That’s believable.”
After that incident, we became good friends.
Fifteen years later, I’d gone to visit my aunt. I’d left her house and began walking when a car pulled up next to me. When I saw who the driver was, I was stunned. It was Sadagopan! He told me he was the owner of a printing press called Kittambi Press. I felt bad when I heard this. Life is so unfair. How do you explain the fact that Sadagopan, a failure and a dunce in school, was now the owner of his own press while I, a top ranker, was languishing in a musty government office in a dead-end job? I might as well have been like Sadagopan, failing every exam.
Five years later, there was a chess competition in our office for which many contestants had come from different places. I became acquainted with a great player. When we discovered that we were both from West Mambalam, we began asking each other whether we knew this man or that lady.
“Do you know Sadagopan?” I asked him. “How is he now?”
“Was Sadagopan your friend?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Why are you doing a double-check?”
“Your friend Sadagopan died two years ago. His obituary was in the papers. How is it you didn’t come to pay your last respects? Were you really his friend?”
Sadagopan had gone to Ahobila Mutt with his family. His son fell into a river and Sadagopan jumped in to save him. Both father and son lost their lives.
And now I think of how stupid I’d been to envy him when he had a printing press and a car. With neither printing press nor car to my name, I am more fortunate than him because I’m still alive.
If I’d caught the train to Delhi, I could have landed up in prison or died. But I missed that train and I’m still around, still walking, still breathing. And I think that’s a good thing.
But let us return to the reality – to the story of the person who caught the train to Delhi.)
My departure to Delhi was motivated purely by the desire to flee from the Tamils. I would have no trouble getting around in Delhi because I knew Hindi. A major reason why Tamils fail to pass the shorthand examination is their lack of familiarity with the North Indian English accent. If the dictator says “vokkayyen,” he is a Punjabi and the word is “occasion.” If he says “Jo kaaj noteej waaj ijood,” he is a Bihari and he means “Show cause notice was issued.” As I had taken pains to absorb the peculiarities of every version of Indian English, passing the test had been a cakewalk.
But knowing Hindi and every version of Indian English was not going to get me a roof above my head in Delhi. I knew no one there. When I told Bhuvana this, she told me that she would speak to her cousin Raman who lived in Delhi. She assured me that he would help me in every which way he could and that he would even accommodate me. Raman turned out to be as nice as Bhuvana had made him out to be. The Grand Trunk Express took me to Delhi and when I alighted at the station, Raman was there to receive me and take me to his home where I stayed for a few days. Raman’s father was not too pleased about having a stranger under his roof. He was a bigot who told Raman in my presence, “I will not dine with this shudra. You people eat first. I will eat later.”
His attitude towards my caste did not bother me as much as the babu’s English he used when he spoke to me.
One reason why I didn’t take the caste-discrimination too seriously was that it was quite common even in the civil supplies office where I worked. For instance, the jealousy and resentment that people of other states felt towards Punjabis who had left Pakistan during the partition and settled down in Delhi were very obvious. There was a young Punjabi employee called Akash in my department. Whenever he was not around, the others would sit and discuss the traits of Punjabis. They would go on and on about how Punjabis were a money-minded lot. But for some reason, I liked Punjabis. Unlike the Tamils who couldn’t even bring themselves to smile, the Punjabis were a jolly bunch who believed in living life to the fullest. Their khao, piyo, aish karo philosophy greatly appealed to me.
Like most Punjabis, Akash was also a merry person. Hang on, did I just call him by his name? Now, had I been in Chennai, I would have to address other government employees as “A2,” “B2,” et cetera, for in Chennai, a government employee’s number – not his name – is his identity in the organization. Also, it is disrespectful in Tamil culture to call a person by his or her given name. I realized this when I was working as a prison clerk in Chennai. A person who is below the stenographer in rank would call him “Steno saar” while the person above him would merely call him “Steno.” This is a peculiar mannerism of the Tamils. For instance, if a Tamil has a driver, he calls him “Driver.” Similarly, if there is a watchman outside his apartment complex, he calls him “Watchman.” It is believed that your prestige will take a knock if you use these people’s names.
In Delhi, I w
as delighted to hear people properly addressing each other. Everyone’s name was suffixed with “ji.” People would therefore be called Sharmaji, Varmaji, Guptaji, Anandji and so on. In the case of a superior, the “ji” was replaced with a “saab.”
As a result of convent education, Akash spoke fluent English. When I asked him what a convent-educated young man like him was doing working as a babu, he pointed to the sky. When I told him about the stereotypes concerning the Punjabis, he said they were all true. Punjabis had been affluent landowners in Pakistan, but after the Partition displaced them, they were reduced to paupers and refugees.
“They are driven to recapture what they’ve lost. It’s that drive you see in them,” he explained. “Besides, it wasn’t just replaceable earthly possessions they lost during the Partition. So many loved ones had been lost too. That sense of loss made us want to obsessively pursue money. Have you ever seen a Punjabi beggar?”
“No, why aren’t there any?”
“While it is true that Punjabis are all about money, it is also true that they work hard to earn it. Everything is money, money, money. We don’t know anything else, yaar.”
“In that case, what do you think of the Tamils in Delhi?”
“You mean the Madrasis?”
Before I could tell him that there was no such thing as a Madrasi, he said, “Yes, yes, I know. Andhraites, Keralites, Kannadigas, Tamils… What’s the difference between them, bhai? I know nothing about those Andhraites, but when they say “randi, randi” in Telugu, it sounds rather obscene. I believe “randi” means “come” in Telugu. What a language, yaar!” Keralites are total ruffians. Kannadigas? I don’t know. Tamils are numero uno when it comes to chamchagiri. But you don’t seem to be like that…”
“I’m not a Brahmin, that’s why.”
Marginal Man Page 29