Marginal Man

by Charu Nivedita

  In summer, the sun threatened to melt our skulls like wax and in winter, we had to brave the cold like people from the Stone Age. There was no outlet to plug in a heater and even if we had both an outlet and a heater, it would have been futile as there was no power on winter mornings anyway. We considered heating water for our baths on the Nutan stove but kerosene was in short supply. It would take the administration five damn years to give us a gas connection, so we had no choice but to bathe in ten-degree water. During summer we’d sleep on the terrace which had no walls. Sleepwalking would result in instant moksha. We had to climb to the terrace on a metal ladder in the kitchen. Also, there was no handrail on the staircase that led from the first floor to the second. The best thing a misstep could do was send you tumbling down with a few scrapes and bruises; the worst thing it could do was cost you a limb.

  We died every day for two years in that hole. That the tenants who had been staying there happily for years were still alive was one of the many bizarre miracles one can witness only in India.

  Nalini hated Delhi and wanted to return to Chennai. As I worked for the Delhi administration, I could ask for a transfer to a place of my choice. I asked to be posted in Chennai’s income tax department but was refused. “It’s a wet department,” they told me. Supposedly, the department’s trade unions did not like outsiders and newbies infiltrating it as they felt it would upset their yield in terms of bribes. I refused to be inducted into central intelligence as I knew I didn’t belong there. Finally, they fixed me up in the postal department.

  Soon after we landed in Chennai, Nalini suggested we have a child but I refused. Once our phase of lust was over, there was no love or affection in our relationship which had stopped making sense to me.

  I didn’t think Nalini would be able to raise a child as she couldn’t even take care of herself properly. Her body was her biggest foe. She always fell dramatically ill during her period and it was I who used to wash her menstrual pads. No one – not even my closest friends – believes me when I tell them that I’d been hand-washing her bloody menstrual rags for ten whole years. Though disposable sanitary napkins were available, Nalini refused to buy and use them.

  Tamils have some extremely peculiar ways. Instead of spending reasonable amounts of money on immediate, everyday necessities, they squander unreasonable amounts on gold jewelry. They wear aged rubber slippers with broken straps fastened with pins while their hands and necks are decked with gold. The women wear two dirty nightdresses alternatively for an entire year, but they will own two houses. If a guest has to spend the night, there will not be an extra pillow and the ones they have will be greasy with oil and stink to high heaven because they never see the inside of a washing machine. Women’s panties will be stiff with age and years of scrubbing while men’s underwear will be riddled with holes. As Nalini adhered to this culture of miserliness, she used the same menstrual pads every month.

  Now tell me, can a woman like Nalini take care of a child? Not at all, but this didn’t stop her from giving birth to one. Three years after the child was born, she asked me for a divorce and refused to take the child with her. After she left me, I quit my job and started picking pockets and writing gossip columns about actresses. I was suffering a severe mental breakdown.

  It was after this phase of my life that I met Perundevi and married her. Soon after the marriage, Nalini came to see me to ask for the child back. I returned the child in everyone’s best interests.

  I’d started to believe I was a eunuch after Nalini repeatedly called me one, but Perundevi called me the God of Lust. In a trancelike state, she’d say, “Let me plant a trail of kisses on your musk-scented skin that awakens my lust. Your smell makes my eyes roll back, it makes me drunk. Your gaze makes every cell in my body come alive. You fill your mouth with wine from my cellar and pour it into mine. When you enter me, my body forks like lightning and I become wet like rain-drenched earth.”

  We lose track of time when we make love. When we were done, the mattress would be soaked through with sweat. Sometimes, I’d go to the toilet to urinate, but then my dick would be so hard that urination was impossible.

  “Are you a man or an animal?” Perundevi would ask as she drew me in.

  Cock, who was taking down all that I was saying, commented, “What a tall story!”

  I wondered what a fellow like him, who knew nothing about sex, would achieve in the literary world. I’ve spent more time on pedicure than he’ll ever spend in literature. As I spent a lot of time on my feet, my heels cracked. Perundevi would give me a weekly pedicure. Before her, I didn’t know what a pedicure was. Before her, I didn’t know my body. I discovered my body through her.

  She told me that if she ever became a writer, she would call her first book My Sexual Experiments with Udhaya.

  WHAT A SWELL FUCKER YOU ARE, MAN!

  Our sexual encounters would end with Perundevi saying this. Hearing her say it, my frigid nights with Nalini became a thing of the past. With Nalini I felt fear, shame, anger and rage, and towards the end of our relationship, insults always hung in the air like perpetual smoke. Humiliated as I was by Nalini, I never thought I’d be able to bed a woman again. In that desert of derision, how could I have hoped for a revivifying stream of fresh water?

  Perundevi, in her stark naked glory, was thunder and lightning. The mirror-reflection of our entwined bodies looked like beautiful abstract art. She slithered across my sweaty torso and settled herself into a comfortable position to give me a blowjob.

  In return, I pleasured her lady-parts with my tongue, exploring all her unexplored regions. She pushed me down with such force that the bed creaked in pain. Post-orgasm, she would pass out. When she did regain consciousness, I would mount her again.

  Cockaphonix had been patiently scribing. When I’d finished my story, he remarked, “It’s awful! You could have written a meaningful story but you chose not to. That newspaper article about the truck that rammed into the E. S. I. Hopsital wall could have inspired you to make an excellent novel. You began well, but you meandered. There were so many things you could have explored:

  Poverty,

  Uncertainty,

  The pathetic condition of human existence,

  The world from the perspective of a truck driver,

  The problems of pavement-dwellers,

  Loss of life and loss of limbs,

  The negligence of doctors and nurses,

  The tragedy of unclaimed bodies of accident-victims in morgues,

  The life of a morgue-worker,

  Chennai’s high accident rate,

  Corpses that lie unnoticed on the side of the road…

  You ignored all of that and chose to go for a titillating porn tale. This is not literature, not by any yardstick!”

  “Fuck off,” I said.

  (Yet Another Bloody Author’s Note: When I was collecting my notes on Delhi for this novel, I came across another note I’d written later about a short trip I made to Delhi – after moving back to Chennai – to attend a film festival. This must have been written seven or eight years ago.)

  After moving back to Chennai, I returned to Delhi only to attend film festivals in the Siri Fort Auditorium. After watching five films there each day, I’d rush back to Chennai.

  This journey was one hell of an experience.

  The second-class coaches in Tamil Nadu Express were like underground sewers on wheels. The questionably low ticket price made me suspect as much. While a deluxe bus ticket from Chennai to Nagercoil cost four hundred, a Tamil Nadu Express ticket from Chennai to Delhi cost five hundred.

  I understood why after the journey.

  At each station, huge crowds of beggars clambered in – eighty-year-old women, cripples, eunuchs, women with babies (who, I believe, were drugged) in their arms. If you didn’t give them money, they shouted the worst kind of abuse at you.

  Like the beggars we
ren’t enough, a band of eunuchs entered, clapping their hands in their signature eunuch style. They approached the men seated in front of me. One fellow gave them a one rupee coin, but eunuchs are not satisfied with anything less than ten rupees as they have particularly lavish lifestyles. They cannot find employment easily, they have no security anywhere and they are ragged on public transport. They have to make themselves happy by buying flashy clothes, jewelry, fancy accessories and cosmetics. They spend a lot of time clapping their hands to earn money for their pains.

  The child-beggars stood in hordes, like an army, at every station. Their eyes had the desperate cunning you see in those of hungry beasts of prey. I shuddered to think of what they must have endured in life to have acquired such an unsettling gaze.

  As for the food I got on the train, even a street dog would walk away from it: two spoons of overcooked rice and a dal that tasted like brine. And the “meal” cost twenty-five rupees!

  All the other passengers had brought homemade food. The Tamils sitting across from me were breakfasting on tamarind rice and lemon rice. To my left, some North Indians were chopping some onion and green chili which they mixed with puffed rice. This was their breakfast. For lunch, they ate dry rotis with pickle and onion. I threw away my plate of overcooked rice and brine and made do with some fruit.

  Now for the toilets. There were two problems: one, there was no water, and two, the stench was overpowering. Luckily, Perundevi had packed some tissue paper into my travel bag. It surprised me that none of the passengers thought it necessary to protest against their travel conditions.

  The ordeal was compounded by the heat and humidity. The weather was no better at night as I was leaking like a faucet.

  I endured this hellish journey for thirty whole hours!

  Upon alighting at Delhi Railway Station, I was accosted by an auto driver. I’d planned to stay near Uphaar Cinema which was close to Siri Fort Auditorium.

  “Take me to Uphaar Cinema,” I told the driver.

  As we wended our way through the streets of the capital, he casually asked me what the purpose of my visit was. (He probably figured from the looks of me that I was a Madrasi.)

  “Uphaar is in Safdarjung Enclave,” he said. “The rents there are unreasonable – two thousand to three thousand rupees. If you stay in Karol Bagh, you’ll get excellent rooms for one thousand.”

  “One thousand?”

  “Don’t get agitated, saab,” he said. “How much are you willing to pay for a room?”

  “Five hundred,” I said hesitantly.

  When we arrived at Karol Bagh, I was worried about how far it seemed from Siri Fort.

  Entering the lodge, the auto driver had indicated, I enquired about the room tariffs. It was thousand five hundred rupees a day. As it was way beyond my means, I began to leave, but the lodge manager came running after me and grabbed my hands.

  “I can reduce it, sir,” he said. “If you stay for a week, you need pay only eight hundred.”

  “Arrey, aat sau pachaas pucho!” the auto driver ordered him.

  He must have thought I was ignorant of Hindi. When I realized that room rents could be bargained over, I left.

  We went to another lodge and after some lengthy bargaining, we settled on six hundred rupees on condition that I stayed at least for a week. I agreed, handing over an advance of three thousand.

  I later realized that the auto driver was actually a broker for the lodges in Karol Bagh.

  Auto drivers in Delhi are generally honest and don’t charge a paisa more than the meter-fare. I paid only sixty rupees for a forty-five-minute drive to Siri Fort.

  I vacated the room after two days as I felt it wasn’t economical for me to take an auto to Siri Fort every day. With one magic word, I managed to wriggle out of my agreement with the owner of the lodge. If I’d merely said, “It’s not your fault. I’m going to catch that auto driver by the collar and drag him to the police,” the owner would have laughed at me for being a bewakoof Madrasi and wouldn’t have returned my advance. I just polished off my sentence with a ‘behenchod’ and that word worked wonders.

  Chapter Sixteen

  1 – The Saint who was My Friend

  Before Siva became a saint, I used to go and visit him in his room whenever I went to Nagore.

  “Coming to the silladi?” I’d ask him.

  Growing up, Siva and I spent a lot of time in each other’s company. We used to hang around in Chettiar’s house on “Shit Lane” during the day and in the silladi in the evening. When dusk fell, we’d make our way to the dargah’s kulundha mandapam or Vettar Bridge and start making our way home at nine. Siva’s house was near the Perumal temple. My house was situated between the cremation ground and Rangayya Madam near Eluthiyarankulam. We took a detour to go home – we’d start from “Shit Lane” at nine, cross Sivan Kovil West Street, get onto Perumal Kovil Street, turn right onto Perumal Sannidhi Street where we would stop and talk for an hour or so. Then, we would resume our journey, taking another right onto Perumal Kovil South Street beyond which the haunted tamarind grove lay. (The stories I’d heard about the tamarind grove made me hesitant to go there even in broad daylight.) By the time I reached home, it would be eleven, and even at that late hour, Amma would get up from her sleep, light the firewood stove and make dosas for me.

  After Siva became a saint – or as the townspeople say, a madman – I met him once and I asked him, “How do you stay shut up in your room for years on end? What do you do with all that time?”

  He did not think of a response. He simply said, “Time has stopped, da.”

  I started to think that the real mad people were the ones who thought Siva had lost it. Siva is not mad. He is a seer.

  “As for me,” Siva said, “I’m not mad either, but everyone seems to think I am. How I’d love to stone those people to death!”

  2 – Between Lovebirds

  -i think i love you more than you love me, udhaya dear.

  -that cannot be! i love you like a madman.

  -that i will not deny. oh udhaya, i want you next to me. i don’t like to have to hear your voice over the phone.

  -i love the way my name sounds on your lips. you make it sound like music.

  -i’m watching shakespeare in love as we speak. and i’m reminded of you because shakespeare’s words in this movie sound so much like yours. love is so beautiful, don’t you think so?

  -ah, love! of course, it’s one of the greatest miracles known to humankind, but when we fear losing it, it turns to pain.

  -don’t ever fear losing me, udhaya. i’ll never be the cause of your pain. just know this: i’m not willing to lose you.

  3 – La petite mort

  -When I’m with Udhaya, my self-consciousness takes leave of me and I turn into an animal. He remembers nothing of what he says or does when he’s three sheets to the wind. As for me, when I’m in bed with him, I forget the rest of the world. Nothing else exists, no one else exists. It’s just me, Udhaya and the moment.

  -This is what Roland Barthes refers to as la petite mort, Anjali. The little death. Sex is indeed a small death.

  -So you’re telling me I really bit the pillow? Oh god, I don’t even remember! I just don’t, Udhaya!

  Eager to know what Anjali thought of my writing, I gave her one of my short stories to read. Twenty-four hours passed and she didn’t bring it up. I usually don’t like nagging people, but I couldn’t help myself, so I asked Anjali about the story the next day.

  “I didn’t exactly have the time to read it yesterday, but I’ll certainly read it today,” she promised.

  When I spoke to her over the phone in the evening, I was hoping she’d bring it up, but she didn’t.

  Finally, unable to control my curiosity, I asked her, “Did you read it?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Three words. That was all she h
ad to say.

  “You are insensitive,” I railed and hung up.

  This was her reply to my outburst:

  “You said I’m insensitive. Well, I wasn’t always insensitive, just so you know. I wasn’t born that way. I’m not angry with you, but there are just things about me you won’t find easy to understand. I feel castrated. I feel inexpressive. I feel scared to tell people what I feel. Please try to understand that. I don’t feel qualified enough to comment on your work. If I appreciate it and tell you how much I loved and adored it, how much it made me respect you as a writer, I will only end up spouting clichés.”

  This was quickly followed by another message.

  “You know what? I often wonder whether I’m the right woman for you. You are a mind-blowing writer. I feel so small beside you because I’m not as well-read as you are; my knowledge is far inferior to yours. I fell madly in love with you after I read your novel. Why else would I pounce on you a mere four days after we’d met?”

  There were at least a dozen more messages like these, but I’ll spare you the trouble of having to read them.

  Udhaya said, “Any other woman with a libido like yours would have bedded a dozen men by now. You are divine.”

  I told him he was wrong. I immersed myself in my work just to keep sexual thoughts at bay. While other women went to meditation and yoga classes, I trained in karate. I turned myself into a relentlessly spinning top.

  I told Anjali about one of my female friends.

  In seven years of marriage, she had two kids, and maybe ten sexual encounters with her husband. He was a workaholic and he returned home at midnight, eat dinner, and immediately crash. In spite of not being an alcoholic, a smoker or a womanizer, he was not a satisfactory husband to his wife who used to ask him openly, “Shall I take a lover?”