He would casually reply, “I know you won’t stoop so low.”
“Get a girlfriend or go whoring!” she told him. “You’ll want me after that.”
“You don’t find me amusing, but still, I impregnated you twice,” he’d boast.
The poor woman suffered for many nights. Every cell in her body burned and ached with desire. Some nights, she’d stand under the shower, naked, for hours.
“Did you sleep with her?” Anjali asked me quizzically.
“I couldn’t even kiss her,” I said. “She and I decided to meet privately. She was so stupid – she knew nothing about sex, and instead of cooperating, she just made a nuisance of herself. We ended up doing nothing and going home. Only men who stand in queues to sleep with whores can deal with women like her.
The next day, she sent me a message: ‘Yesterday, you didn’t use me properly.’
‘You are not a commodity for me to use,’ I replied. ‘Maybe we could have had sex if I was like you, but I don’t think my dick will ever be compatible with your hole.’”
What follows is the story of the woman you might have judged harshly from her appearance in this novel. This is her story in her own words.
“When I attained puberty, I had no idea what was happening to me. All I remember is being scared because I was bleeding. My mother just gave me a napkin and told me how to use it. She didn’t sit me down to talk; she didn’t call me aside to explain – nothing.
“She asked me out of the blue one day, ‘Have you bled these past three months?’
“Surprised, I said, ‘No, I haven’t.’
“‘What? Nothing? Nothing for three months?’
“‘No, Amma.”
“Diwakar, a family friend who’d been staying with us butted in. ‘So young and she’s spread her legs already. I keep telling you that she’s running about and rolling around with all kinds of fellows. After you leave the house, she abuses me in such vile and obscene language.’ He continued in this vein for a while.
“‘I shall take you to a doctor,’ my mother said grimly.
“Diwakar picked me up from school on the day my mother was supposed to take me to the doctor. He told me my mother was waiting in the hospital. However, when we arrived, she was nowhere in sight.
“‘She will come. You go on inside,’ he told me, pulling the doctor aside and speaking to him in hushed tones.
“There were three nurses inside the room. I still haven’t forgotten their contemptuous stares. I don’t think I ever will.
“‘Take off your clothes,’ one of them said.
“I began to cry. How could they ask me to remove my clothes in front of them? What were they planning to do to me?
“The second nurse said, ‘We all know you’ve done much more than you seem capable of doing. Come on now, be quick!’
“Shivering uncontrollably, I removed my school uniform.
“The nurse forced me to lie down and inserted a gloved hand into my vagina. The pain was so unbearable that I screamed aloud and clutched the hand of the nurse standing beside me.
“‘Chee!’ she spat, snatching her hand away like filth had touched her.
“I was a newly-matured thirteen-year-old girl being subjected to such an ordeal by a nurse. Would you like to imagine that, dear Reader? You who have been judging me until this page?
“It was not just my body they violated. They shattered my mind as well. After a few minutes that felt like an eternity of agony, the nurse, pursing her lips, removed her gloved hand. She went outside and spoke to Diwakar.
“‘Oh, so she wasn’t pregnant?’ I heard him say.
“Only when I married did I begin to feel shame and humiliation when I thought back on this incident.
“Sometime after my marriage, I befriended a gynecologist who had a different story to tell. She told me that she was approached by a number of schoolgirls seeking abortions and when I expressed my disbelief, she took me to her clinic to prove her claim. The girls who came to her were really no more than fourteen or fifteen.
“‘I scrape teenagers’ wombs from morning to night,’ she told me. ‘I have to dirty my conscience just so these girls will not tie nooses around their necks or get disowned or stoned to death. Do you know how it makes me feel to see little bloody arms and legs?’
When I heard her story for the first time, I asked her, “Why didn’t you tell your father anything?”
She’d never reply.
When I didn’t drop the question, she told me, “Udhaya, my father was a short-tempered man. I didn’t want to cause trouble in the family.”
When I tried to get her to tell me more, she said, “I can’t talk about it, Udhaya. I don’t know why.”
She put her head in my lap.
“Woman, don’t cry now,” I said, kissing her gently. “I’ll be your father; I’ll be your mother; I’ll be anything you want me to be.”
Chapter Seventeen
1 – Mind over Matter
When I returned to Nagore to do some research for this novel, I heard people saying that Siva’s madness had gotten worse. Apparently he was no longer Amba; he had taken to wearing saffron clothes, sported a beard and a moustache and wore a rudraksha. Physically, however, he remained undiminished. I started to wonder what he ate, and, like a telepathic connection had been forged between us, I got the answer.
“Udhaya, this body is just a shell. Once the kooththan which resides within it leaves, it is nothing but carrion; a scorned thing. Have you heard of Karuvoor Siddhan who sculpted the statue in Chidambaram in one hour? Lord Shiva himself used to tremble before him. Karuvooran would stand outside the temple and call out to Shiva and if there was no response from the inside, he’d leave at once, declaring that Shiva was not present in the temple.
“When Karuvooran went to Srirangam, he crossed paths with a dasi called Aparanji. Praising her knowledge, he gifted her a navratna necklace which he had received from Sreeranganathar* and said, ‘Whenever you think of me, I will appear before you.’ Aparanji went to the temple where everyone was looking for the necklace. When they saw it round her neck, they started interrogating her. She told them it was a gift from Karuvoorar and she called him to bear witness to this. Karuvoorar instantly appeared before her, but no one believed him either. Ultimately, the god Ranganathar himself came to his defense.
“As Karuvoorar’s fame spread, certain people became jealous and plotted to kill him. When conspiracies didn’t work, they decided to kill him openly and gave chase to him. Karuvoorar found safety in the Aanilayappar Temple where he embraced the deity. The moment he did, his body vanished into thin air. You see, Udhaya, Karuvoorar renounce his corporeal form and today he sits before you, having possessed the body of the person you are now speaking to. You have been good in your previous birth which is why I have chosen to speak to you and reveal the truth to you. Thus far, I have given my darshan to seven people and I am not bothered in the slightest about the fools in this town who call me a fool.”
Wow! Siva is talking like Karuvoorar himself!
“Yes, Udhaya. How does it feel to know the truth?”
Damn! He knows what I’m thinking!
He laughed and continued.
“In my hut, you are transparent. You can conceal nothing from me. Your mind is like a mirror with its veil drawn aside. I can see your thoughts so clearly.
“Ashta sithukkal are the eight siddhis – supernatural powers – that lie within our root chakra.
The first siddhi is anima – the power to transform oneself into an infinitesimally small particle. Bhrungi, a sage, worshipped only Shiva. One day, when Shiva and his consort Uma were in Kailash, Vishnu, Brahma, Indra and his devas, the 41,000 sages, the ashta vasus and every other celestial being bowed before them. Bhrungi genuflected only before Shiva. An infuriated Uma took the ardhanaari form the next day. In response
, the unruffled Bhrungi turned himself into a wasp, drilled a hole in the female half and flew around the male half alone. Furious, Uma demanded an explanation of the sage’s behavior whereupon Shiva said, “Bhrungi seeks only moksha, not good fortune, which is why he only honors me and not you.” So Uma says to Bhrungi, “I gave you my flesh and my blood. Return them to me!” Bhrungi returned the flesh and the blood and was left in a vegetative state. On seeing him thus, Shiva pitied him and gave him a third leg which is why you will find Bhrungi standing on three legs in Shiva temples.
Mahima is the power to enlarge a small object. The Lord used the mahima siddhi on his feet in order to measure the world.
Lahima is the power to become weightless like the air that blows. When Thirunavukkarasar was tied to a stone and immersed in the ocean due to a religious dispute, he saved himself from drowning by using the lahima siddhi to transform the stone into a float.
Harima is the converse of lahima. When the Lord went to Amarneethi Nayanar to obtain his loincloth, he was unable to balance the weight of the cloth even with the entirety of his possessions. He resorted to the harima siddhi that made him and his wife heavier. When they sat on the balance, the scales were balanced.
Prapthi is the ability to travel anywhere and everywhere without hindrance or restraint. The Thiruvilayadal purana contains a song explaining it. The song can be found under the section Ellam Valla Sitharana Padalam. Paranjothi says that throwing his stick into the air, he made it stand upright. He then places a needle atop the stick in the same upright fashion. He balances himself on the needle, standing still and on the tip of his toe. He inverts himself on the needle and whirls around.
Thayumanavar sings a song whose words in translation go thus: “One can master an elephant in musth, bind shut the jaws of a beast, mount a lion, or subdue a serpent; feed mercury to the flames and make gold and prosperity for oneself.
“One can travel the world unseen, make menservants of gods and handmaidens of goddesses; one can remain in perpetual youth, and jump bodies.
“One can walk on water and not drown and sit on fire and not burn.
“But more difficult than all of these put together is the power of mastery over the mind, the power to still oneself, the power to do nothing.”
With the aid of pirakamiyam, you will be able to assume the physical form of another in addition to being able to appear before the person who thinks of you. This was how Avvaiyar assumed the form of an old woman in her youth and also how Karaikal Ammaiyar transformed her beautiful self into a ghoul.
Eesathwam is the ability to attain a form that is worshipped even by the gods. Using this siddhi, Gnanasampanthar at Mylapore restored Poompavai’s ashes to life.
Vasitwam is the ability to take on the seven fold appearance of god: human, animal, avian and reptilian, arboreal, planetary and astral. It was through vasitwam that Thirunavukkarasar stopped the elephant that was on the verge of killing him and how Rama stopped the noisy twittering of the birds on the banyan tree.
Siddha is comprised of five disciplines: yoga, medicine, vatham, astrology and mantra. The ashta sithukkal pertain to the discipline of mantra. The ashta sithukkal are known by a number of names:
Vasiyam (effects mojo)
Mohanam (effects desire)
Sthambam (stuns a foe)
Akrushanam (effects mojo on angels)
Uchchaadanam (chases away a foe)
Bhedanam (brings about confusion)
Vidhweshanam (sows misunderstanding among friends)
Maranam (brings about death via black magic)
There are eight kinds of vasiyam: jana vasiyam, raja vasiyam, purusha vasiyam, sthree vasiyam, miruga vasiyam, deva vasiyam, shatru vasiyam and loka vasiyam. These are all practicable, but the effecting mantras were never revealed to humanity by Karuvoorar for its own good.”
2 – G-string
Before I met Anjali, I never knew that there was such an accessory called a stole. As far as I was concerned, “stole” was the past tense of “steal.” Anjali and I weren’t able to have much of a conversation when we met for the first time in the Tamil bookshop in La Chappelle, so she asked me to meet her the next day at a café. It was an unforgettable meeting for both of us. I reached the café ahead of time and was waiting outside when a bus stopped and a woman got off. She smiled and waved. I turned around to look if there was someone behind me and when I saw no one, I realized she was smiling and waving at me. I managed a tentative smile as I couldn’t believe that the glamorous creature in front of me was the same woman I’d seen the previous day. She was dressed in a pair of jeans, a white t-shirt and around her shoulders was a very curious dupatta that looked like an extra-long muffler. I just assumed that in France, dupatta-muffler hybrids were meant to be worn with casual clothes.
When I next met Anjali, I asked her about the dupatta-muffler.
“It’s not a dupatta or a muffler or a dupatta-muffler,” she told me. “It’s called a stole.”
She was wearing a skirt then and her hips swayed like a pendulum and the sight of them inflamed me.
Anjali contributed much to my meager knowledge of women’s clothing.
We went to a clothing store to shop for her and she gave me a lesson there. She indicated a skintight stretchy piece of clothing that resembled a swimsuit and said “That’s called a leotard. Gets its name from Jules Léotard, the French acrobat.”
How Udhaya has fallen! It distresses me so greatly! (I say this with my hand on my heart.) He used to write about Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum and now he’s writing about another kind of pendulum. He used to write essays on Jean-François Lyotard that discussed his concept of “End of Grand Narratives” and now he’s writing about Leotards that women wear. Empires have fallen because of women. Can Udhaya be any different?
My most fascinating lesson by far was the lesson on the g-string, a postmodern version of the Indian loincloth. Do you know why it’s important? It was created so that women can wear sexy clothes without worrying about their panty-lines showing. The g-string is like a fig leaf with strings. Now, there was a g-string revolution which is comparable to all other revolutions in the world. This revolution took the g-string, chopped off its strings, and transformed it into the c-string. The c-string is the world’s smallest panty and it’s shaped like a crescent moon. It’s like a fig leaf with a tail, that’s all.
“Won’t it fall off?” I asked Anjali.
“Not likely,” she said.
So I asked her to show me how women wore c-strings and she shyly obliged.
After the c-string I don’t think there can be anymore revolutions – at least where women’s panties are concerned.
One day I went to Delhi’s Khan Market. The entire place was full of women wearing tiny shorts. They say the real estate value of Khan Market is equal to that of USA’s Manhattan. Perhaps the price of land had an inverse relationship with the length of women’s pants.
I mentioned this to Anjali over the phone. She stunned me when she said that she loved shorts. I’d never seen her in shorts but I still imagined she’d look gorgeous in them.
“So, you’re enjoying the sight of women’s thighs, huh?” she asked me.
“I wouldn’t be a man if I said no, would I?” I replied. “Which man wouldn’t enjoy the sight of sexy thighs? But you know what? I think we’re visually raping women. And I’ve been dying to ask: Do women wear skimpy clothes because they’re exhibitionists? What’s the psychology behind the wearing of revealing attire?”
She told me that most women dress to compete with other women and to keep up with the latest fashion trends. She also told me another very interesting thing. Women fear women when it comes to clothes and body shape. A woman will feel reluctant to take off her clothes in front of another woman because she fears her body will be judged. There is no such reluctance with a man because a man will tell a w
oman she is beautiful like no other even if she has a lousy figure.
3 – Sitting on a Throne of Lies
When I visited Paris in 2001, I saw a most intriguing sight. A young woman – she wouldn’t have been more than twenty-five – was urinating near a platform in the Montparnasse Metro, her pants around her ankles. This she was unabashedly doing in broad daylight. When I pointed this out to my friend, he told me, “She’s doing it here to avoid going to the fifth level, searching for the toilet and fishing out change from her purse. Nobody bats an eyelash at the sight of pubes or an ass here.”
“I want to kiss her piss,” I told him.
Only people who live in a master-slave country like India will understand why I wanted to do something so extreme. For me, that girl’s urine was a symbol of pure freedom. In India, if you are found loitering on the roads at night, the cops will haul you off to the station for suspicious behavior.
After I wrote about the Montparnasse incident, one of my friends, a frequent flyer to Paris, asked me, “Is there no end to the lies you tell?” Well, here’s the thing. Even if he’d visited Paris a hundred times, he would never have seen what I saw because affluent chaps like him take the number one route while ordinary folks like me take the number nine. When I told him this, his sarcastic response was, “Whatever you say.” As far as he was concerned, what I had written was nothing but a fib.
Before I met Anjali, I’d been to Paris only twice, but for forty years, my life has been revolving round French literature and cinema. This is how I know the story of every stone in Paris. I could fill a thousand pages with stories about the Notre Dame Cathedral. When I stood before the cathedral, Quasimodo’s story played like a motion picture before my eyes.
When I visited Notre Dame in 2006, I saw a statue of a saint with his head in his hands – Saint Denis. This saint was a Catholic bishop who was beheaded by the Romans who were angered by the number of conversions he was effecting. Denis is believed to have picked up his severed head and walked a great distance before giving up his ghost. The head kept speaking as he walked.
Marginal Man Page 38