Though he was involved in several harami activities, Kokkarakko was a good student. He took part in debates, essay competitions, Thirukkural competitions and elocutions, winning medals and certificates that brought glory and fame to his school. He was the principal’s pet and there was hardly a day his name was not mentioned after the morning prayer for all to hear.
In those days, there were close ties between students and Tamil teachers. Kokkarakko had a Tamil teacher in the sixth grade who, according to him, was one hell of a beauty. The teacher was young and her son was in the same class. As Kokkarakko used to win many prizes, the teacher was very fond of him. Once, he took part in an interstate elocution competition and won the first place for the topic, “Bharatidasan: The Greatest Poet in the World.” Kamban, Thiruvalluvar, Ilango Adigal and all the others failed to impress. The Tamil teacher summoned Kokkarakko to her side and kissed him on the cheek. Kokkarakko was unable to sleep that night. The next day, he went to the teacher’s son and told him, “I am in love with your mother and I’m going to marry her.” The news spread like wildfire and the librarian came to know of it. Kokkarakko was summoned to the library as that was where inquisitions were held.
“Stand on the bench,” said the librarian.
A teacher interrupted him saying, “Wait, let’s find out what happened.” Turning to Kokkarakko, he asked him, “What did you say about the Tamil teacher?”
“Nothing saar. Only that I love her and that I am going to marry her.”
All the teachers laughed and the harami was not punished.
He also had a Tamil teacher called Muthiah in the higher classes. The man would force the boys to speak chaste Tamil while liberally using English himself. He had a penchant for using the invented word “soiing” to describe the movement of vehicles. The boys therefore nicknamed him “soiing.” When he came to know that he was being mocked, he stopped using the word. Still, whenever he came close to using it, the boys would stare at him expectantly and this made him nervous.
One day Muthiah had to talk about planes.
The blame for the incident I am about to narrate lies squarely on the shoulders of Ilango Adigal who wrote Silappatikaram and not on Kokkarakko’s, though he was a harami. Adigal speaks of Kannagi traveling by air with her husband Kovalan who had died a fortnight ago. When the teacher was reciting the lines of the text, Kokkarakko uttered the word “soiing” thrice.
Muthiah said, “There is the vaanavoorthi that is mentioned in Seevaka Chinthamani. Sachanthan, who creates a peacock-shaped flying machine, teaches his wife, Visayai, to fly it. But she is unable to operate it properly and it lands in the cemetery.”
“Soiing, soiing, soiing.”
“The westerners invented the airplane only recently–”
“Soiing, soiing, soiing.”
“– but our ancestors had already invented aircraft centuries ago.”
“Soiing, soiing, soiing.”
“Similarly, the Ramayana also features an airplane –”
Muthiah didn’t even finish his sentence, but Kokkarakko continued to repeat his soiing-mantra imitating the sound of the airplane. All the students laughed and the teacher turned to glare at him, trembling with anger.
The classroom had a dais where the teacher stood and taught. It had two steps too. Muthaiah was drenched in sweat and his face insipid. Breathing hard, he bent down to remove his slipper to beat Kokkarakko, but when he tried to stand upright, he found that he couldn’t move at all. He stood there, half-bent, the slipper dangling precariously in his hand. He made another effort to rise but he suddenly collapsed. The students ran to the teacher and revived him by sprinkling water on his face. They gave him a soda to drink. Kokkarakko sat unfazed, while all this chaos was unfolding.
He was taken to the headmaster who said, “You fool! What have you been up to? I’m hearing people complain a lot about you these days. What were you doing in class?”
“I didn’t do anything, saar. Muthiah saar was teaching us about airplanes in a very interesting manner and I only said ‘soiing’ to make it even more interesting.”
Muthiah, who was quite alright then, butted in saying, “Don’t believe him, saar. He used the word mockingly and repeated it several times.”
“Saar, airplane goes soiing only, no? That’s why I said it.”
“Saar, Saar, Look! How many times he says ‘soiing’ in front of you!”
The headmaster was amused.
“Get lost, you useless fellow!” he said, sending him off with an indulgent smile. If he called anyone a useless fellow, it meant he was in a jolly mood.
That was the last and after that Muthaiah never set his foot in that class.
When he was still in school, Kokkarakko used to scalp tickets to earn money for cigarettes and drinks. It was a risky endeavor as there were rowdies who did this as a full-time job. To escape them, he developed some strategies. As he wore a school uniform, the rowdies did not suspect him. Sometimes he would ask the customer to meet him at a building near the theatre and sell the tickets secretly. Or he would approach the rowdies themselves and say, “Anney, my friends and I bought these tickets so that we could see the movie, but they didn’t turn up. Can you buy them?” They’d buy the tickets from him for twenty-five and sell it for fifty. He was a smart and a crooked harami who knew many tricks of the trade. He knew that tickets for movies starring Kamal or Rajini had to be sold for higher prices than tickets for Vijaykanth and Satyaraj starrers. The story of how Kokkarakko bought tickets for movies like Iruvar, Kuruthi Punal, Indian and Muthu and later resold them at a profit should be etched in stone like the Kalinga edicts. There is no place here for all that; besides, this is not Kokkarakko’s novel.
As far as he was concerned, ticket scalping was a good solution for his money problems. The main reason why this illegal business thrives in Tamil Nadu is the attitude of the Tamils. It works like this: The day before a holiday, they decide to sit and sleep at home. On the day of the holiday, at around four in the evening, they are hell bent on going to the cinema. If they plan in advance, they can buy the tickets legally and cheap, but the Tamils just don’t care. Hence, one can do roaring business as a ticket reseller.
Another solution to solve his fiscal problems was stealing from his mother’s purse. He followed a new technique. He would take money and hide it in the different section of the same purse itself. If there was no talk about the missing money for a whole week, he would take it.
He had his first drink when he was in the ninth grade. There were several boys willing to give him company and they formed a gang. People who gave him bland and unsatisfactory reasons for not wanting to join were punished by Kokkarakko.
Nowadays, herbal remedies for impotence – siddha, ayurveda and unani – are available everywhere and are heavily and openly advertised in the media. In Kokkarakko’s salad days, these medicines were not only used by men but also by men who had become debilitated and weak due to frequent masturbation. Amulets were also popular. All of this could be ordered through a letter to the company and your package would be sent by VPP and the money would be paid on delivery.
Kokkarakko meted out innovative punishments to boys he had bad blood with. He would send a letter to the company that sold medicines for impotency using the name and the address of the offender. The aphrodisiacs would arrive by VPP. As the boy would be in school, the parcel would be received by his confused father who would have to shell out two hundred rupees. When the father opened the box and realized what its contents were, he would scream at his wife, “Woman! Look at what your scoundrel of a son is up to!” The couple would then shout recriminations at each other and eventually settle down to wait in grim silence for their wayward son who, like a meek lamb, would amble in after a tiring day at school only to realize he’d stepped into a warzone. Around a dozen members of Kokkarakko’s gang had endured this punishment.
This incident
happened when he was sixteen years old. Those were the days when people could smoke cigarettes in movie theaters. Though there was a law that forbade people from lighting up there, it was ignored by most people. At that time, a young police officer was posted in Chidambaram. The young ones are always idealistic and patriotic. They believe that all it takes to make the country super power is to nab ‘criminals’ who ride doubles on a bicycle, and who demand a bribe of fifty bucks and throw their asses in prison. This particular police officer had gone to Singapore to see his family and returned with the lofty dream of turning India into another Singapore. One day, he saw some men lighting cigarettes in the movie theater in Chidambaram. He stormed the theater with his men and hauled the offenders in lock-up – one of them was Kokkarakko. He argued that the police made it difficult to have a smoke anywhere in town. The cigarette vendor himself would curse him: “Hardly out of his nappies and he wants to smoke!” And when he sought a secluded place, there was the probability of him running into one of his father’s friends. Under such circumstances, the best place to smoke was obviously the movie theater. Even in lock-up, Kokkarakko managed to smoke.
The lone policeman in the station was fast asleep. Kokkarakko’s parents had not been informed and they’d worry if he didn’t return home at night. Silently, he inched his way closer to the phone on the table and called his friend. “Go home and tell my folks that I’m studying at a friend’s place and won’t be going home tonight.”
The next morning, when the senior officer arrived at the station, Kokkarakko begged him with narrowed eyes and folded hands, “Saar, today we have our practical exam. Please let us go. We won’t do it again.” Not wanting to spoil their education, the officer let the harami and his squad go.
Kokkarakko was in the eleventh grade when a new teacher came to his school. He called Kokkarakko and asked him to get him some water. Our boy went straight to the toilet; it was a village school, so I’ll leave it to you to imagine the facilities there. Kokkarakko found an old, dirty plastic mug with a broken handle, filled it with water from the toilet tap and gave it to the teacher whose eyes reddened with fury. Through gritted teeth, the teacher said, “I too was like you once!” Unable to speak any further, he left the classroom and never set foot into the school again.
Research has claimed that Tamil Nadu has the highest proportion of suicide in all of India. Here, people commit suicide because they are forbidden from watching their favorite TV show or because of a failed love affair; students commit suicide because of bad grades; fans commit suicide because their favorite actor’s hero was a box-office failure; followers immolate themselves when their political leader is arrested (and he or she will be released the very next day which is another story). There are also those who commit suicide when their leader receives a garland of slippers from his enemies or when their parties lose elections; wives commit suicide when their husbands say mean things about their families, criticize their cooking or refuse to buy them jewels. Some others commit suicide due to failed demands for a separate state. Women commit suicide when their husbands torment them after they casually talk with male friends. There are still more who commit suicide due to headaches, backaches, and stomachaches. As the number of suicides in Tamil Nadu is very high, there are suicide prevention centers in every district. People contemplating suicide make missed calls to these centers and a representative calls back and counsels the person in an attempt to dissuade him from committing suicide. To punish an offender, Kokkarakko would simply make a missed call from the person’s number. Imagine trying to convince some stranger that you have no intention of taking your life and that you are, in fact, having the time of your life doing illegal things.
When Kokkarakko was studying in a Chennai college, he and his friends would often go to Devi Theater to watch late-night movies. The theater was quite a distance from Pazhavanthagal where he stayed. By the time the movie got over at midnight, no public transport would be available, so they would hitch a ride on some truck that was loaded with freight. But it was a terrible ordeal. They would have to sit on the load which was very uncomfortable for their bottoms. But the trucks sometimes helped them make money on the sly. If there was a hole in the packing material, they would enlarge it with their fingers and steal iron nuggets. On reaching Pazhavanthagal, they would pay the truck driver five rupees and make off with the iron which would fetch them twenty-five rupees the next day in the market.
During this time, Kokkarakko used to cook his own food. His friends were always broke, so while Kokkarakko sponsored the drinks, they would steal rice, dal, tamarind, coriander and vegetables from their homes and give it to him. This was how he subsisted.
Kokkarakko’s English was not flawless, but he knew how to speak suavely and sophisticatedly in order to get whatever it was he wanted. Whenever he wanted to have expensive drinks he couldn’t afford, he would consult the Yellow Pages directory, find the number of a star hotel and ring the bartender. “I’m a regular customer at your bar, but now I’m out of town. I’ve tried a lot of places, but none of them make cocktails the way you do. Could you tell me how to mix myself a cocktail?” Flattered, the bartenders would blurt out their recipes to him. He would buy some cheap Old Cask rum, mix it with pomegranate juice and orange juice and hey presto! The five star cocktail would be ready.
Kokkarakko used to travel by bike in those days. If he didn’t have the necessary papers on him and sufficient cash for a hefty bribe, the cops would seize his license and ask him to collect it from the station the next day. But no matter how many times he got caught, he didn’t have to go down to the station for what he gave the cops was only a photocopy of the original license and he always had four or five at the ready.
Later, he began to tackle the problem differently. He wouldn’t beg the cops to let him go, but he would park his bike in a corner and act like he was the cop’s assistant. He would stop motorists and ask them to get off their bikes. When the cop asked for their papers, he’d say, “Saar is asking, no? You’d better hand them over.” He ended up befriending the cop and he started presenting himself at the station, enquiring about his well-being. “There used to be nothing for me to do when I returned home. That way, I was able to pass my time without getting bored,” he explained. In this manner, he made several friends in the police department, including an assistant commissioner.
Kokkarakko liked to change his hairstyle often. The shaved head, the kudumi, a French beard, a luxuriant moustache, or no moustache – the experiments were many. You could even say he started a mini-revolution with his hair. He even sported a police crop once. This hairstyle accessorized with a beer belly gave him the appearance of a cop. One day, while driving on the highway, he stopped for toddy in a small village. Having mistaken him for a cop, the shop owner tried to flee. Sensing an opportunity, Kokkarakko’s friends told the shop owner that the cop had come to drink toddy and not to conduct a raid. Relieved, the fellow served them fresh and unadulterated toddy. He not only refused to take money from them, but also offered a bribe of fifty rupees. To his credit, Kokkarakko refused it.
If I write about Kokkarakko’s whoring, this novel will never end, so I will restrict myself to a couple of incidents.
On the way to Mahabalipuram, there are many cottages suitable for clandestine trysts. Even though there were boards on the beach saying that the cottages were private property, who could prevent people from hanging around there? The loiterers just found it convenient as they were spared from paying two thousand by way of rent. It was Kokkarakko’s habit to have drinks with his friends in such places. On his birthday, he went to the beach with his gang. He’d also invited a woman who arrived an hour before midnight. Telling his friends he wanted to buy her some food, he took her to a nearby casuarina grove and returned two hours later. If it wasn’t obvious, he went and had sex at midnight on his birthday.
In a village that shares borderlines with three states – Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka – can be fou
nd some of the most beautiful Indian women and they will give you sex for just three hundred rupees. The reason? Poverty. Kokkarakko’s American buddy, Robert, wanted to sleep with some Indian whores as he was tired of the homegrown variety. He had a thing for oral sex.
“Don’t worry,” Kokkarakko told him. “I know a place. I’ll take you there.”
But Robert was bitterly disappointed when the girl ran out of the room screaming blue murder when he tried to have oral sex with her.
Kokkarakko was furious. He yelled at the woman in Tamil and she yelled back in Telugu. A huge fracas ensued after which the woman returned the money.
While on a trip to Hyderabad, Kokkarakko and a couple of his friends decided to engage a modern and sophisticated whore. They rented a room in a luxury hotel and were subtle when it came to the women. Instead of just having a romp under the sheets, they were told that they were to accompany the men to a party where they would be their dance partners. The girl who was supposed to entertain Kokkarakko and his friends was from a village near Nellore. She would visit Hyderabad monthly, make some money there over a period of two days and return home. Each man had to pay her one thousand rupees. As Kokkarakko wasn’t interested in her, the other fellows agreed to pay her two thousand. While she was having sex with one of the friends in the room, Kokkarakko was sitting outside and drinking with the other friend. After the first customer walked out, the second customer walked in.
Marginal Man Page 42