Half of What I Say

by Anil Menon

  ‘Your mentality is hundred percent pure Tamil yankee bitch. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. But you—’

  ‘Did you or did you not check out the Hans Rosling link?’

  ‘What I am saying is—’

  ‘So you didn’t. Well, check it out, then we’ll talk.’

  He laughed. ‘Come here, Kanno. I missed you all week.’

  She straddled him, adjusting till her crotch was positioned directly over his growing erection. She put her arms around his neck, sought his mouth. She began to grind against him, but he stopped her. He just wanted to hold, and she wondered, amused, if the driver’s peepers had something to do with that decision.

  Nah. He genuinely seemed content to just hold her, his arm around hers, her body close to his. His necklace with its tiger tooth was uncomfortable against her chin and she moved it to one side. She told him about her day, but as usual his had been much more interesting. He hung out with more colourful characters, ran into weirder situations, dealt with more serious stakes than getting code to compile.

  He was busy organizing the morcha. It would draw attention to the Lokshakti’s unchecked power grab. It would demand a blue-ribbon panel to probe General Dorabjee’s business links and his private thug-army headed by some Small Evil called Kalki. Most importantly, it would show everyone that it was possible to protest without fear.

  ‘It’s a little bit of work,’ he said, smiling.

  She cradled his head between her breasts, feeling protective. Organizing an event with thousands of people had to be worse than death. But Sawai never lost his smile or his cool.

  ‘My man. Sawai Gawai, my man with the plan.’

  He pulled her closer. It was great to have him alone to herself. She felt like a girlfriend. It was a pleasant feeling. When others were around, he was different. Louder, more alpha, more North Indian, stupider. Like he had to show the boys he wasn’t pussy-whipped. Their car turned onto a road that quickly revealed an exclusive community. The huge houses stood much farther apart, there was almost twice as much well-watered greenery, the road signs had an American feel, and they passed a Jaguar XJ and an S-class Merc. The driveways, when visible, had three, sometimes four cars. There were hardly any people to be seen.

  The car pulled into a gravel driveway lined with bougainvillea on either side. Compared to the monsters they’d passed, the two-storey haveli wasn’t overly awesome. But Sawai fell in love at first sight. Oh, the old Delhi haveli. One day he would own one for sure, Kanno. There was no better place for a kid to grow up in, Kanno. If an elephant could become a house, then it would be a haveli, Kanno. She listened, smiling. The haveli looked like any other. The standard setup of multiple rooms, arched doorways and general Islamic mien. Plus an upper terrace from which a patriarch could shoot eloping lovers. The haveli’s exterior looked kind of neglected; peeling paint, scruffy yard and bald patches in the gravel.

  The brilliant magenta-coloured flowers along the driveway partly obscured the house’s large front window, but as they pulled up, Kannagi saw a tall lean figure set aside a book and stand up. By the time they walked up, Mir Alam Mir was standing in the doorway, smiling in that lopsided way he did. Kannagi hugged the poet. He shrank from the touch even as a delighted smile crossed his face. Mir’s body felt trim, not bony as she’d guessed it would be, and he smelled pleasantly of fresh starch and attar. From somewhere in the house, a clatter of pots, accompanied by the slow rolling syllables of Bhojpuri.

  Mir launched into a complicated story involving a bag of onions and the cook. Kannagi waited for the story to end, then began to suspect her smiles and nods were only encouraging the poet. The living room was a tall rather than large space, and its lemon-coloured walls didn’t have the expensive clusterfuck of paintings, miniatures, photographs and knick-knacks that littered Anand’s palace. One corner of the room had an obese red barca just underneath a large abstract painting of a frame and nothing but a frame. Typical People’s Studio stuff. Mir showed no sign of ending his culinary story. Finally, she had to interrupt:

  ‘Mir, I gotta tinkle.’

  ‘Tinkle? Of course, of course.’ He gestured to the hallway. ‘First room on the right. Can I get you something to drink? Hot, cold?’

  ‘Beer’s fine.’

  ‘Just beer?’ Mir’s face fell. ‘I have a ten-year-old single malt. Port Charlotte. It’s quite unique and I’m sure—okay, okay, you go, then we’ll talk.’

  She knew they’d be staying for the weekend. The place had a gentle homey vibe, as if she were returning, instead of visiting for the first time. She closed the guest room’s door behind her, pulled on a pair of shorts and a skimpy T-shirt. She checked her cell; there were lots of messages but one was particularly important. It was from John Liu: ‘More gud news frm NYU. U r on the shortlst. Hav grt weekend.’

  Will do John Awesome Liu, will do. Kannagi glanced at the mirror, pressed her nipples flat.

  When she returned to the living room, she saw Mir had already made Sawai comfortable. Ghazals in the background, some of that Port Charlotte. Then again, it didn’t matter. Sawai was comfortable no matter where he parked his butt.

  The shorts made it a pleasure to sit cross-legged on the old marbled floor. Not only were the tiles cool to her exposed skin, but Sawai’s admiring ogle and Mir’s careful disinterest was a bit titillating. Adore away, boys. She raised her arms, adjusted her hair.

  ‘The floor’s cold,’ she said, accepting the Scotch.

  Mir was a laidback host. He had a few manias—hard-selling his Scotch was one, and the need to constantly switch music CDs to give his guests a better aural experience was another—but otherwise he was content to sit in his Barca and issue suggestions to make them feel more at home. If they accepted them, fine; if not, also fine.

  This was an attitude right up Sawai’s street since he could take over as event manager. We’ll have dinner at eight-thirty if that is fine with you, Mir-ji? How about we begin with an appetizer plate? No, no, I’ll take care of it. Kanno, the sun is in your face, are you comfortable there? I smell fish—are we having fish? Surmai? From Ghazipur fish market or Chittaranjan? Good, good. Excellent. No, no, sit Mir-ji—arre Mir-sahib, please sit. I need to talk with your cook. I’m very particular about how surmai is done. Kanno, this chair is more comfortable, I’m telling you, sit here.

  ‘Did you find Durga’s files useful?’ she asked, after Sawai had left to check on the fish.

  ‘Useful?’ He weighed the word. ‘But it was a gift from you, no? The files brought back many fond memories. They helped me make a decision about my novel. I’ve realized all too late that Durga was a much better storyteller than a writer. Obvious now, but I wish my beloved friend had been less modest.’

  ‘Me too!’ She described how more than once she’d run, all excited, to Durga’s office with some result or the other, and he’d go to his file cabinet, pull out an unpublished paper with the same result. In several cases, a more general result. ‘Why didn’t you publish the paper, I’d holler, and he always replied he didn’t think it was ready.’

  Mir laughed. ‘Yes, yes, that was Durga. He must be miserable in heaven—there’s nothing to improve. He lived to improve.’

  ‘Yeah. Worse, on top of his self-censorship, now there’s the damn Lokshakti. You heard about them banning his book on Hinduism?’

  That triggered a long lecture. She admired his courtly English. It was as if he couldn’t just express ideas, he also had to dress them up beautifully before sending them out the door. Kannagi, all this stuff about Durga insulting Hinduism will shortly be exposed for the lie it is and the nation will once again honour him in kind for precisely the same quality that Clive James had praised Paul Valery: for his capacity to appreciate. Durga’s capacity to appreciate, what a capacity it had been.

  ‘Never indulge a poet.’ Mir appeared to be regretting his wordiness. Or perhaps it was just his innate khaatir-daari. ‘Tell me something, you are in computers like Durga. Do you also work on the same problems as h
e did?’

  ‘No, not quite. But it’s related. Durga worked on randomized algorithms. I work on more applied stuff. You’ve used Siri? The iPhone’s Intelligent Assistant?’ She outlined her work on Artificial Personas and how programs like Siri, or rather, the AI technology behind it, were radically changing how people related to machines. In the future, people would talk with machines rather than hammer away at keyboards. There would be no such thing as programming. You would simply outline what you needed done.

  ‘Arre wah! Talking to computers.’ Mir twirled his fingers, as if he’d just thrown a googli.

  ‘No. Talking with computers. Talking-to is the same as programming.’

  ‘Arre wah! Talking with computers.’ Mir once again twirled his fingers, as if they were re-shooting the scene. ‘But Kannagi, what will happen to programmers? I have a nephew, a somewhat dim boy but quite loving, who’s very fond of programming. Maybe I should warn him?’

  She laughed. ‘We aren’t there yet. But send him my way. I know some clowns he might like to meet.’ She described the fab-jab network, how each group picked an Indian movie as their mascot, how they came up with all sorts of projects and how the focus was always on some kind of digital implementation. ‘Durga often said that until we’re able teach a machine how to do something, we haven’t really understood how to do it.’

  ‘He had a weakness for provocation. Is the purpose of understanding making people redundant? That’s Capitalism speaking through Durga’s mouth. Marx warned us that the aim of Capitalism was to dehumanize us.’

  Kannagi unpacked the outburst. So Marx was commenting through Mir’s mouth to critique the comment that Capitalism had made through Durga’s mouth?

  ‘I don’t know about that all that,’ she confessed. ‘The way I see it Mir, human life is becoming more precious, not less. Agreed, it’s not all fun and giggles. Change never is. But if you hung out with my bachchas, then you’d see it’s going to be all right. Personally, I believe the future’s going to be awesome.’

  Mir smiled politely. It said: personally, I believe all of Arabia’s attars with their scented arts cannot disguise your future’s foetid foetor.

  ‘There are many futures.’ Mir leaned over with the bottle, looked disappointed when she covered her glass. ‘I’ll tell my nephew about the fab-jab club. Fab-jab, fab-jab. Yes, I like the sound. Thank you. Why the Indian movies?’

  ‘We needed some kind of flag. Our movies are fun. They have attitude. They aren’t afraid to be silly. And that’s the way we roll too.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mir. ‘Your generation likes to watch, not read. So do I. Durga and I often discussed the movies. We even made a Hindi movie together. Your generation’s preference is good for me. You forget, I’m in the movie business, not the novel business.’

  She confessed she hadn’t read his novel yet, but he stoutly refused to let her apologize. He swore he was glad she hadn’t wasted her time. He begged her not to read the novel. He despised it. He’d given up on the novel.

  ‘But it must be worth something if you blew five years on it,’ she said. ‘You must love something in it.’

  ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.’

  ‘Did you just make that up?’ She was utterly cowed.

  He laughed. ‘I wish. A line from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Perhaps a program will write such lines some day but would it want such a love? A love that does not alter needs lovers willing to alter. Will we allow our programs to alter at will? For love?’

  Jesus. Kannagi moved to the chair across from him, took another sip of the Port Charlotte. The liquid lingered on her tongue, smoky, earthy. She gently felt her upper lip with the tip of her tongue, savouring the warmth of the liquid trace.

  ‘The cook and I have reached an understanding.’ Sawai had come up behind her. She raised her face, kissed him. ‘What are you two talking about?’

  ‘Love. Mir said he and Durga made a Hindi movie about love. I had no idea.’ Hello! Sawai’s hand had slipped under her T-shirt and was caressing her bare stomach. Um, excuse me horny Indian toad, I’m on the same tree trunk, but we are not exactly alone. She tried to squirm away, but his hand only slipped upwards further. ‘Can I take a look at it?’ She was getting breathless. ‘Sawai!’ Apologetic smile. ‘What was the movie about, Mir?’

  ‘A love triangle, what else?’

  ‘What’s with you and triangles?’

  It was a Mitrajit-type question and it triggered a Mitrajit-type answer. She tried to pay attention but it was hard what with Sawai’s busy fingers and the blood pounding in her ear. The reader, Kannagi, blah blah dhak-dhak is a dhak-dhak blah blah demon-temptress dhak-dhak dhak-dhak an impotent God dhak-dhak blah blah dhak-dhak a voyeur.

  ‘Durga would have wanted you to see the movie,’ concluded Mir. ‘I’ll send over a CD. For your eyes only, so please.’

  But his smile included Sawai. Mir stood up, began to feel the outside of his kurta, as if searching for a smoke. Or an identity card. His feet were hidden by the settee and his tall frame obscured the large painting whose presence she hadn’t fully registered when it had been visible. But its half-revealed frame made the otherwise bare wall behind Mir seem boundless as if the poet had escaped, no longer moored by any frame of reference, an ungainly hybrid creature now generated by seeing rather than being seen.

  I really like this Scotch, she thought, inspecting her glass. A calloused finger grazed her aroused nipple. Sawai. She twisted away, but the fucker had a large hand.

  Mir inclined his head, hardly noticing them, his hand continuing to search for the pocket’s opening. ‘Please, feel free. This is your home as much as it is mine. I too am just passing by.’

  He extracted one unfiltered cigarette. He held it up for their view, adding a smile. He said something about getting a light and left the room.

  The moment Mir disappeared, Sawai’s large rough hand slid upwards, towards her right breast. She watched its progress with clinical detachment. Then she gasped.

  ‘What’s got into you?’ She laughed in delight. ‘Sawai, do you think Mir wanted us to—’

  ‘These Nawabis are kinky to the nth degree.’ Despite his authoritative tone, he appeared as bemused as her. ‘Consider this your home. I am just a passer-by—’

  ‘No: I too am just passing by. What do you think he meant?’

  ‘Who knows? Still, now we have his blessings.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ She extricated herself and headed for the Bose music system. Load Hindi songs, hit play, pull Sawai to the centre of the room.

  Dinner turned out to have been worth waiting for. Kababs with fresh mint, caramelized onions, and a paste of soya sauce, tomato sauce, mustard and pepper. A vegetable sabzi of green peppers and cherry tomatoes in olive oil and herb dressing. Basmati rice bustling around like a kindly unmarried aunt in white. Hot and sour surmai curry. And at the end, a choice between Mejdool dates and a simple mango kulfi.

  She chose the Scotch.

  The night was cool with few mosquitoes and they moved to the porch. Mir was seated in a rattan armchair, smoking. The only other piece of furniture was a long sofa, also rattan, fat with cushions and the sunburnt odour of benign neglect. Kannagi leaned her head against Sawai’s torso, conscious of the weight of his muscular farmer’s arm on her chest.

  She thought, this is the kind of evening I want my life to be filled with. Good food, interesting friends, passion. She took a sip.

  ‘Mir, it’s wonderful, this Scotch. Kinda smoky.’

  Mir flushed with satisfaction. Kannagi learned she was drinking a single malt known for its high peatiness. Peat was a kind of rotting organic matter, mostly vegetation. Peat fires were used to sweat out malt barley, hence the smoky taste. She was tasting a purifying fire.

  ‘But the ras of the fire is not in the liquid. You understand? The ras is your creation. The Scotch is only enabling you to enjoy the ras.’

  She had thought ‘ras’ referred to fruit pulp, like mango pulp, but Mir
said dismissively that it was just one of the many meanings. She gathered ras was something like ‘savour’, but Mir said, no, that didn’t quite capture it. She tried others, but he resisted all equivalents. It didn’t help that Sawai encouraged his intractability.

  ‘The English translation of ras is ras,’ said Mir, firmly.

  ‘True, very true Mir-saab, very true.’

  Mir sat back, pleased. ‘Will your future include ras, Kannagi? Will it have machines who can appreciate scotch the way we do?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Machines?’

  ‘Yeah, machines. Why not? I’m not an expert on this ras business but I can imagine robots with artificial tongues who’ll be able to appreciate things we don’t have a clue about.’

  ‘Impossible! Kannagi, that’s impossible. Appreciation is a creative act. Your machines, your artificial people—’

  ‘Artificial personas, Mir meri-jaan.’ The scotch was giving her a sweet little buzz. ‘And about this creativity stuff. Again, not an expert, but I can tell you how my personas go about creating art.’

  She explained that kolam diagrams were both structured and flexible. A lot like an English sentence. In fact, a kolam diagram could be thought of as a sentence from a pictorial grammar. A Tamil mathematician called Gift Siromany had worked out this grammar in the nineties. The artificial personas, basically AI programs connected to drafting printers, took Kannagi’s specs and used the grammar to produce a diagram. But a grammar could produce infinite sentences. So the personas had to make choices. Each choice influenced the next choice they made. The result was that each persona quickly developed an identifiable style.

  ‘I have about ten personas and even if I gave them the same specifications, I’d still get ten very different kolams. It’s kinda neat.’