by Anil Menon
‘I told you she’s a genius,’ boasted Sawai.
Kannagi gave him a kiss. Ooh. A static spark there.
‘My eyes thirst to see your wondrous works, Kannagi.’ Mir steepled his hands, lost in thought.
‘Okay, now you’re making fun of me.’
‘No, no. Please send me some samples of your art.’
‘Sure. But I gotta warn you. My friends at the Studio didn’t think it was art. They kept saying, oh this is Boorzua, it is Boorzua. I didn’t know what they were complaining about, so I said, cool, that’s what I’ll call it, Boorzua art.’
‘I have stood at thresholds all my life, Kannagi. You’ll find me more open-minded about kolams. I wonder, your personas or their children, will they be able to write stories one day? Will I be able to download a great novelist, set the bastard to work on a masterpiece, just for me?’
He sounded depressed.
‘It’s a long ways off,’ said Kannagi.
‘But it’s possible.’
‘Yeah. More than possible. Future definite. We evolved to write stories, so why can’t our creations?’
Mir sighed.
‘But you scientists must respect public’s feelings also,’ said Sawai, authoritatively. His forearm was busy, rubbing gently back and forth against her right breast like some sort of hairy pendulum. ‘My humble opinion, which the public also shares I feel, is this: say what you want about your father’s property, but not about my holy stories. That’s reasonable.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Kannagi, irritated. He was once again turning her on. ‘Truth is more important than your bloody stories.’
‘You’re wrong there.’ Sawai continued his subversive frotting. ‘Public is at the mercy of those who control the stories. And it is all a story. My Aayi believes my ancestor is Maharishi Kutsa. When I was a child, some nights she would tell me about Kutsa, his best friend Indra, and their antics, as if she’d been an eyewitness. That is mythological story. I talk to my father and he tells me we came from Satara, from such and such village. That is historical story. Kanno, you tell me I’m descended from a monkey. That is evolutionary story. True or not?’
‘False! The story of evolution is that there is no story. That’s what Darwin was trying to say. There are no plot arcs, no themes, no villains, no heroes, no goals, no gods, no justice, no happy-happy endings. We don’t need a story to explain how living things came about. And it’s not just evolution. Take Physics. Things like lightning, fire, eclipses, how planets were formed—we used to have stories for all that. Now we have something better. We have equations. A story is just a placeholder until something really useful comes along. I’m not saying stories aren’t useful. They are. It’s like sugar. You take facts, sprinkle a little story, and everything becomes easier to chow down. The trouble starts when you can’t do without the sugar.’
‘Provocative!’ Mir grimaced horribly in delight. He poured himself a small peg. ‘Tell me, do you live your philosophy? Have you taught your brain not to dream?’
‘No,’ admitted Kannagi. ‘You got me there.’
‘Adaab, Mir-saab, adaab,’ said Sawai with satisfaction. You’ve no idea how hard it is to win an argument with her. Kanno, if you banish stories, what will we politicians do?’
I don’t want to banish stories, she was going to reply, but Sawai had lowered his head and his lips were too temptingly close. She turned her head, kissed him, and tasted mango and saffron. He was a good kisser, patient and playful.
She waited for him to break the kiss but he didn’t so she increased the stake, flickering her tongue’s tip under the soft arch of his lips.
She felt the familiar unmooring of her consciousness, a melting away as it were, and despite her resolve to pull away, to put a stop to this, it’s not right,
not in public, such a dirty girl,
but it felt so good, his tongue in her mouth, filling her, and she began to shake, clutching at his white shirt ... yes!
as his hand slipped into her shorts, she drew her breath in sharply, choking, flattening her stomach and unwittingly easing the need’s descent into her cotton panties ... no, no, oh god
as she tried to wrench her mouth away from his, her thighs opened and his forefinger, lazily, casually, dipped into her wetness, entered. She clamped her legs violently, then spread them again, moaning, all resistance abandoned
as he broke the kiss, began to ease his hand out, there, it was gone, just like that, the fingers slipping out of her panties, out of her shorts, a daub of wetness over her navel, slid up her T-shirt, curling around her right breast, then a hard squeeze that wasn’t painful enough, and
as she lay there dissolute, legs spread, lips on fire, T-shirt half-pulled up, right breast exposed, swollen nipple, her gaze locked on Mir’s inscrutable face and she was flooded with a desire to give.
Kannagi threw her arms around Sawai’s neck, drew his head towards her, Mir’s just a passer-by, let him be, how tender Sawai’s gaze, but she knew the dirty fuck animal, her animal, put his hand where it belonged, between her legs, and sought an unframed privacy in yet another unstoried kiss, impossible to tell.
10
‘WHO’S THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN OF ALL?’ ASKED PADMA, with satisfaction.
He smiled. He was glad to be her truth-telling mirror. He was glad Padma had pressured him to attend the 10th Annual IAPTA Fashion Show party. He was glad Eshwar Pillai was in town. He was glad Eshwar couldn’t stop ogling his wife.
He is glad because he understands how a man might dream of an unattainable woman. His name isn’t important, but it is convenient to give the woman a name. Kannagi. His dream isn’t a wishful one; that is, Kannagi is as real as he is. Perhaps he first met her in his Columbia University days and they had been that hard-to-define thing: a newbie couple.
The past is infinitely supple and flexible; the future, not so much, and the present is practically set in stone. Kannagi, Kannagi, Kannagi. Having invoked it in the present, it seems he’s never been able to invoke it enough. Kannagi is exactly as she used to be. Five foot two, dark as Tamil, glowing with energy, attitude, hundred dollar Fendis, stylish black jacket, Guess corset top, designer jeans, her small brown boobs jiggling as she moves towards him.
He doesn’t mention the jiggling brown boobs to his wife. What he says is this: I had a dream we were at this restaurant and bumped into an old girlfriend.
Now there are several possibilities as to how Padma will reply. She could say: oh God, not your mother-dream again. Padma has a snarky sense of humour, which always used to catch her daddu by surprise since he’d raised her to be a nice Indian lady. Of course, it is not necessary to assume Padma had always been Indian. She is certainly Indian now.
‘Kannagi’ suggests any number of things. It certainly suggests she is South Indian. That is true. To be precise, she could be Sri Lankan. Or Tamilian. For instance, her Tamilian father had first been a Sri Lankan refugee, then an Indian citizen, then a consulate officer in San Francisco, then they’d been NRIs, Kannagi had straddled cultures, languages, time zones, all thoroughly confusing, until she made up her mind.
There’s another possibility. Kannagi had been a film major at Columbia, he’d been struggling in the Business school, he’d returned to India, they’d lost touch, it had been the pre-Facebook era, et cetera. This has happened to many people.
He believes Tamil women to be the most beautiful in the world. It is true they combine the best of Aryan and Dravidian features, but honestly, aren’t such statements usually based on prejudice? For Tamil, he could just as easily have substituted, say, ‘Kampuchean’, and leave the truth undisturbed. In any event, he may share this preference with Padma, who has participated in beauty contests and therefore considers herself an expert on feminine beauty.
If her broad-mindedness divides them, it can also unite them. Some of their most humourous couple moments must be when they simultaneously check out women at malls. She knows his type and sometimes points them out. There’s one, she
’ll say, with a nudge. Padma thinks they’re all variations of the word ‘voluptuous’, whereas he isn’t sure if they aren’t all variations of a certain bra-less aunty from his childhood.
On the other hand, he doesn’t know her type even if he thinks he does, which provides Padma with a lot of amusement. Naturally, Padma wouldn’t dream of doing anything disreputable. As a middle-class Indian woman from a respectable family—is there any other kind?—she’s probably been conditioned to think pleasure arises from straying within boundaries. Padma is merely honest about what she feels, which is one reason he may have fallen in love with her. There is another possibility. To an intimate friend, the man says: Of course I love Padma, I love ruins.
In any case, what Padma will actually say if he mentions his dream is this: I don’t dream of fucking other men.
Which is certainly true, though rather crude. It is a sign Padma is now confident about sex. In the early days of their marriage, it seems Padma couldn’t bring herself to mouth that one-eyed devil word: ‘cock.’ One plausible explanation is that she dislikes the vulgar sound of the word. But the real reason is that it’s because her husband doesn’t have a cock. He has a ‘someone’. As in: someone’s excited, someone wants to come in, someone doesn’t agree. Awkward, to say the least.
Kannagi couldn’t have been awkward; it is un-American to be awkward. There’s no reason to doubt either of the last two statements. In any case, she didn’t think she was attracted to Indian men. But there’s no predicting either passion or plumbing. Or perhaps it is simply that any couple will happen, given enough time and proximity; both Mrs Thatcher and Kim Il-Sung have expired, so it is hard to be certain.
Speculatively, if Kannagi and he had been roomies, chillax friends, hash buddies, then they’re basically just one great picnic or concert or fun-night away from dry-humping each other like demented intercaste rabbits. Later, their other two roomies, Josh, an American, and Salah, an Egyptian, would beg them to layoff on the Whitney Houston they played to mask their animal sounds. So perhaps Kannagi had been coy after all.
But what does it matter what Kannagi is or isn’t? It might be more relevant to inquire why he feels dissatisfied and not reassured. Padma isn’t a ruin in the physical sense, he doesn’t think that. Padma turns a lot of heads. No, she’s a ruin in a different sense. Maybe it is what she’s made of her life. Padma, a former Miss Maharashtra, a Miss India runner-up! She might claim to have studied with Uma Sharma, performed onstage with Padmini Kolhapure, but if so, all she’s taken away from the experience is that she has their phone numbers. Why hadn’t she pushed herself ? Her daddu hadn’t approved of hanging around studios, that demanding Subhash Ghai, daddu had worried so much, it wasn’t good for daddu’s heart. Daddu refused to eat, wouldn’t sleep! There were escorts, taxis, expenses of all sorts, cannibals to worry about, it was all so very inconvenient. She had caved in. Her husband was so very wealthy, where was the need to work? All very good reasons, of course.
That is the problem, isn’t it? Our chikoo sultans, their black hearts hidden in the sweetest pulp. He doesn’t blame Padma. What exactly would she have been rebelling against? There’s no enemy on the other side. He thinks desi women are like Arjun on the battlefield, besieged on all sides by love. Padma lowered her bow. He can’t blame her.
He could though. He can shout and rant, hurl curses at ‘the System’, cajole her to be more than she can be, perhaps he even arranges a screen test with Ekta Kapoor for a daytime soap and how satisfied she’d be with Ekta’s gentle turndown, but in the midst of his rant, she may say complacently: you’re just like daddu, always watching out for me. Or: I love you, you’re so supportive.
She says this often, which is tolerable, but he suspects she means it, which isn’t. He could bear it if she didn’t love him. If she saw this life as an extension of childhood’s prison, he’d kiss her feet. He could respect her if she hated him, his native kind, his judgment, his superciliousness, his dismissal of her necessities. But she is so content. So much aptitude, so much education, so many advantages, and so little to show for it all. Of course, she could ask:
‘What do you want me to do?’
But if you need to ask that question, it is already a tragedy isn’t it? What does it matter what he wants her to do? Kannagi doesn’t care what any man wants her to do. For her final year, she shot a zombie movie in the Amazon, won awards, worked as James Cameron’s assistant, took off into the stratosphere. No one would be surprised if all this was true; Kannagi is the kind of woman who attracts those kinds of histories. In contrast, Padma is a placeholder. She’s a caste, a tribe, a colour, a gender, someone’s ideal. She’s all the music she’s been told to enjoy, all the books she’s supposed to have read, all the grades she was told to attain. There is no Padma.
If there is no Padma, then it raises new possibilities. Perhaps the man never left the US. Perhaps he turned American, joined a prestigious Business faculty, enjoys a casual relationship with Kannagi, and only occasionally dreams of an alternate life, one in which he is Indian, has forgotten everything and has had an arranged marriage with an endangered species. In that life, he might awaken, turn to Kannagi, perhaps sitting cross-legged on the bed worrying over a script, and say—well, so on and so forth.
That may be true. He collects ruined things, cherishes them. His bathroom is filled with proofs. Ruins must mean something else for this man. But what? If prompted, doubtless he will offer his reasons. It is highly likely that in his many speeches, inspirational mythologies for the young entrepreneur, there’ll be touching dedications to Padma.
Indeed, who is this ‘intimate friend’ to whom he said the alleged words? And how did he respond when Padma commented on their lack of sex? There are more untied threads. But it is clear that life is no story, so at this point, all threads must once again diverge, inevitably.
So yes, of course he understood how a man might dream of an unattainable woman. Padma acknowledged that comprehension with a dazzling smile. She leaned close, and turning so as to block any view of his hands, allowed him to caress her creamy waist. He hid his surprise. His wife’s cheeks were rosy, her eyes aglow with the rush of being unavailable. She is turned on. How she loved these high-fashion affairs. Leaning forward, she whispered in his ear:
‘Who’s the most beautiful woman of all?’
‘You are.’ He squeezed her waist, knowing it would leave an angry mark. ‘You’ll always be.’
‘Are you sure you married the right sister?’ she whispered, rubbing his cock awkwardly.
‘You are drunk.’ He drew away.
‘Just a little. Sorry.’ She kissed him, genuinely contrite. ‘Isn’t this wonderful? I have my dream life, darling.’
#
Like all bastards, the Najafgarh riot had many fathers and many mothers. The riot was born, some said, when Rafiq Aslam fell off the lorry just as it was leaving Aijaz Ata’ullah’s godown in Najafgarh, in the southwest section of Delhi, laden with stolen grain. Neither Rafiq Aslam nor Aijaz Ata’ullah are of much consequence, but the thieving lorries, called chyuntis, were the sort of entities around which trouble accretes.
The lorries were called chyuntis—ants—not because they looked like insects with their corded torsos, flat-nosed fronts, six pairs of tires and sloped hoods, but because no merchant was protected from their depredations. The Brahmavaivarta Purana reports that the ants had taught a lesson to Indra himself, and if the King of the Gods had been humbled, what chance did mere grain traders have against them? Indeed, getting robbed in this manner was almost a mark of having made it in the extremely competitive grain markets at Najafgarh, Maddanput Kaddar, and the half-a-dozen other centres feeding the twenty-million plus denizens of the larger National Capital Region. These grain markets had to supply about fifteen million kilograms of fruits, vegetable and grains on a daily basis. As consumption went, Delhi had a lean belly. In comparison, the health-conscious citizens of the equipopulous New York City consumed nearly three times as much, though to
be fair, most of the excess could be blamed on the household’s least health-conscious member, the garbage bin.
Of course, if one drinks from a leaky can of water, then the amount of water required to sate thirst cannot only be measured in terms of the quantity consumed. The quantity leaked also has to be counted. This task the Government was willing to do. In Delhi’s myriad sarkari offices, myriad weak-chinned men laboured endlessly over the quantity of food lost due to spoilage, accidents, demand fluctuations, rats, and of course, the chyuntis.
One theorem had been established. Both industrialized and developing worlds wasted food in approximately equal amounts. The difference, however, was where the wastage happened. In developing worlds the wastage took place early in the food supply chain, that is, at the level of post-harvest and preliminary processing stages, while in the industrialized world, it occurred at the end of the supply chain, that is, in the retail and consumer stages. This was real progress in understanding, since it meant a developing world could be studied as an industrialized one, except that one had to remember to multiply all the numbers with minus one.
Nonetheless, satisfying as the theorem was, it wasn’t too long before some spoil-sport pointed out that none of it was any help in stemming the loss. For all practical purposes, the chyuntis might as well have been invisible.
The chyuntis achieved their invisibility not with the help of advanced nano-techno-gizmo invisibility cloaks supposedly available to the US military, but by incentivizing the people who were supposed to keep watch to turn a blind eye.
The chyuntis usually compromised security from the inside. The merchant was rich, his employees poor. This made honesty a scarce resource. This meant the real master was Economics and the real law was enforced by the iron fist of Economics. It didn’t matter what security system was in place. RFID tags, beamers, scanners, video cams, thought-reading devices, specially marked grain, prayers and rituals—everything that could be tried had been tried, and it had all proved to be as ineffective as an ant’s fart. The iron fist of Economics punched a hole in all measures, redistributing honesty as fists tend to do, and the chyuntis slipped through, laden with their jute bags of illicit goods.