Virtual Realities

by Neelum Saran Gour

  The kid tittered.

  ‘Well, that did it. Mr Bunkum Not had always dreamed of being a leader of men, a man whose slightest word and act could fire multitudes. And now he saw it happen. All at once he saw his fellow Calcuttans slinging bottles, papers, magazines, sunshades, even chairs on to the field. The police appeared with their lathis and cracked a few skulls and wrestled briskly with a few hundred maddened fans, but they could do nothing. Until the referee, Clive Lloyd, stopped the match and announced that if people didn’t behave themselves immediately, the match would be stopped and Sri Lanka declared the winner. The public quietened down a bit, but again the flinging match began. By now burning paper was being thrown, too, and a fire broke out. Mr Chuckerverity was capering about the pitch when he suddenly noticed something funny—his bottom felt hot. It was smoking. Burning. “Gosh!” he cried, and “Good grief!” and “Bless my Soul!” and “Upon my word!” But when your bum’s burning, smoking like the chimney of an Olde English cottage on a Christmas card, you need a fire brigade, not Victorian English. His dhoti was on fire!’

  The kid shrieked. Sravan had the impression he was rolling and thrashing about on the mattress.

  ‘Now, one thing Mr Bunkum Not hadn’t abandoned when he turned sahib was his dress. He loved his dhotis. Light and airy—they allowed the breezes from the Bay of Bengal to sweep into his interiors. Nothing could induce him to give up his dhotis—except a fire. Mr Chuckerverity was appalled. To stand before the world in scorched, striped underwear—nay, he thought. Is it for this that I have spent the flower of my youth and the prime of my life writing nature poetry, reciting Burke and playing the piano? But there’s no arguing with a fire, even in Victorian English. The long and short of it is that he had to go home without his dhoti, in his ripped and fretted underwear, and suffer the shame and sorrow of meeting one of his “Bonkers, old chap” friends from the Tolly Club on the way! And when all the Calcuttans sent a letter saying sorry to the Sri Lankan team, Mr Bunkum Not’s name was among the thousands who signed. The neighbours laughed at him for weeks.’

  ‘Oh, ya,’ chuckled the kid, impressed.

  ‘Now, have you heard of Purushottam, the Ambassador Dog?’ continued Buddhoo, almost in the same breath.

  ‘No!’ cried the kid, panting with laughter.

  ‘Then listen to this one. There was once a virtuous man named Purushottam, who ever strove to be righteous, who examined his conscience with tireless scruple and lived a life without taint or blame. Still, there came to him great suffering. Fed up with his lot, he fixed an appointment with God, met Him and said: If you don’t mind my saying so, sir, there’s something wrong with your system. Fatal error. Evil gets comfort, good is battered.

  ‘God pondered a while. Said, “To tell you the truth, I too am vexed. It’s a troubling thing—something wrong with the programming. The Evil One is the Arch Hacker. He’s squeezed in a cosmic virus, and now there’s something wrong with the hard disk of the world. My universe grows bigger and bigger, with every star racing away from every other star and every creature from every other creature.”

  ‘Till it’ll all go bang!’ interrupted the kid.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Buddhoo. ‘God went on—“I’m now informed that there aren’t any straight lines left, no time, and everything is both this and that and neither this nor that. My laws all seem to get reversed. It’s a management problem. What’s worse is that some men are such hypocrites. They come to me at my various camp offices laden with coconuts and milk and sweets and coins and pious assurances. How am I to distinguish the wolves from the lambs? I’ve been thinking of downsizing the world—I’ve done that before when things got unmanageable. If I could be sure of only one man …”

  ‘To this the virtuous Purushottam said, “You can count on me, sir. Ever your devoted employee.”

  “Good,” said God. “Then you, my friend, must assist me. If you’re indeed the righteous man you claim to be, you must prepare to suffer a little more for my sake.’

  ‘Purushottam wasn’t happy to hear this. “But haven’t I already suffered enough?” he protested.

  “Just this once,” God pleaded gently. He’d just read a book on human-resource development and was now trying to get the most out of his creatures.

  “If you say so, but what incentives, sir, if I may dare to ask?” Purushottam murmured.

  “A speedy promotion—from dog direct to angel, superseding the entire human race in record time. By the time you’re ready to retire into salvation, you can hope to be an archangel at the very least—a GM-level position.”

  ‘Purushottam bowed in humble assent. So God transformed him into an ugly, ailing dog, covered with running sores, crawling with ticks and fleas, stinking with the mange and carrying a crazy glint in his clouded eyes. “Go ye and watch men closely,” are God’s instructions. “Learn the names of those who spite and spurn you, those who despise and injure you. Learn the names of those who hurt not but look with abhorrence in their eye. Learn also the names of those who can’t help you but look on you with compassion. And those who, in passing, toss a scrap or a morsel. You shall be my personnel man to test mankind.”

  ‘And so sits that sleepy dog, flicking away at the flies, awaiting promotion. He sends God detailed accounts. Writes confidential reports. He’s known to the angels and spirits as the Ambassador.’

  Buddhoo’s tone changed swiftly to one of informal enquiry. ‘Speaking of dogs, I saw you throwing stones at that lame brown dog by the colony gate. The sentry told me the other day that you lit a candle and burnt his whiskers.’

  An embarrassed giggle. ‘Sanjay Soni’s idea. Actually we wanted to brand him for our ranch.’

  ‘Eh? Why?’

  ‘To tell others he’s ours. For Diwali. To tie the crackers to his tail and blast them off.’

  ‘And what d’you think he’ll write in your report?’ asked Buddhoo grimly. ‘You’ll probably be demoted—be born a snake or a pig in your next life. Better to adopt him without branding—feed him every day so that he sits waiting for you and gives you a toothpaste smile when he sees you.’

  ‘What was the Ambassador’s breed?’ the kid wanted to know.

  ‘Pariah. Cur.’ Buddhoo ventured. ‘No, that doesn’t sound nice. Come to think of it, yaar, our native dogs have been shamefully neglected by zoology. We must give our street dogs a nice, Indian zoological name. Let me think—let’s call them Margvasi hounds. Margvasi—get it? Marg means road, street, vasi means dweller, inhabitant, so Margvasi would mean …’

  ‘Who lives on road,’ said Ashu, pleased.

  Buddhoo raised his eyes and saw Sravan standing at the door. Ashu slipped out.

  Sravan entered and stretched himself out on Buddhoo’s comfortable mattress. ‘Quite a marathon yarn session.’

  ‘You’ve been eavesdropping?’

  ‘Your voice isn’t exactly a whisper. Couldn’t work all morning. Where the hell does this nonsense spring from?’

  ‘Oh, just like that. Out of the juice of the moment,’ said Buddhoo airily.

  Later in the day, Sravan was still idly trying to figure out what Buddhoo had meant by ‘juice’. Unless the fool meant rasa, he thought, and the idea slowly magnified in his head.

  10

  ‘The ladies decided to raffle me. Flattering, no? That’ll give you an idea of my popularity. Some of it I owed to my sari-lending business, the rest to my dedicated service at the shop.’

  ‘Selling what?’

  ‘This was a brand-new concept. A high-brow shop.’

  ‘Books?’ asked a voice which Sravan recognized as that of his neighbour, Pawar.

  ‘No. This was an argument shop.’

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘Argument? For sale?’

  ‘Ji han,’ Buddhoo replied joyously. ‘I’ll tell you how it worked.’

  ‘Where was this shop?’

  ‘I’m coming to that. I was the shop. A walking shop. I sold the joy of argument as a sport. An abstract so
rt of commodity but quite the rage, as all my old customers still confirm. The Greeks would have appreciated it.’

  ‘And they actually paid cash for it?’

  ‘Bilkul! They paid and gladly. Those desirous of indulging would deposit a small sum of money, then argue with the proprietor. I had a sort of menu card of possible subjects, but I was perfectly willing to engage in any subject of the customer’s choice. If the customer won, he got a refund plus a handsome percentage. If he lost, he forfeited the deposit. Onlookers were free to bet on the victory of either party. If the proprietor won, fine. He scooped up the moolah from several quarters.’

  ‘What kind of questions were on your menu?’ Sravan recognized the amused voice as that of Pawar’s wife. Apparently Buddhoo’s fame as a raconteur had spread outside the immediate family.

  ‘All sorts. Great range and variety of choice. We catered to every sort of taste. There were classical philosophic questions like: How does the rope appear as a serpent? How many angels can stand on the head of a pin? Which came first, the lingum or the yoni? I had my own set of logic-breakers—Buddhoo’s Indeterminate Questions, they came to be called. There were also funny questions like: Why, in Hindi grammar, are items of male dress feminine and items of female dress masculine? But one of the most perplexing questions I came across—a customer’s idea—was Why is a rickshaw? Now, for heaven’s sake, consider a question like that. Does it make sense to you? Why is a rickshaw? I’m proud to tell you that I won that round hands down, through sheer ingenuity and unstoppable bluster.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll explain my technique. When a question boggles my mind, I usually look twice at the sound of the words, and a kind of half-witted sense sometimes emerges. Then the trick is to take the bull by the horns, speak very fast so as to confound the other fellow and get him to lose the thread. Use every method of distraction and bafflement at your command. Taking the offensive and adopting an offensive manner is one. You annoy your opponent into fallacies of reasoning. I repeated the question in great outrage—as though it was a silly, self-evident sort of thing worthy only of the greatest nincompoop.’

  Suddenly Buddhoo began speaking in a stilted street-hawker’s voice, a VJ’s voice, a pontificating sadhu’s voice. ‘ “Why is a rick sure? A rick is sure because it has three wheels, two for balance and one for support—which is more than can be said of you, who stand on two meagre legs. The third appendage, if in the ascendant, may achieve a tolerable stature and substance, but never shall be a support in respect of length or firmness. The fourth, the tail, dropped off in your simian past, and though you may bear a reliable likeness to the anthropoid ape, you have not the privilege of all its perks.” I’m sorry to have to reproduce this argument uncensored in the presence of old ladies and small girls and I hope you’ll pardon me, but it remains one of my record-breaking performances.’

  The audience didn’t object.

  ‘And don’t run away with the idea that it was a mug’s game for the idle and irresponsible. No, sahib, it had lasting practical benefits. Honed your analytical powers, practised your speechifying, entertained you in a new way, built an intimate connection with another person (what’s more intimate than a good, loud argument?), exhausted unpleasant combativeness, drained away pity and terror, in short made one an agreeable person to have around and conferred domestic peace and harmony to many stressed souls.’

  ‘How?’ chuckled Pragya.

  ‘Simple. You attacked your opponent without pity, you lost your terror of defeat. But,’ Buddhoo went on, ‘there were difficulties. One, an insoluble argument led to a long waiting list. Two, when an argument proved invulnerable to solution, who won the cash? Lots of unpleasantness. Who was the referee? Nobody on the poor proprietor’s side except the guys who’d betted on him. But, pitted against the guys who’d betted on his opponent, an explosive situation, believe me. Fists coming into violent contact with my collar. Three, even the meekest customer turned amazingly warlike when cash was involved. Result—the proprietor lost more cash than he earned. Therefore he closed shop. Finally, a cop came along and argued over the cut I owed him for the freedom to run a gambling business on the pavement. I reasoned that it wasn’t gambling by any means, it was an intellectual sport—if you can have street plays, why the hell can’t you have street debates?—but nobody can argue with a lathi. So that was it. My argument shop downed its shutters.’

  Late that night Sravan cornered Buddhoo.

  ‘So,’ he challenged. ‘You’ve been a sign painter, a fashion designer, a nameplate collector and conceived a psychospiritual text called Eat and Excrete. You’ve run a school, an animal restaurant and an argument shop. You’ve been in jail on charges of imposture.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten the urinal-attendant stint,’ reminded Buddhoo.

  ‘That too, yes.’

  ‘The one dream I haven’t realized is being an effigy maker.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘See—lots of effigies are burnt daily. There’s money in the thing. But no one’s going into it systematically, with the right market sense. I’d like to make good, artistic effigies. Hire a cartoonist, maybe. What is an effigy? A three-dimensional cartoon, a voodoo object, a receptacle for popular wrath. I’d like to make protest visually pleasing, turn a useful art into a fine art. This’d be a true reflection of social reality, an authentic testimony of …’

  ‘Which of these yarns has a single grain of truth in it?’

  Buddhoo looked hard at him and began to laugh. ‘Applied Mayavada, dear boy. Chapters from my Mithya Sutra.’ He put on a lofty mantric voice. ‘The mind clacks away by itself, O well beloved. Like a pair of birds upon a branch. Like a pair of knitting needles in the hands. It needs yarn, any sort will do—to knit with, the knit-wit (sorry for the pun)—you’ve got to keep the saala busy. Every life can support a book, there’s content enough; all it needs is a chronology and a commentary, to decongest the head and expectorate the stuff. Know, O Shvetaketu, real stories and imagined ones are equal, see? There isn’t a life at all, only a narrative, and thou art that.’ He changed to a normal voice and added, ‘The thing to remember is that it’s all to be swept away with a broom, like rangoli on the floor. That’s what the ojha fellow did. Cleared my head of the goblins, see?’

  11

  Half an hour of false starts. This had to be a personal letter, for God’s sake! Preferably handwritten. The putting-things-right tone. Malini set store by such gestures. He’d drafted and redrafted but discovered, as he had sometimes done before, that personal letters were beyond him. Novels he could plot, poems he could craft, but personal letters, no. All his writing powers deserted him. How did one start? Dear Malini? Hullo Malini? Rubbish! Better to begin briskly with a simple—Malini, when do I see you next? Wrong somehow. Undignified and unsuitable. Too eager. He crossed it out. I look forward to seeing you soon? A summary, officious note in that one. He’d sometimes wondered if human contact was something he couldn’t achieve through words. He could only hope for contact with the page. He put the half-scrawled letter aside. There was that speech to draft, too. No better than the letter.

  Drafting this particular speech was proving far more complicated than Sravan had thought it would be. He found it hard to explain himself. The right tone wouldn’t come. This speech had to be well whittled, with a subtle inlay of humility. Conviction. Concerned humanity. Something like: This award is made not merely to me as an individual artist but to my language, my people. (But would it be better not to sound quite so separatist?) I’m happy—but also embarrassed that others equal or superior to me have been overlooked. (But did that sound fake?) I dedicate this award to all anonymous and committed writers who’ve died unrequited. (Sounds fine but somehow phoney—I mean, abstract dedications are fine, but pocketing what they amount to makes it suspect. I’ll be expected to donate something to some wretched cause or something, and there is no Hack Writers’ Charity Foundation that I know of.) No, all this self-abnegation sounded out of character.
He could just hear the press crow.

  When he was alone in the flat, with his father snoring next door, Sravan sometimes stepped across the invisible border which divided his study from his father’s territory. A curious, prohibited satisfaction. At complicated moments of expression, what he most wanted was to go to that room and sit by his sleeping father in a simplified relationship.

  His personal paranoia sometimes reached such a pitch that a cry erupted in his head, his father’s voice calling for help, piercing his sleep. And he couldn’t bear to sit in a place where his father could see him. Deeply disturbing currents came through the air. He felt himself being studied with venom and mockery, and an iron clamp closed round his throat.

  Now he stood above the old man, head crammed with angry confusions. His father slept with his slug-like eyes half open. They looked spectral, those faded eyes. Filmed over. Opaque bubbles filled with slime. Gone was the piercing glint. His waxen face puckered up in permanent distaste.

  Sravan felt an old hurting twinge of compassion in spite of himself. Watching over his father’s sleep, peering into the abysmal interiors of his murky plight, he experienced something of the man’s isolation, and something of his own fascinated panic over the impending absence.