Keep Off the Grass

by Karan Bajaj

  ‘A cabbie told me to,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  Where do I start, I thought, and will you ever understand? For one, I hate the script. I’m twenty-five years old and more than a third of my way through, and I have acted perfectly so far without ever asking for even a single extra take. I’ve scored straight As in school, become the valedictorian at Yale and joined the best bank on Wall Street. But I can’t live this Truman Show any longer. I dislike the monotonous predictability of my life. I’m tired of making a livelihood filling spreadsheets that help make rich, fat bastards richer and even more miserable than they already are. Every day I get the sinking feeling that I’m not creating anything; I’m just pushing paper around. I’m done with the eighteen-hour workdays, and I don’t need the constant unnecessary ball-crushing stress to make my first million before thirty. You won’t understand this, Dad, but I don’t give a flying fuck whether I become a millionaire by thirty or thirty-six, or even if I don’t become one at all. I’ve realized that I’m just not Indian enough to run the race. Can you please try to understand that?

  What I really want to do is to shave my head, grow a beard, become a hippie, wander around Africa and India for a year and ‘find myself ’. But I’m just not American enough to do that. I’m an ABCD, an American Born Confused Desi, if you will; I can’t function without back-up plans, career options and safety nets. So I’m taking the safer route and joining business school in India instead. At least there I can still play the American searching for himself while getting an education that would be somewhat valued by Corporate America.

  I know these are the vague, spoiled concerns of the ‘privileged Americans’, as you say, but I’m one of them now, am I not?

  ‘Samrat? Hello? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I don’t know, Dad. I just hate it here.’

  ‘You should have listened to me when I told you to join medical school. But no, you didn’t like medicine,’ he said. ‘Why India, though? Have all the business schools here shut down? After Yale, you should go to Harvard or Stanford, not some school in India.’

  ‘I need a break from here, Dad,’ I said. ‘Plus, the whole “second-generation immigrant finding his roots in India” is so glamorous now, I think it will work to my advantage. Differentiate my resume and stuff.’

  This was true, although I couldn’t care less about my resume or my career right now. All the group presidents in the bank and their diamond-studded wives had wept their stone hearts out after seeing Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice and similar nonsense. If I could tell them with a straight face that I had gone to India to find my roots, their eyes would probably well over as they handed me my job back.

  ‘It’s going to be okay, Dad. I’m joining the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, not Sholapur Leadership Institute, so hopefully you will think there is still some hope. I managed to sneak in through the foreign national quota,’ I said lightly.

  Dad didn’t seem to think it was funny, though.

  ‘Beta, twenty-seven years ago I graduated from a similar college in India and came here to give you a better life. Now you want to go back to the place where I began? Ultimately, it is your decision, though. We will be supportive of whatever you decide to do,’ he said tiredly.

  Surprisingly, his support made me feel irritated instead of grateful. I wished he would shout, shake me by my shoulders, tell me that it was a wrong decision and forbid me to go. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be an adult, to deviate from the script or be held accountable for my choices any more. But my slide down that slippery slope had begun, and there would be no going back now.

  I spent my last few weeks in the US wrapping up my affairs and communicating my decision to those who mattered. The reactions ranged from encouragement, albeit the Australian variety, from Ruth (‘I am disappointed, but go for it.’ No drama. ‘We’ll be glad to have you back when this foolishness is over.’) to disappointment from Mom (‘This is what happens when you stay alone for so long. At your age, your father had you. As usual, you’re running away from responsibility.’) to outright admiration from Peter (‘Good for you, dude, you finally stuck it to the Man. I’m very proud of you. And yeah, if your Asian roots screwed you over, you should find out what it’s all about. Remember Tarantino: if someone stuck a red-hot poker up your ass, you’ve got to find out whose name is on the handle.’)

  I was glad they understood in their own ways, though I still wasn’t sure what I was getting into. Hopefully, there were more answers than questions in India, and it wouldn’t all be a waste.

  2

  It’s All a Waste

  I didn’t understand the finality of my decision until I was comfortably strapped into my seat on the twenty-two-hour-long flight from New York to Bangalore with a stopover in Paris.

  ‘That’s it,’ I thought as the flight took off, ‘no turning back now.’ And surprisingly, I found myself getting into the zone of not caring pretty quickly. I usually get into that zone when things are neither definitively good nor bad: they just are. Now, for instance, the good (excitement at going to India, escaping the monotony of my life in Manhattan) balanced the bad (a risky, directionless career move, the prospect of two wasted years). But there was so much noise in my head that it genuinely didn’t matter any more.

  To hell with it, I thought, you get one life, and everyone is allowed a couple of mistakes. Who can predict the future and in the broad scheme of things, does it really matter anyway? Do what you feel like and hope that it sticks. If it doesn’t, throw it again. Maybe it will stick the next time round. And if it doesn’t, who cares? It’s just one insignificant life wasted in the vast ocean of lives all around. Whatever floats your boat, whatever cranks your tractor, whatever melts your butter, whatever humps your camel, whatever sizzles your bacon, whatever tickles your pickle…

  I was so spaced out by the time I was on my connecting flight from Paris that I broke my rule of not swapping life stories with the guy sitting in the next seat. No good can ever come of that. At best, you walk away feeling thankful because you met another fucker in the vast cosmos whose world is even more screwed up than yours; at worst, you meet a self-satisfied prick who makes you doubt your life’s choices. Unfortunately, it was going to be the latter this time.

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ asked the young Indian software engineer dude sitting next to me on the flight. He wasn’t being facetious. He seemed genuinely agitated by my decision to quit Wall Street and go to India for an MBA. With the typical Indian gift for immediate familiarity, he had quickly dispensed with the pleasantries and probed into the intimate details of my life. He now felt compelled to pass judgement on my choices.

  He took off his glasses and squinted at me for a while.

  Finally, he said, ‘You’ll be fucked there.’ He breathed on the lenses and wiped them on his shirt before putting them back on and continuing, ‘Look, I don’t mean to sound insulting, but you’re what we call a “coconut” in India—brown on the outside, white on the inside. You have grown up in the US and can’t even begin to understand how screwed up our Indian education system is.’

  He immediately dismissed my suggestion that investment banking on Wall Street wasn’t a cakewalk either.

  ‘I don’t think you’re quite getting it. How do I explain this? The folks in the Indian Institute of Management, they are… how do I put it… crazy behenchods. They have dreamt all their lives of breaking free from the mythical iron hand of the Indian system that grips your balls the moment you are born into the great Indian middle class. There is no place for Yale’s “balanced perspectives”, “broadened horizons”, “work-life balance” and other oestrogen-boosting “let us help you get in touch with yourself ” stuff at the IIM. There is only one perspective there: get the highest-paying job. People work like dogs, backstab, front-stab, side-stab—whatever it takes to achieve that. Every year there are cases of suicide.’

  I could already feel a cold grip on my b
alls, but he continued relentlessly.

  ‘Look brother, if you still have the chance, just opt out. Live your high life in Manhattan. Save this self-discovery for another life. It is all maya anyway, the chasing of an illusion. How far do you want to travel to realize that dissatisfaction is the nature of existence and unanswered questions the only real answer?’ he said, ending on a surprisingly philosophical note.

  The chance conversation would come back to haunt me at various times over the course of the next two years in India. How far did I really need to go before I realized the futility of my journey?

  For now, though, there was no time for second thoughts, or first thoughts for that matter, considering how little time I had invested in this decision. The flight had touched down. I was in Bangalore already, the outsourcing capital of the world and the subject of recent frenzied worldwide debates as it threatened to make the US workforce redundant. However, if the famed technological boom had caused any change in living standards, it wasn’t apparent. We were greeted by the customary delay at the airport as multiple flights arrived simultaneously and the immigration queue got longer and longer.

  ‘Bastards! Why the hell is it taking them so long to check the papers?’ grumbled my engineer friend. ‘Who wants to immigrate to India illegally anyway? Bangladeshis only! And will they arrive from New York on an Air France flight?’

  More frustration as an immigration officer decided to leave for his mandatory cigarette and tea break, exhausted by the unexpected exertion that the night had thrust upon him. Expletives filled the air: ‘Saale sab haraami kaamchor hain’, ‘everybody is a fucking bastard’.

  ‘See, for you, all this must be charming. The authentic Indian experience that you are seeking in your quixotic trip. However, I promise that if you stay long enough, this kind of stuff will start messing with your head. How can we keep caressing our balls with stories of globalization when even our most basic infrastructure is so hopeless?’ ranted my bitter friend.

  I didn’t find this oft-romanticized sight ‘charming’ in the least. I wasn’t Paul Theroux or Mark Twain or even Patrick Swayze, out here to experience the City of Joy and pontificate on the plight of humanity. I was just another ordinary traveller on an un-heroic journey; one more lost soul in the sea of lost faces around me, out to fill a known void with an unknown one. But I didn’t mention this to my friend who was close to breaking point anyway. He seemed to be waging his own private war against the system and cheered up after scowling at the immigration officer who checked his papers. He offered to give me a ride to the Indian Institute of Management.

  ‘My car is outside. It’s horribly expensive and unsafe to keep the car parked there during a long trip, but I have an arrangement with the parking lot guys. They watch it and don’t charge me the full rates. In India, everyone has some kind of arrangement or another,’ he explained. ‘You stay here, I’ll be back in one second.’

  Waiting outside Arrivals, it felt like I’d stepped into a riot. I’d forgotten what it felt like. A cacophony of sounds, people everywhere as far as the eye could see, stale air smelling of automobile smoke, industrial exhaust and strong tobacco, blaring horns, a swarm of frenzied taxi-drivers descending on me to wrestle my bags away, more shouting, screaming and cursing. A taste of India, I thought, would I really be able to survive two years here away from the creature comforts of the US?

  Soon enough, a small bright red car pulled over. My friend got out to help me load my bags. As I squeezed myself in beside him, I immediately detected the sweet smell of marijuana. Then I noticed the dreamy look in his red eyes and the conspiratorial expression on his face.

  ‘Need a joint whenever I get to the airport, man, otherwise the traffic gets to me,’ he explained apologetically. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t impact my driving. I have a couple every day in the morning before I drive to work.’ Was that supposed to make me feel better?

  I wondered whether I should get a cab instead, but Dad’s words came to mind. Much to Ma’s dismay, he had relented to give me some rare fatherly advice just before I left:

  ‘Now that you have decided to go, beta, here is my only piece of advice. Learn to let go in India. Succumb to India. I always felt that America makes you very soft and self-centred. India will make you a man if you allow it to.’

  I decided to be a man and entered his car.

  ‘Would you like to have a joint as well?’ he said.

  Sure, why not? That’s why I’d just left my quarter-million-dollar Wall Street job. To smoke marijuana in India, be driven along the madness of Indian roads with a stoned driver whose hands trembled as they gripped the steering wheel, and possibly end my inglorious pursuit before it even started. A speeding truck, a stoned driver, both passenger and driver killed instantaneously—it was probably a typical Indian story that wouldn’t even grace the inside pages of the local newspaper.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said aloud. I’m going to make you very proud today, Dad.

  Soon we were flying, and I revelled in my friend’s acute observations as he drove the car at Formula One speed over narrow roads. I concentrated on looking straight ahead, into blinding headlights.

  ‘It’s all a waste,’ he said.

  ‘What is?’ I looked around, wondering if I had missed something on the road.

  ‘All of this!’ he shouted, agitated at my shallowness. ‘Every fucking inch of this.’ He removed both hands from the steering wheel and waved at the passing world. The car nearly swerved off the road. ‘Lies, hypocrisy, sleaze; it’s all around you. They teach their kids to bomb airplanes but won’t let them write fuck on the walls.’

  ‘Okay, okay, got it,’ I said hastily. ‘You’re right. It’s a waste. Everything is.’

  We drove in silence for a while, racing big SUVs, all inexplicably white, when suddenly the road became very bumpy indeed. The seatbelt was broken, so I had to hold on tightly to my seat to avoid hitting the ceiling.

  ‘Fitting,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘This is the approach road to the IIM. It’s falling apart,’ he said slowly.

  ‘What’s fitting about that?’ I asked, puzzled.

  He threw his head back and laughed. The car took another dangerous turn. ‘It’s metaphorical, allegorical, whatever.’

  It didn’t make any sense, but I said nothing, worried he would lose control of the car.

  ‘The world. It’s falling apart,’ he said suddenly after a long silence, as we pulled up at a tall, imposing gate. ‘We live, we breathe, we pay mortgage, we die, just chasing wind and trying to catch the rainbow.’

  I wondered what had inspired this outburst. The entrance to the institute looked harmless enough—warm white gates, an Indian Institute of Management sign lazily perched on a spire, and a lush green approach to the main building.

  ‘Best of luck, man,’ my friend said as he dropped me off. ‘Always remember, nothing matters. It’s a cosmic conspiracy.’

  By now, the dope had hit me as well. We both giggled hysterically. I bade him farewell, delighted at the fact that we hadn’t even exchanged names during the past twenty-four hours of knowing each other. Nor e-mail addresses, telephone numbers or promises to meet again. There was nothing fake about our encounter. And I was finally ready to live my own life. I giggled again. This was India, things were probably real here.

  3

  Things Were Real Here

  Would I have chosen a different room in the hostel if had not been stoned that night? Probably.

  My tiresome Type-A traits would have kicked in. I would have checked multiple rooms, analysed their pros and cons and probably chosen a bigger room than the small one I had drifted into. But then, would I ever have run into Shine Sarkar at the IIM? At Yale, Peter had once stumbled into my room high as a kite and said, ‘Dude, it’s all connected!’ before passing out on the floor. I had thought nothing of the comment at that time, and had resumed my studies as usual after dragging him to his bed.

  But now I though
t I understood what he meant. In a sense, everything that happened in India followed a well-laid-out master plan, though it seemed like a series of random events to start with. Or perhaps, it was a death wish of some sort: I had probably been seeking out disaster from the moment I arrived here.

  It started with a loud, insolent knock on my door that jolted me awake the next morning. My head hurt from the combined effect of the jetlag, the airport ordeal and the late-night marijuana romp. I woke up confused. Why were the walls of my room covered with crumbling, pale whitewash, and where was the Monet? But it didn’t take me long to get back my bearings. With what I would later recognize as disrespect for personal space, so characteristic of life here, a small, dark Bilbo Baggins-esque character, who seemed to be in unusually good humour, barged into my room as soon as I opened the door.

  ‘Ah! You are the famous firang who is going to live next to me. I must say I’m disappointed, though. I was expecting the real deal, a gora—a white-skinned Archie with hairless skin, red hair and freckles on his nose,’ he said, plonking himself down on my bed. ‘But you, my friend, you look even more Indian than I do. A six-foot plus, broad-shouldered brown giant: Shiva’s very own phallic symbol of Indian manhood. Don’t worry, I know I’m making no sense. I’m Sarkar by the way—Shine Sarkar, your next-door neighbour.’

  I tried to figure out if he was drunk. He didn’t seem to be.

  ‘I’m Samrat Ratan,’ I mumbled, trying to adjust to this new, undesired presence in my room. ‘How do you know I’m from the US?’

  ‘Thank God, at least the accent is authentic and Samrat sounds like a real hippie name. And your red eyes do betray a true jetlag. You are a major celebrity already, firang. Everybody is talking about the Manhattan-based investment banker from Wall Street who has decided to grace us with his presence at the IIM,’ he said.

  I was surprised. ‘What? Why? That hardly warrants star status.’

  ‘You have to understand,’ Sarkar said. ‘They won’t show you this in the Hollywood films about the slums and whores of real India, but becoming an investment banker on Wall Street is the kind of fantasy that adolescent wet dreams are made of in India. And you decided to leave all that and come here; you are the star of the great Indian middle-class porn blockbuster.’