The Elephants in My Backyard

by Rajiv Surendra

  I had no idea of what I was going to do to make money, but somehow things came together. The one thing I knew was that I was only going to do something that made me happy.

  I was picking up some of my calligraphy supplies from The Paper Place, on Queen Street West, when I noticed a “hiring” sign by the cash register. I began my shifts there later that week, making minimum wage. The manager and I were restocking the shelves one morning, and when she found out I did calligraphy, she came up with an idea for an in-store event—customers could buy cards in the store and I would customize greetings on them with my script. It was a big success, a giant line of people waiting outside the store as I wrote on card after card.

  A high-end wedding planner in super high heels happened to swing by for the event—she gushed over my work and then chastised me for wasting my time selling paper when I could be running my own calligraphy business. Then she insisted that I set up a table at the ritzy wedding show she put on once a year, sweetening the deal by offering it to me free of charge.

  So I set up a small business, which I named Letters In Ink, and my little booth at the wedding show was crammed with people all day.

  Work came in slowly at first—brides and event planners would hire me to address the envelopes of their invitations by hand, and I’d sit at my desk for hours, under my old framed painting from Maine, quietly transcribing hundreds of names and addresses with pen and ink. I managed to make enough money to get by, meekly.

  My heavily tattooed friend, Christian, and I were riding our bikes around one summer afternoon and we stopped into Café Pamenar, in Kensington Market, for a coffee. We were sitting out on the patio, soaking up the sun, and Christian began brainstorming how I could further capitalize on my artistic abilities. We started bouncing around ideas. The first few weren’t great, but then he spotted the A-frame chalkboard on the sidewalk, advertising the specials at the café.

  “Look at how bad that writing is. You knoooow . . .” his eyes widened as he sat upright, “—you should rewrite that shitty board. Heck, do it all over the city, and put your website on the bottom . . . I bet people would start hiring you for calligraphy work.”

  It was a good idea. “Go over and do it right now,” Christian whispered, “that guy behind he counter is the owner.”

  “How much?” the soft-spoken young Persian guy asked.

  “How about another round of coffees . . .” I proposed, happy to just try it out.

  He handed me some chalk and then headed off to the espresso machine to make our lattes. I spent about half an hour on his chalkboard, kneeling on the sidewalk as I carefully laid down various fonts to spell out the message he wanted. People stopped occasionally and watched what I was doing, and every so often someone would shout out, “Nice work, man . . .”

  I spent the following few weeks on the prowl, riding my bike around the city all day in the scorching summer sun—and every chalkboard I spotted would be a target for advertising my wares. I stuck to plain white chalk, staying away from color; I loved how the simple black-and-white pairing showcased my skills in design and composition in an elegant and classic way.

  I always offered to do those sidewalk chalkboards for free initially, and the owners or managers wouldn’t hesitate at all to grant me permission. I’d leave my card behind as they stood in front of the boards, thankful for what they hadn’t expected. Then, as I rode away, I would pray to the Blessed Virgin for rain. And when that happened, they’d call me back, telling me that they had noticed an actual influx of business after the chalkboard was fancified. And this time, they’d pay me for the work.

  By the end of July, a popular city blog had reached out for an interview and published a post entitled “Who’s Writing All Those Fancy Restaurant Chalkboards?” I was thrilled—being featured on blog.to was akin to being endorsed by Toronto itself.

  The jobs started trickling in. Restaurants wanted me to come inside and do the large boards that featured their wine lists or weekly specials. Following close behind came commissions from advertising agencies, whose employees had spotted my work in the bars, cafés, and restaurants they frequented for lunch or dinner. And this was where the real money was.

  My cellphone rang one afternoon—I wasn’t familiar with the number. The woman introduced herself as the executive art buyer at a major advertising firm.

  “We’ve seen your chalkboards all over the city,” she explained, “and we’d love to see what you’d come up with for this project.” My chalk work would be photographed and then printed to make posters and spreads that would appear on billboards, bus stops, and subway trains. It was a big job, and I was to submit a quote to them, outlining my fee for the entire project. I was thrilled when I got a call from the head of the agency saying I had the job. She told me I’d hear from the art director shortly—and when he called, we went over the details.

  “So I’m thinking you’ll do the artwork in green and white chalk, maybe some red . . .” the art director said over the phone.

  “I only work in white chalk,” I noted, reminding him that I had stated that early on, in the quote I had submitted.

  They were adamant about using color and I was certain that I wouldn’t be happy with the result if I gave in. So I stood my ground and they curtly told me this would mean we couldn’t work together.

  That was fine with me. I lost out on seven thousand dollars, but I really, truly wasn’t disappointed. I was almost completely broke, gathering twenty-dollar bills one at a time from my sidewalk boards, and collecting them in my sock drawer to save up for rent, but I had told myself when I decided to turn my beloved childhood hobby into a business that I was never going to do any work that might compromise my passion for my craft. Saying no to that job reassured me that I would not be swayed by money.

  Two weeks later, another big job request came in—a huge chalk wall in the headquarters of a big food company. The art director asked for a quote, and I sent one off to her along with a rough sketch of what I proposed for their wall. We had a conversation on the phone and she mentioned some elements she wanted in color. I didn’t hesitate at all to tell her I’d only work in white chalk and then there was a brief moment of silence before she said, “Well, I’ve looked through your website, and I love everything I see, so that’s fine. If you want to do it all in white, I trust you.”

  Seven days of hard work climbing ladders and drawing all over their walls ended with a check in the mail for more money than I had ever made in a week. I thought my wild dreams had covered every possible scheme and scenario that my potential career paths could lead to, but this? This was above and beyond anything I had ever imagined—being paid so much to lay out lettering on a wall with a stick of ordinary white chalk.

  I met up with a group of friends to celebrate—a place that I had done some elaborate chalk work in. The owner, very happy with my work, generously sent out a bunch of plates we hadn’t ordered and gave us a complimentary bottle of wine. We topped that off with a few rounds of cocktails and by the time we headed out onto King Street, we were laughing and slurring our words.

  It was a swelteringly hot summer night as our motley crew made our way uptown on our bikes at about 2 a.m.

  We were riding along a side street, when I noticed the high fence that protected a huge outdoor swimming pool.

  “Let’s go swimming!” I yelled out, and without any discussion or negotiations, our entire group veered off the road and quietly took our bikes around to a dark side of the fence, looking all around, making sure there were no cop cars heading down Dundas Street. Then we stumbled up and over the fence, safely landing on the cement paving that surrounded the pool.

  Then the lot of us stripped off all our clothes and cannonballed into the water. Another group of people appeared on the other side of the fence, drunk and cheerful, watching us with wonder.

  “What’s happenin’?!” one of the guys asked.

  “We’re swimming!” I yelled back. Christian shushed me, and I told him not to shush me.


  I was free. I could swim. The cold, blue water was now liquid light—and I basked in it. I opened my eyes under the surface and could just make out another body in the water, illuminated in a blue-green hue from a streetlamp nearby. I bobbed up and Christian’s head was out of the water, too.

  “We-have-comp-aneeeee!” Christian said in a singsongy way, grinning.

  The group of four had climbed over and were standing at the edge of the pool, ripping off their clothes and jumping in.

  “Woooooooo!” one of them shouted, making a loud splash.

  I went back under the water, closed my eyes, and pulled a large breast stroke, propelling myself forward, then allowing myself to just glide slowly, loving the comfort in this world of water. I kicked to the surface, flipped over onto my back, and looked up at the city sky, floating.

  It was Christmas. Ma had asked me to come home, but that day I just felt like being alone. I had a big calligraphy commission that I was working on at my desk, and decided to spend the day in my apartment, taking advantage of the rarity of having it all to myself. The daylight streamed in through the plate-glass window of my bedroom, and I silently wrote one name and address after another in brown ink on thick ivory-colored stock, making my way through the pile of three hundred envelopes.

  Snow started falling around 4 p.m., and the light was fading. My eyes felt strained, so after reheating some leftovers and eating my dinner alone in my tiny kitchen, I wondered what I should do next.

  Then it hit me—the perfect thing to do this Christmas night, alone. I pulled on the long woolen Bavarian hunting cloak I had bought just before leaving Munich, and eased my bike out into the snow, still falling lightly on this quiet winter night.

  I rode down through the Annex, going slow, gliding over potential patches of ice covered in snow, safely arriving at my destination—the Varsity Cinemas in the Manulife Centre on Bloor Street.

  “One ticket, please, for Life of Pi,” I said to the scrawny Jewish kid working the register.

  The theater was almost completely full, but I squeezed into a row at the back.

  As the house lights went down, the hair on my arms stood up, then the iconic sound of marching drums and trumpets blared out the fanfare accompanying the golden 20th Century Fox logo lighting up the screen.

  A blank, black screen. Silence. A few coughs from the audience.

  The black screen fades into full color, a giraffe nestles into lush greenery and blooming flowers.

  “Kanné . . .” a woman’s voice sings out in Tamil—“precious one”—and like a blow straight to my heart, my mouth contorted and tears quickly fell from my eyes.

  “Kannmanniyé (the jewel of my eye) . . . kannurangai (close your eyes) . . . poové . . . (little flower) . . .”

  Could anyone in the room understand the words of this Tamil lullaby? To everyone else, it was just music, but I knew the meaning of every single word. Was she singing just for me?

  The opening credits unfolded as zoo animals flew in and out of the frame, and the lady continued her song.

  “Mayilo . . . thooghai mayilo?” (Is it a peacock, or the fan of the peacock’s plumage?)

  “An Ang Lee film” fades in and out of focus over the scene.

  “Kuyilo . . . koovum kuyilo?” (Is it a bird, or the song from the bird?)

  “Casting by Avy Kaufman, CSA”

  “Imaiyo . . . Imaiyin kanavo?” (Are they the eyelids? Or the dream within the eyelids?)

  “Based on the novel by Yann Martel”

  Pondicherry appears on screen in all its glory: bullock carts, whitewashed French colonial buildings, and ladies selling flower garlands on the roadside. A woman lays out an intricate kolam on the ground in front of her house with rice flour.

  Then, a Tamil boy sits among his peers—dozens of uniformed schoolboys with coffee-colored skin and jet-black hair, surrounded by the plastered walls of Petit Séminaire. Within these walls, the boy’s name takes on a new meaning.

  On a whim, by chance, the young boy finds himself in a quiet church where he is first introduced to a man on a cross. Compelled by the story, he thanks Vishnu, for introducing him to Jesus.

  Later, with no warning, the boy is thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool, gasping and struggling before eventually becoming one with the water.

  Life continues in peaceful, repetitive sequence.

  Curious, eager, and his body trembling with anxiousness, in the dark and confined backrooms of a zoo pavilion, the boy comes face to face with a huge, live tiger.

  The spectacle of Hindu ritual lights up the screen, Vishnu swathed in jewels and flowers as Brahmin priests chant sacred Sanskrit prayers, their eyes rolling back into their heads in a trancelike state.

  An unexpected turn in events and the boy is cast adrift.

  Tragedy. Loss. Despair.

  All alone, he struggles; he waits; he hopes; with little control over the world around him.

  He survives, and looking back at his journey, shaping it into a story, enables him to go on.

  It was nearly midnight and the roads were empty as I stepped out onto the street, where snow continued to fall lightly. I turned up the collar of the wool cloak and lifted the hood onto my head, before getting back onto my bike and making my way westward. Riding along Bloor, I passed the Royal Ontario Museum and a few U of T buildings, before making a right turn onto Huron Street—the 1920s brick houses and huge maple trees that lined this quiet residential side street always made for a peaceful bike ride back to my apartment. Twinkling Christmas lights coupled with the streetlamps overhead casting a warm glow onto the freshly fallen snow blanketing the asphalt. All that disturbed the perfect sheet of white was the single track that my bike left behind.

  A gust of wind laden with snow blew toward me, sending my cape billowing behind the bike as I rode. All around me, people were tucked away in their houses on Christmas night and I, alone, would make my way home, put my bike away, take off my snow-covered cloak, and, happily, go to bed.

  From: yann_martel1963@yahoo.com

  To: rajivsca@yahoo.ca

  Subject: RE: your book

  Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2015 03:24:06

  Hello, Rajiv.

  I thought I’d get a few ideas down on the page, so to speak.

  Life of Pi is a story about the choices we make in life. One set of tragic facts—the sinking of a ship and the dying of a boy’s entire family—yields, to the reader, two stories, one with animals, one without. The reader is invited to choose between those stories; that is, to choose how to make sense of what happened to Pi. In your story, the tragedy at its heart is that an aspiring actor did not get the role he yearned with all his heart to play. That thwarted artistic aspiration has symbolic resonance, because nearly everyone has artistic aspirations. Everyone at one point or another in their lives, aspired to be an actor/novelist/poet/singer/etc. Or, at the very least, everyone has had aspirations that have been thwarted, whether to get a promotion, get a girl/boy, and so on. What to make of failure will speak to everyone, because it’s what life is about. We learn through failure and defeat; we discover who we are through failure and defeat. In that sense, victory comes through defeat. That’s what Christianity is about, as an aside: victory through defeat. Christ enters Jerusalem as the Messiah who will free the Jewish people, and then he is strung up on a cross like a common criminal. What kind of Messiah is that? Well, as the apostle Paul figured it, it was part of the plan. Christ would win—our hearts, our souls, our faith—through his crucifixion. I would suggest that you make your book about an actor who discovers who he is through his quest to play a role and his failure to get it. There’s a quote from Joyce that I will paraphrase poorly here but it goes along the lines of: whatever the roles we play in our lives—son, father, brother, employer, lover, student, teacher, and so on—we are always aspiring to play ourselves. That might be the theme of your book, of someone finding out who he is in trying to play someone else.

  I’m sorry for being so general,
but I hope you get my drift. You have, I believe, a very good, original, touching story at hand. It just needs work. And by the way, I have no problems with you using (and abusing) Life of Pi all you want. You’re just using my novel to tell your own story, and I’m fine with that.

  Talk/write/keep in touch.

  Om shanti.

  Yann

  From: steve@stevencallahan.net

  To: rajivsca@yahoo.ca

  Subject: Peach Pie

  Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2015 11:55:34

  Rajiv,

  Always a joy to have you around. Thanks for making the effort to come up and inspire us and bring so much energy into our lives, not to mention the meals you made and that peach pie. You didn’t oversell that. It was fantastic. I found it very interesting when you were talking about your chalkboard biz and how you would never accept working in color. I was thinking of how we approach work very differently. I’m much more of a slut, but it seems that our opposite approaches have served each of us well. I’ve done so many things in my life that I would have rather not done, but if I wanted to eat . . . if I was a chalkboard artist and somebody had asked me to work in color, I might have been very uncomfortable undertaking it, but generally, I have always tried to accept a client’s desires and tried then to get into it by looking at it as a learning opportunity, a way to push myself into a new direction. Since I was a kid, I wanted to taste a wide variety of experiences, become conversant in as wide a range of subjects as possible, try to take a Renaissance approach to work, and I have been very fortunate to have “been around,” done everything from working in a chemical plant and a shipyard, to books and film. It’s allowed me/us to meet a lot of people, been a lot of places, see a lot more of life than I could have imagined. And since I was always piecing together a “career,” and basically struggling to make ends meet for much of my adult life, I just would accept whatever task walked in the door. What’s been nice in more recent years is that I have been able to actually turn more stuff down, but I don’t regret most of what I did. I did have some rather unproductive, in fact anti-productive associations and projects, and it would be nice to be able to recoup all that time and investment, but I guess waste is a substantive part of life, and from compost, gardens grow.