by Pawan Mishra
Quickly he sat down to write a fourth one:
Although I should stop,
I can’t,
Such is your beauty,
That one can go on and on,
And on and on and on,
And on and on and on…
He copied the poem twice, on good paper in handsome green ink. Then he put one copy in his trouser pocket and the other one in his wallet as a backup.
On Friday his mind floated like a butterfly in anticipation of the event in the afternoon. Countless times he looked at the clock, at the mirror in the restroom, and at Tulsi. Every minute seemed an hour to wait; the last hour, eleven to twelve, was the toughest of all. To address his growing impatience, and pass the time without feeling every second, he decided to see if he could measure a minute successfully without looking at the watch. He looked at his watch, closed his eyes, and counted to sixty, then looked again. He wasn’t good at it in the beginning, so he had to keep practicing—which helped him to keep his mind off Tulsi. By the time he got closer to sensing a minute exactly, it was about time. The trick had worked for him. He stood up from his desk and noticed that Tulsi’s desk was unoccupied already.
Maybe she’s equally impatient.
On that happy thought, he walked toward the café. Nervousness made his heart pound like a devil knocking at a huge tin door. His right hand constantly slipped into his trouser pocket to ensure the poem was still intact.
As he entered the restaurant, a porter with a vast mustard-oil-soaked handlebar mustache greeted him with a broad smile, clearly hoping his warmth would mean a better tip later. Barulay’s was an inexpensive place with very modest furniture, arranged without much artistry. Saarang looked around for Tulsi before occupying a table.
A big occasion was only a moment away; a close encounter with the divine beauty! His heart pounded even harder, and the delay in Tulsi’s arrival allowed him some time to compose himself.
Then she walked in, smiling, in her beautiful sunglasses; she located him in a blink and came straight to his table. The faded light-blue vinyl tablecloth hid every detail of the table other than the square shape. Pushing her sunglasses up in her hair, Tulsi sat on Saarang’s immediate right and pulled her chair closer to his. Looking into his eyes, she spoke deliberately.
“So…Mr. Shameless, finally succeeded in making us talk, huh?”
She paused after saying this, maintaining an intimate smile on her face to make it appear a cordial conversation to the casual onlookers. She then took a quick around their table, turned back to Saarang, and asked, “So how can I help you stop being my tail at the office?”
Saarang was completely caught off guard by the sudden twist. Desperate for a response, he decided to feign that Tulsi was pulling his leg.
“Slow down, slow down, dear!” he said. “Take a breath or two. Do you want to order something to eat first? You will have ample time to pull my leg.”
Tulsi turned her head around, feigning that Saarang was talking to someone else. “Whom did you just call ‘dear’?”
“You, I thought. But if that’s a big deal, I can just call you by your name. Maybe that’s more appropriate for now. By our next meeting we may be more comfortable with each other.”
“The next meeting? Who the heck decided there’d be a next meeting?”
“Well, doesn’t a second meeting typically follow a first one? I would even go on to say that the second meeting is more important than the first one.”
All he truly cared at the moment was planning his escape—he was thinking about it continuously in his mind.
“You know what?” A lovely smile still reigned on Tulsi’s face. “Let’s get to the point. What’s your problem?”
“What’s my problem? Weren’t you the one who set this meeting up?”
“Well, because you shamelessly tailgate me, causing me a loss of reputation. What can I do to stop that?”
“For now, a friendly conversation would be highly helpful.”
“Have you ever looked at yourself in a mirror? I’m not wasting my time on this meaningless conversation anymore. I only wanted to warn you to stop pestering me immediately.”
Saarang was ready with a scheme for his graceful escape from the awkward situation.
“Tulsi, I implore you to not judge my behavior before giving me a sincere ear. I am here on a very serious purpose. Now, I am a person of jovial nature too—that’s why I was trying to tease you a bit. Setting a lighter mood is always the best way to start on heavy topics. As of now I’ll stop monkeying around and explain everything like it is.”
The waiter had arrived for their order. Saarang ordered a cheeseburger with a soda, but Tulsi took a pass.
“Your observation is accurate,” Saarang continued. “I have been trying to speak to you at the office. And I fully understand your perspective based on your side of the observations. But I was trying to strike up a conversation with you for a purpose.”
“What was the purpose? And why in the weird world couldn’t you tell me earlier—instead of just chasing me like a psycho?”
“The purpose was to discuss the coin problem that is plaguing everyone at the office. I have been seeking to make you an ally, as we can’t do it unless everyone on the first floor is with us.”
Finally Tulsi seemed interested. “So what are you planning to do about it?”
“The plan hasn’t been finalized. We are working on bringing people together right now, so that we have the full support of everyone.”
“So you were chasing me to gain my support on this?”
“Only if that’s not too much to ask for.”
“I need some time to think about it,” she said as she got up to leave. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
She shook his hand formally before leaving.
A thousand good books have been written on man, woman, and love; but there is still so much that has remained unsaid on the topic. He tore both copies of the poem and sighed to himself, “Ahh, love, why is it so easy to let you in, but so difficult to let you out? Why couldn’t you subsist only two-sided?”
11. The Dawn of the Heat Wave
When the world around is ready to back one unconditionally, one can become as unreasonable, unfair, and coldly sadistic as one likes.
The gang meticulously lined up the support before embarking on schooling Coinman. They also picked all the days when management was going to be away at off-site meetings.
One day at the first flush of morning, Hukum came to the office before anyone else. He went to Coinman’s desk and rapidly worked through his shoulder bag to fetch numerous loose glossy pages from an adult magazine. He then arranged a few in a neat fashion on Coinman’s desk and dropped a number of them all around his desk.
As the normal office hours started, people gathered around Coinman’s desk like onlookers at a mass-casualty incident. When Coinman got in, he walked past the crowd, trying to stay away from the playful throng as usual, failing to realize at first that the epicenter of the quake was his desk. Then as he approached his desk, intrigued, he could see people chatting in loud voices, laughing, and even miming hysterical mocking gestures. On seeing Coinman, the loud discussions turned into a humming sound. They parted to clear a passage for him—much like a mob giving way to the cops at the site of an accident.
As Coinman reached his chair, he saw instantly what had occurred and simultaneously decided, astutely, to pay it no mind. He slipped off his shoes as usual after sitting on his chair and, without losing another minute, took some files out of a drawer and started peering into them. Let down by the lack of a reaction from him, the crowd slowly dispersed.
Coinman continued to pretend to be lost in the files for the next few minutes. When all appeared to be normal again, he looked around to ensure that no one was looking at him. He then slowly collected the blasphemy, piece by piece, from his table and threw it all in the trash can. A few minutes later, he slipped beneath his table and stretched his hands out to collect even m
ore pieces from the floor. He had his head and body completely inside the table and arms close to the floor to keep others from noticing his activity. After successfully collecting all the smut, he slipped back into the chair, waited for a minute, and looked around one more time, just to make sure no one suspected anything.
Then, closing his eyes, Coinman started practicing deep breathing quietly to suppress his anger. He was very clear on who’d done this: who else but the most uncivilized man at the office, Hukum. A straight punch in the face would suit him the best for what he had done, thought Coinman, but a straight talk seemed more pragmatic.
So Coinman waited patiently for half an hour, until he saw Hukum heading outside for a smoke with his gang and followed after them. Once outside, he watched them from a distance until Hukum inhaled his first drag. Then he approached them.
“Hey, guys, do you mind a quick chitchat?”
No one paid any attention to him, as if he weren’t visible and audible. So Coinman went on without wasting time.
“I know that was your lewd poop scattered all over my desk,” Coinman said to Hukum directly.
Hukum rolled his eyes to his right, to Coinman’s face, without turning his head. He didn’t reply until the inhaled smoke had come out of his mouth as rings after concluding its stunt with his lungs. “Are you speaking to me, fella?”
“No one else is here, other than you and your sidekicks. Whom can I speak to other than you when I am standing next to you?”
“That’s all right. Don’t lose it, buddy. I just wanted to make sure before I decide if I want to answer.” Hukum took a much deeper puff this time, held his breath, and again started making rings of smoke. Once the rings faded, he turned to Coinman. “Be a sport, young man! I could almost see your Max Johnson super-active over there—don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it.”
The gang broke out laughing.
Coinman began shivering with anger, his chin being the command post.
“Have your parents never taught you to behave decently? Don’t you have any moral values, guys?” Coinman managed to keep his voice calm despite a storm passing through his head.
A sly smile played on Hukum’s dark lips. “I do have moral values, but I wouldn’t blow them on you. You know, I have a limited stock of them—so I save them for emergencies. It’s hard to tell these days when one may confront an emergency—like the one you faced on your desk few minutes ago. I don’t want to take a risk. It’s better to play safe by saving for emergency situations. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Coinman’s chin could easily have measured more than six on a Richter scale. Unfortunately, an appropriate rebuttal, a quid pro quo for which he would have sacrificed anything, didn’t occur to him. Frustrated, he merely turned and went back to his seat to save himself further mortification.
But the pranks had only begun.
The next day when Coinman wanted to pay a visit to the restroom, he realized that his shoes were missing. Someone had spirited them away very cleverly from below his chair. He looked for them everywhere possible—inside the drawer, beneath the chair, underneath the table, even on others’ feet; to no avail.
He walked to Ratiram in the end. “You wouldn’t believe this—I can’t find my shoes. I was wondering if you have any ideas where to look for them?”
“Well, dear Coin, the only possibility lies with the mighty mice that are present aplenty here. I suggest you look at all the places that are normally hidden from view.”
Though unconvinced by Ratiram’s idea, Coinman went to each corner looking for his shoes, and came back to Ratiram to make a request. “Would you be able to help buy a new pair of shoes for me from the market outside our office?”
Ratiram shrugged and said, “Dear Coin, ask me for anything else within the office boundary, and I swear by you, I will deliver that. It’s sad that my hands are tied a bit here. I cannot go outside the office during business hours. The management is increasing scrutiny on me, specifically on my disappearances during office hours.”
It’s not his hands that are tied but his heart, Coinman thought. Under the frustration of recent events and current madness, this was the first time Coinman ever thought of Ratiram that way. He knew for a fact that Ratiram had spent a great deal of time outside the office recently. Even if that was for official business, can’t he pretend this is business too—for the sake of friendship?
“That’s awful. Why would they do that to you? I hope all goes well with you regarding the scrutiny. In the meantime, I hope you don’t mind me borrowing your slippers for a few minutes, so that I can buy a new pair,” Coinman persisted, to test Ratiram’s intent. “I will be back before you blink!”
Ratiram slyly smiled and slowly shook his head.
“Actually, I forgot to tell you about an internal swelling that I have in my feet today. Some kind of a bacterial infection that’s in the beginning stage—can’t be observed right now, can only be felt. Long story short, I cannot be without my footwear.”
“Crazy liar!” Coinman barely kept himself from shouting back to Ratiram. In this world, it is so difficult to judge who is on your side! Thanks, God, for revealing his true face to me today. It’s strange how necessary it is to have problems to be able to prepare for avoiding future disasters.
Coinman was happy to see Ratiram’s true face sooner rather than later, yet was very sad to lose his best friend, especially when it happened so unexpectedly.
Now that he thought about it, Coinman realized that some of Ratiram’s actions should have tipped him off about the guy’s true self earlier. Coinman clearly remembered one instance when he had talked to Ratiram about his lack of companionship with Imli—his honest feelings about his married life at the time when Imli had gone to her parents’ place. He’d extracted a promise from Ratiram to keep it only to himself. But what had happened? Only a few days later he had a colleague drop by his desk to talk about it and ask if he could help in any way. When he’d confronted Ratiram, he’d responded emotionally that Coinman’s anguish had been too big a burden on him to bear alone. It was out of sympathy that he had shared with only a few colleagues.
It all became very clear to him now. Coinman rebuked himself for not knowing better. I should have understood his true nature back then!
Coinman called the admin department to find out if it could arrange for shoes; the person on the other side had the bright idea that Coinman could call his wife, who could then drive to the office with a new pair of shoes.
“If only that could happen,” Coinman sighed, without revealing anything more. Instead he patiently waited till the last person had left the office, and then left barefoot.
Barefoot! It wasn’t a matter of discomfort or money. It was a matter of pride. He was in no hurry to buy shoes now and drove to his house barefoot.
Thus, from that day forward, when Coinman arrived at the office, he took his shoes off and locked them in a drawer before commencing his work. Whenever he needed to walk, he opened the lock, took his shoes out, wore them, and went. When he came back, he again locked his shoes in the drawer. He did this religiously for a week before he got lazy about the endless locking, unlocking, and locking. So he started staying barefoot in the office. He wore shoes only while coming to or leaving work. He even recommended his barefoot enchantment to other colleagues.
“It’s a heavenly feeling, when the foot, the powerhouse of reflexology, touches the cold marble floor,” he said. “The collaboration sends a soul-fulfilling sensation through the whole body.”
A few days later, when Coinman found that his lunchbox was missing from his bag, he didn’t bother with Hukum or Ratiram, nor did he even search for the box. He remained hungry that day to demonstrate his protest. He brought a new lunchbox the next day. From then on, his lunchbox went into his locked drawer, right next to his shoes.
12. The Restroom Addiction
Sometimes two strangers are just waiting for a chance to discover each other to become best friends. This was true in the case of Da
ulat and Kasturi, who had found a soul mate in each other after the union arranged by their parents. In no time their afternoon siestas had emerged as a sublime platform for their soul-merging conversations, and were to remain so for the next thirty years, until Daulat’s transformation into a schizoid personality began.
Their ongoing afternoon symposium had dealt with various hot topics while they idled around in their bedroom after lunch.
By the time their child, Kesar, had turned five years old, he had already won a spot in the symposium for not being able to commence his elementary education, despite their having tried all the schools in the area, because he was inconsolably upset in his parents’ absence. It was déjà vu every time: they would leave him in school on his first day, he would become sick from crying the whole day, and the school administration would call Daulat and ask him to educate his child elsewhere.
It was a vicious cycle. The more the attempts to get him to a school, the more abandoned and insecure he felt.
“Next time you take me to a school,” he often forewarned them, “I am going to flee to an unknown place and won’t ever show up at home.”
Then one day, on his sixth birthday, he actually disappeared from the house. His parents looked for him everywhere before calling the police, who then connected to the current “lost and found” reports to locate him quickly. Someone had already reported a kid crying alone in a strip mall at the city outskirts. The family was able to recover Kesar safely, but couldn’t stop the issue from becoming explicitly visible to people outside the house.
Good neighbors always spy on you to make sure you are doing well. Cheela, being a good neighbor, had been constantly observing the challenge his neighbors had, and he couldn’t resist volunteering his advice to the parents when he found an appropriate social opportunity for a conversation.
“We have been there with our son Bunty,” Cheela said. “We asked around, looked into newspaper advertisements, and intercepted the parents of disciplined children, including ones we had no prior acquaintance with. Our attempts seemed unproductive and frustrating; we were ready to give up when we finally heard about this school that exclusively enrolled such children.”