Autoplay: Not-so Stories

by G. Sampath

  The developer was commissioned by the governments of Malaysia, Brunei, Brazil, Denmark, Ukraine, Latvia, Madagascar and Morocco to construct a chain of ultra-modern, eclectically designed public conveniences that would also be renowned as architectural wonders, much like the Susu Towers, and much like traditional places of religious worship such as temples, mosques, etc., would combine form and function to produce the effect of beauty as well as awe and thus attract not only tourists but also pilgrims. Within a week of his winning the Peace Nobel, both Time and Being had him on the cover and called his company the McDonalds of the architectural slash religious monument slash public convenience construction industry.

  And the developer’s chain of Architectural Wonders Extraordinaire, which came to be known as the AWE buildings – imagine a Coliseum or Taj Mahal in every country and every national capital, so that people did not have to traverse continents and go abroad to see a Wonder of the World and could just hop on to the bus instead – became like the first and obvious stopping point for every tourist visiting any city anywhere in the world; it was like a mandatory stop, akin to the visit to the loo at a new airport, and what’s more, it was a loo. Travel writers and photographers made ambitious tour itineraries wherein they visited and profiled and compared and contrasted AWE buildings; tour operators offered special packages for enuretics and the nephrologically challenged focused on high AWE-density sectors; and several memorable climaxes and romantic scenes in Hollywood and Bollywood began to be shot in AWE buildings, which again, only added to the cultural cache and religious charm of these monuments.

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  The big question, of course, is whether the developer achieved the original objective that spurred his foray into excretory construction and monument architecture – the love of SDW. Well, she accompanied the developer on a few parties, few soirees, few world tours, few chief guest appearances, few award ceremonies, sparking feverish gossip in Page 3 columns about the mystery woman on the developer’s arm. She even allowed him to make love to her a few times, and then, one day, as vampires are wont to do, she disappeared, plunging the developer into deep melancholy, which, in turn, made him lose himself in his work and related commitments with even more fervour. His extraordinary success and wealth in conjunction with his equally extraordinarily puzzling melancholy – after all, what could a man want that the developer did not already have? – made him fatally attractive to the opposite sex and to the same sex as well, as also to all the intermediate sexes – and the developer gave himself up to all of his suitors and gave of himself to no one, his heart fixed on one person alone, SDW. And not a day passed when he did not wake up in bed expecting to find SDW by his side, and sometimes, as he opened his eyes, he got a sharp sense that she had just moved out of his vision, that she’d been standing right there by the window, leaning against the wardrobe, twirling her hair, watching him, watching him sleep the developer’s sleep. But a vampire, as we know, doesn’t always have to be physically present in a room to be with you. If it loves you – or if you truly love it – it will hug you electromagnetically, and sometimes you feel it and sometimes you don’t. But don’t expect anything more from a vampire lover.

  A TRAUMATIC INCIDENT FROM THE EARLY CHILDHOOD OF THE CMD

  One night, when the chairman-cum-managing director was a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler, he had the most terrifying, most painful, articulation-resistant, beyond-management-level horrifying – with probably ten years of suffering compressed tight like a zip file into seven minutes – night of his life-till-then as well as the life-to-come.

  Nobody (not even God) had bothered to check in advance if the toddler-CMD at that stage of his biological and psychological development had the capacity to withstand this level of pain and suffering, with repercussions that would be felt far away, in the distant future, by his partners, personal and professional, by his progeny, private and public, as well as by the employees, temporary and permanent, real and deemed, who would come to work under him at home and in the world in the company he would go on to helm as its most feared but also its most devastatingly successful, from the shareholders’ and industry’s point of view, CMD.

  And so, years later, when the toddler-CMD was an adult, and having adult-type troubles like any other adult, suffering like any other adult, as well as being the cause of suffering for many other adults and adults-to-be, he would think back to that X-treme suffering of his toddler-self and wonder where in the scale of suffering (a scale on which his toddler self’s suffering represented one end of the scale) the current suffering (both what he was enduring as well as what he was inflicting) figured, and if he could survive, more or less unscathed, that epic episode of suffering as a toddler, why were those he was making suffer, which he had to do as part of his role as CMD, already whining so much in the face of what was obviously barely even eligible to qualify for that scale, and was a cakewalk-in-the-park compared to that cosmic-level misery that he had survived as a mere, all-round vulnerable, innocent-of-the-world toddler, and not only survived but gone on to become the CMD?

  What had happened – and this was a story the CMD loved to narrate to his Leadership Team when they were winding down at The Club or The Lounge after one of their gruelling Review-cum-Strategy Meetings – was this.

  It was a little past midnight in the toddler-CMD’s household. The toddler-CMD was asleep, having been put to bed in his toddler-sized bed in the toddler-sized room1 by his female parent after much tantrum-throwing2 (meal-related and sleep-related) from his side and much speech-heavy, attention-heavy, parenting labour from her side. Drained of energy, patience, poise, and throat-water after another exhausting day of full-time offspring management, the female parent had herself collapsed into the slumberous arms of the night only an hour or so before midnight.

  Other members of the household – the toddler-CMD’s male parent and the male parent’s female parent3 – were also fast asleep. And then, as per the version his female parent would go on to narrate on numerous occasions to the toddler-CMD in the course of his childhood and adolescent years (both individually in one-on-one interactions as well as in group settings with friends/blood relations), and which version was the most exhaustive, if not authoritative, version of the incident extant,4 and also subscribed to by the adult-CMD,5 around twenty past midnight, everyone in the house, and subsequently several of the neighbours as well in adjacent flats, was woken up by fierce, night-piercing wails.

  The wails, which rapidly took on the decibel quality of unrelenting full-throated screaming,6 originated, everyone in the house realized, in the room occupied by the toddler-CMD, and they further realized, at once, as a matter of fact, that the cries now emanating from the toddler-CMD’s room were qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from the typical interrupted-sleep cries they were used to hearing on most nights. This was big time. They all rushed, at their own age- and sex-determined pace, to the toddler-CMD’s room. The female parent got there first, and turned on the lights. What the illumination revealed was the toddler-CMD curled up in his bed in the foetal position, bawling his innards out, as it were. With a gasp the female parent bent down and picked up the toddler-CMD, and as she did so, and hugged his body to her own, her own being seemed to vibrate with the deafening cries of the toddler-CMD.

  The toddler-CMD’s body was in the throes of something that evidently nobody would ever want to be in the throes of, and it rolled this way and that, turning its head this way and that in the female parent’s unsteady arms, threatening to pop out of her grasp. The female parent performed a quick all-body check for any insect-bites or allergies or rashes or untimely emissions of waste matter7 or any other anomaly of any kind while making tender, reassuring noises, and at the same time requesting the toddler-CMD to communicate calmly to his mama what was troubling her darling, etc., for the toddler-CMD was old enough now to engage in adult-compatible human speech. But the female parent could not access her offspring’s attention – its agony being too thick, too hard, too a
ll-encompassing a barrier for her to be able to tunnel through. And while it was clear to her that her darling offspring too was trying to communicate something to its adult caregivers, and trying probably extremely hard, tugging at its tiny ears, twisting its neck, writhing this way and that, it too could not overcome the hurtling landslide of pain that seemed to have buried its brand-new consciousness under.

  The female parent’s attempts to pacify the toddler-CMD – without having first addressed the root cause of the agitation that she was attempting to pacify him out of – only seemed to send his agonized cries into higher and higher circuits of pitch and decibel. As the male parent and his slow-moving, aged female parent watched half-dazed and full-confused, both of them addressing rapid vocalizations in the direction of the female parent and the toddler-CMD, without much effect, it seemed, on either, it occurred to the female parent and the male parent (independent of each other) that none of them seemed to know what was wrong or what had to be done with this organism – this loud, steaming, raging entity that was literally bringing the building down, and would probably get the planet to stop rotating on its axis if it could, until its soul-wrenching pain was assuaged with immediate effect. Had it been the case that someone had chopped a body part (of the toddler-CMD) off, the screaming-bawling intensity or decibel level could not have been higher. The female parent, increasingly panicky at being unable to figure out what it was that was causing her beloved offspring such unconscionable, breath-stopping, lung-splitting pain and terrified that something life-threatening or permanently debilitating might be happening to it began getting him out of his night clothes so as to examine him better. This was the scenario the female parent had always dreaded, from the time before she became, or even seriously considered becoming, a female parent, a scenario she knew she was incompetent to handle and therefore helpless around, unless it was somehow managed for her.8

  Just when it seemed like they would spend the rest of their lives living this moment, and this moment only, this wailing-screaming-raging aural hell they just did not seem to be able to get to the exit of, the doorbell rang. The male parent got it. It was their across-the-floor neighbour, a tired-looking matron-mother of two teenage offspring, both male, and occasional evening walk-cum-crib session companion of the female parent.9 This woman, dressed only in a loose, shapeless, suitcase cover-material nightie, without so much as a what’s going on or is everything okay marched straight to the bedroom where the toddler-CMD was being disrobed by his now full-blown hysterically sobbing female parent. The matronly neighbour nodded at the female parent, put her hand on her shoulder, articulated the exact right combination of words the female parent needed to hear at this point and with an authority that struck everyone around as both natural as well as irresistible relieved the female parent of the still wailing toddler-CMD and, after what seemed to the female parent like a ten-second 360-degree scan of the bawling-suffering entity, instructed the female parent to quickly boil some water, not very hot just lukewarm, add two spoons of salt to it and bring it in a tumbler quick quick.

  While the male parent stood around looking this way and that in confusion, and his speculations, regarding which paediatrician he could afford to disturb at this time of the night, or which hospital was appropriate to take his offspring to right now, making little headway, the female parent, who was probably grateful to have something concrete to do, and relieved to have someone come in who seemed to know what to do in the current situation, had the presence of mind not to waste time interrogating the neighbour about the whys or wherefores of her course of action. She went straight to the kitchen and put a vessel on the gas.

  But the male parent, who, even when posted at the corporate office, never took on a project or gave his approval for any new, even minor, initiative, either business-related or cultural, not even those with zero or negligible budgetary implications, unless the rationale behind the initiative/project was thoroughly explained to him, along with the intra- and inter-departmental repercussions, if any, along with impact on current distribution of team responsibilities and time demands and workflows, and unless he was convinced from bottom-up that the decision was in alignment with departmental and organizational objectives – and even otherwise did not take nonsense from anyone – was not convinced. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked the neighbour. ‘What’s the salt water for? What will it do?’

  The neighbour was trying to peer into the child’s ear. And every time she touched the bawling toddler-CMD’s ear, the bawling toddler-CMD bawled louder. The toddler-CMD’s female grandparent, who was very old and very observant and had been observing the goings-on very observantly, understood. ‘Something has gone into his ear,’ she said. ‘Lukewarm saltwater is best solution10 to make it come out.’

  ‘You are going to make him drink salt water, in this state?’ asked the male parent, incredulous, wondering what quackery or bizarre home remedy this was.

  ‘WHERE IS THE SALT?’ shrieked the female parent from the kitchen. ‘I CANNOT FIND THE SALT!’

  ‘Check in its usual place,’ yelled her female-parent-in-law, hurrying toward the kitchen. But the all-important salt wasn’t there in its designated place on the second shelf at eye level. The female parent, trembling and quaking as if an engine of some sort was idling inside her body, began following her fingers around the kitchen as they whizzed about like flies or drones opening all the drawers and all the cabinets and all the jars in all the drawers and cabinets in ever-rising hysteria that, with every passing moment, was threatening to take over her senses completely.

  ‘CAN’T FIND IT,’ screamed the female parent again, her tear-soaked voice hoarse and guttural and yet somehow louder than the toddler-CMD’s screams, and as she stood there, helpless, waiting for some response, some clue regarding the whereabouts of the urgently needed life-or-death material from her female-parent-in-law or spouse, but not knowing whether she ought to be waiting at all in the first place, not knowing whether she was making the biggest mistake of her life right then, not knowing, as she stood near the kitchen door – a useless door that was never shut or opened but just stood there all the time with nothing to do ever, the most pointless door ever invented – with her baby screaming, and surrounded by the open mouths of cabinets and drawers and jars and bowls and bottles of all shapes and sizes lying lidless and open-mouthed and yet somehow miraculously silent, she seemed, to the male parent who had appeared by then in the kitchen to help look for the missing salt, less a mother and wife and more a personification of offspring-servicing madness that he barely recognized as his wife. As he stood facing her, his bare feet sticky on the untiled floor of that tiny kitchen that was like a foreign country to him, this inside-out oven with the exhaust fan decorated in soot which his spouse never turned on because it only re-circulated the smoke and assorted spice vapours within the home, making everyone (and in particular, the male parent) choke and gag and cough and sneeze, as he stood staring at her blankly, with the matron trying to calm the baby, his female parent repeating a question to him which, he now registered, was whether it was salt by any chance that he had been searching for during his dinner, only then did it hit him, and when it hit him, he slapped his forehead because he now knew where the salt was.

  The male parent had taken it (the salt jar) from its appointed place in the kitchen to the table by his bed, where he had been having his meal with the newspaper, away from the TV of the living room, to add some salt to the drumstick sambar he so loved but which, exasperatingly, was off today owing to salinity issues. Normally he would have commented on the salt deficiency in the sambar, and had he done so, the matter may have been picked up by his female parent, who might then have utilized the opening this afforded (the sambar having been cooked by the toddler-CMD’s female parent) to slam an easy winner over her offspring-in-law, or alternatively, induce an unforced error from her offspring-in-law vis-à-vis the toddler-CMD’s male parent. But the toddler-CMD’s male parent, who had become wiser after five years of playing refe
ree between his female parent and his spouse, had decided, on this particular night, and on this particular occasion of a less-than-perfectly-salted sambar, that he would not comment, not utter a word, nor make a gesture or nonverbal sign by way of facial expression, or even verbally ask anyone to get him some salt – which was a pretty normal and typical and reasonable thing for someone in his position in the household to do – but which, nevertheless, may still have sparked another ‘incident’ between his spouse and his female parent. Instead, he set his plate with the spoon in it on the table by the bedside and himself proceeded to the kitchen, and without asking anyone where the salt jar was, looked for it, located it, and then physically transported it himself back to his table without a word.