THE DIARY OF AN UNREASONABLE MAN

by MADHAV MATHUR

  ‘I think you missed a spot,’ he sneered smugly, pointing at his office.

  He had us clear out a section of his office; there was all kinds of trash in there, mostly old pizza cartons, empty soft drink bottles, crumpled paper and pens that had run dry. What a pig. We were diligent and did his bidding, losing some time. After we had done the job we made our way to the back of the building. We could hear the microphones being tested out in front at the amphitheatre.

  ‘It’s on,’ I said to Abhay.

  ‘I can hear it too,’ he shot back. ‘We have to get a move on.’

  Preparations were under way out in front, sound systems were being tested, light-display sets and smoke machines were all being calibrated for the magnificent show. It was a spectacle designed to mesmerize the unsuspecting populace queuing up eagerly to watch it. There was going to be confetti, there were going to be speeches, dances and lots of eye-pleasing gyrations. There were also going to be a large number of celebrities present, especially the company’s brand ambassador, Johnny C (Gyanendra Chaturvedi in real life), a famous Bollywood actor. It was a circus: a very driven and pointed circus.

  They had lined four of their latest models as specimens in the centre of the amphitheatre. These ‘gorgeous works of art’ would be revealed during the course of the show with much fanfare. I couldn’t wait for the fun to begin.

  As they managed and mixed their music to make sure that they’d get Will Smith to implore people to ‘get jiggy with it’, we mixed the manure in buckets of water and vinegar on the terrace of the building. The funk was unbearable. Zeus could have smelt the stench all the way from his throne on Olympus. Sure enough, a lesser being, a constable, came by to see what was going on. We heard someone thump their way up the stairs. Struggling to cover the buckets with an old tarpaulin that was lying on the terrace, we pushed them near some open barrels of sand and some sacks of cement that looked like debris from a recent renovation programme in the building. As the door swung open, we just about managed to sneak out of sight and hide behind a pair of enormous water tanks. Watching from behind the tank we realized it was a cop and prayed that he wouldn’t be too careful in his scrutiny of the terrace.

  We could hear the thunderous applause as Johnny C strode on the stage. The crowd was mesmerized. I turned to Abhay to ask him if he had brought the pamphlets, but anticipating my anxiety he pointed to the bag under his arm. ‘Good work,’ I whispered.

  ‘Can’t leave it all up to your fat ass, now, can we?’ he said self-importantly.

  ‘Right, right … what would I do without you, man …’ I quipped, rolling my eyes.

  ‘Sarcasm makes for a one-man show, Pranav.’

  ‘Okay. Fine. Sorry. Now shut the fuck up before the cop spots us and … ssssshhhhh he’s coming this way.’

  The portly policeman walked by, swinging his baton. His curiosity satisfied, his duty mostly done, he called someone on his walkie-talkie and stated that all was clear and peaceful; there was just a rotten stench of manure.

  ‘God alone knows what they do at this place.’ He grimaced and ambled off the terrace.

  Things were heating up downstairs. We thanked our lucky stars for the constable’s stupidity, locked the access to the roof and continued to mix the ingredients of our little cocktail.

  There was a lot of hustle-bustle around the foyer as people arrived for the launch. Investors, esteemed politicians and guests (men in suits with great expressions of self-importance) were seated at the least distance from the podium, while stands of photographers were stationed to the left and right. A large group of people had assembled to watch the pitch and to get a glimpse of the new car, as well as Johnny C mouthing off on stage. He welcomed everyone to the launch and apologized for the delay in kicking off the event. He tried cracking several bad jokes about the weather, stating that the rains had put a stop to the proceedings. The sun had been up and blazing all day.

  ‘Well it’s going to rain soon buddy!’

  That was Abhay, grinning as he stirred the mixture one last time. He was getting excited.

  A man with a clipboard was going insane near the stage.

  ‘Where are the flowers? Where the hell are the flowers! This is unacceptable!’

  A large number of people ran in every direction after he briefed them all angrily.

  The chaos ensued in the foreground: Johnny C’s atrocious Warwick-meets-Washington-meets-Wadala accent didn’t make things much better.

  ‘All right everybody! Hold on to your seats, we’re going to start this baby up right now.’

  Confetti flew down from the skies above, a light brightened the podium, bringing it to life.

  Johnny C began his trademark romp towards the centre of the stage in his signature sparkling white suit, medallion and top hat. A couple of kids in the crowd had the same costume on.

  ‘Where are my ladies?’ he exclaimed.

  The audience cheered in anticipation, hooting teens and corporate has-beens rejoiced as their big evening began. An evening dedicated to a luxury car, so coveted and so admired even before the fucking thing had been seen by anyone. Funny thing was that across the road from the Pirelli Towers, there sat eager onlookers, common men and women who obviously could not be allowed entry to the event. They too were enthralled by the spectacle that had snubbed them, making a beeline to rooftops, climbing up lamp posts and peering into the distance for a glimpse of the chhamiyas as they made their way on to the stage.

  They surrounded the actor-emcee of the moment and stared out with typical model look number eleven. This is the one where they tighten their jaws and purse their delicate pouty lips out. I believe they squinted their eyes a bit too. That brings out intensity. At least that’s what Tyra Banks would have you believe.

  Gyanendra aka Johnny started talking again. He rambled on and on about the significance of the show. As he said his bit, the women around him swayed as though they were in his control. With the end of each sentence they changed positions, shaking their posteriors suggestively.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the launch of the SHB XS3000! We have a great evening planned for you all; a glorious performance by our dance troupe to heat things up and then senior managers of SHB will introduce the new beauty to you all. After that we will have a short question-andanswer session for members of the press, followed by cocktails and light refreshments that will be served in the lobby of the wonderful Pirelli building behind us.’

  The audience cheered.

  ‘Hit me girls,’ he said, his voice rising with each word.

  With that, the thirty scantily clad girls began dancing, in a frenzy of smoke, glitter and psychedelic lighting. The smoke cleared a bit and they could be seen clutching on to Johnny C’s arms and looking out into the crowd seductively. They started gyrating to some low-grade, old club music and then moved forward in a line, facing the audience in front of the stage, making gestures with their hands, throwing back their hair and twisting their tongues.

  Proverbial dhikhchick sounds filled the atmosphere.

  The idea, as I understand it, was to generate a heightened degree of sexuality for the ad campaign, something one would naturally associate with a car. Elementary advertising.

  They walked from one end of the stage to the other, playing with the audience now, smiling as they displayed their assets. Everybody cheered them on.

  The thumping dhikhchick-dhikhchick was now followed by minor variations, like dhikhchicky. I marvelled at how they came up with that stuff.

  The music died down a bit and the troupe chanted. They switched into cheerleading mode. Great torches marked the highlights of the performance; all we could make out from above was a light-and-smoke-induced mayhem, with colours that most nightclubs refrain from using.

  You want it? You got it!

  You never would’ve thought it,

  XS three oh oh oh, do you want it?

  The ‘oh’s were suspiciously elongated, a little pained and had a distinct evocation of pleasure ass
ociated with them. It was vomitous.

  Abhay was checking the roof to make sure there weren’t any other people there. No cameras either. He was humming his favourite Pearl Jam song as he did this. I thought it was quite appropriate:

  The whole world will be different soon;

  The whole world will be reliev-ed …

  As the dance came to a close, the crowd grew louder and began their own kind of cheering. It made me sad to see that this was entertainment, made me sad to see that many actually enjoyed this.

  It was time for Mr Big Shot himself, the cocky Mr Robin Kapoor, to take the stage. He was SHB’s widely revered CEO. He stepped up to unveil the cars. Not before a speech though. We prepared ourselves. There were buckets of manure mixture to pour. The timing had to be right for the greatest impact. The fliers had to be readied too.

  He walked up to the podium with a corporate panache that must have made his juniors aspire even more to be like him: a leader of men, an orator, a man who made dreams come true. His immaculate black suit glistened in the white light that warmed him.

  He began his address crisply: ‘Thank you all for being here today. You have made this launch a grand success and we hope that in the near future, the XS three oh oh oh, will make headlines as India’s top selling luxury car.

  ‘To me there is no greater mark of success than the car you drive. Our models have always been special. Millions of people the world over aspire to own one of our beautiful creations. Millions of people spend their entire lives dreaming of the SHB brand.

  ‘Finally, after a great wait, we have brought our latest line to India!’

  ‘So where is this guy’s halo?’ Abhay sneered.

  ‘Oh, it only shows in press release photographs and on magazine covers.’

  ‘I see. Is it time yet?’

  ‘Not quite, he’s setting it up for us.’

  ‘He’s quite full of himself.’

  We watched him as he continued.

  ‘I believe the day is not far when every young person in India has this as his dream car. The fine engineering, the slender curves, never before has a machine been so blatantly desirable.’

  That was the cue for some major activity backstage. The organizers scrambled to get the second level of the stage moving. It was time for the cars to be brought under the light and for the white satin sheets that draped them to be pulled off.

  Robin Kapoor raised his right hand to the sky.

  ‘This is your time. This is your moment. Seize it. You too can be the proud owner of the world’s greatest automobile ever. I give you, the XS three oh oh …’

  He didn’t know what hit him. Before he could reach ‘oh’ number three, Robin Kapoor, the great businessman, stood covered in dung, his raised right hand dripping with the stench of a thousand cows’ refuse, his face smeared in chocolate paste. He stood motionless, dumbstruck.

  Then it was the turn of the cars. One by one we emptied the buckets over the stage.

  Falling straight through, twenty storeys down, it crashed through windscreens, light panels and speakers. In the midst of it all we threw down our pamphlets and fliers. They fluttered about in the sky above the hysterical mass of people running amok below us.

  People ran in every direction, screaming and crying.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’ the once calm Mr Kapoor was now shouting himself hoarse.

  The bright blue evening made a wonderful background for the papers coming down on our audience. We had just hijacked the show. It would have been criminal for us to waste the opportunity and not give any indication of why we were doing it all.

  ‘No one needs this shit’, ‘Sell it like it is’, and ‘You are not your car’ our ‘subtle’ pamphlets read.

  The advertisements had begun. We even signed off with ‘Love, Your Anarchists’. Abhay thought it would be a nice touch to have no names, just a simple insignia.

  We could hear wails of the assaulted rising up from the stage. They screamed in agony and cried for help. The supermodels in lacy red bikinis stumbled to find the ground again.

  People were reading the pamphlets too. The indefatigable media folk had snapped away as the shit rained down. What would have been a fantastic car launch ended with the famed sleek exterior and plush leather interiors getting smeared with copious quantities of fermenting dung. The flashes made a beam of their own; and the headlines were sure to be ours now.

  ‘We’ve got anarchists in this town. What would have been another evening promoting the new model of the SHB Auto Company has broken out in utter mayhem. Unidentified men dropped large quantities of manure and dung on the stage where the event was taking place, right behind me, right here at the Pirelli Towers in Mumbai not more than ten minutes ago. This event was to mark the launch of SHB’s new exquisite line of XS3000s in India.’

  ‘The assailants also dropped fliers and pamphlets like this one.’ She held up the ‘No one needs this shit’ example.

  ‘Is this middle-class India’s cry against materialism? Or is this just the work of some kids trying to have fun? Only time will tell. A full-scale investigation has already been unofficially ordered, to try and catch the so-called Anarchists of Mumbai. This is Dhwani Sinha reporting live for NDTV 24×7.’

  We had made the most of the chaos that reigned the first few minutes after the dung had hit to make good our escape. We ran down the side of the building, using the fire escape. The race to the back alley was quick. There wasn’t any time to stop and think. We had just a few minutes before the building security swarmed all over searching for the ‘troublemakers’. We reached the bus stop behind us and boarded the next big red that came our way. We were lucky.

  I felt like a deaf, blind and mute man running in circles, alone on a deserted island, beating his only metal pot with a candle for attention. Waves lapped at my dirty ankles. The sea breeze whipped across my weather-beaten torso as the tireless sun burnt my nose mercilessly. I smiled. It dawned upon me that there was no one coming for me. There was no bottle oscillating its way to the shore and there were no ships vacillating in the distance. It was just me. I put down the candle and threw away the pot. I walked determinedly in what I hoped was the direction of the ocean. I chose the tide. I chose not to lie on the beach and complain. I dived right in. Not a hope, not a whimper, not a prayer.

  The banana-plastering exercise had begun.

  12. THERE IS SUCH A THING AS GOOD TELEVISION

  It was a modest tea stall. Kishan Pandey, the shop’s nosey owner, was known to dryly inform people that his shop served the best garma-garam chai in the locality and the most delicious bun–anda in the city. No one contradicted him. The tea was sweet and seared your throat as you drank it and the buns were soft and buttery.

  He stood behind his table and boiled eggs in a deep pan alongside the large kettle perennially on the boil. The bright turquoise walls complemented the grey and brown benches. In an age of fancy Baristas and Café Coffee Days, this was where the everyman sat and enjoyed his beverage in the company of friends.

  A pensive policeman sat at the head of a table of raucous locals on a tea break. Their animated discussion was interspersed with enormous bouts of laughter.

  ‘I don’t know if it was horse manure or cow dung,’ the cop clarified for his audience.

  ‘But it sure stank all the way from there to here. Can you still smell it?’ The local wit snickered.

  ‘I can.’ The policeman was firm.

  ‘Yes, yes, Akram bhai has a fantastic sense of smell, after all he’s a policeman …’

  ‘Are you making fun of me?’ barked Akram. He was clearly not having a great day. Just that morning his boss had called him about the case. At 6 a.m.

  ‘We’re looking for those punks,’ he continued seriously, swirling the chai around in his glass as he talked. ‘Apparently their little drama has upset some of the higher-ups in the government as well as in my department. There’s a full-scale top-level investigation that has been launched. Those SHB guys are too well
connected to not have something done immediately.’

  His eyes flamed as he looked over his friend’s shoulder to see the tiny television behind him, bringing them a trailer of the latest Johnny C film.

  ‘What does that mean? “Full scale, top level.” Every bloody enquiry is immediate, full scale and top level. How many of these enquiries really work, Akram bhai?’ The stall owner mocked him. He had clearly been following the conversation. ‘I don’t understand how they could have made their way around all that security.’

  ‘Don’t tell anyone, but we found two janitor’s uniforms abandoned on the stairs at the back,’ Akram added in a hushed voice, conspiratorially leaning in towards the avid audience.

  ‘The ones that open up into Main Street?’ the hearty gentleman to his left spoke loudly.

  ‘Yes, the long spiral staircase at the back,’ the inspector said, visibly surprised.

  ‘I read about that in the paper!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, it seems your confidential bit of “inside information” is doing the rounds. It’s been all over the papers for the past week!’

  The policeman looked down into his glass of tea in embarrassment, shrugging his shoulders. His satanic goatee aided him in his characteristic scowl. Sensing his displeasure his friends began goading him more.

  ‘You have to admire their courage, Akram bhai …’ they started only to be interrupted by a loud outburst from the beleaguered cop.

  ‘You people are out of your minds, giving these boys, these vandals, a pedestal to dance on and celebrate their pranks.’

  ‘Oh let it go, he’s just yanking your chain.’ Pandey advised as he bustled about behind the counter pouring piping hot tea into glasses.