Pandavas

by Anil Chawla

  Embarrassed by the tamasha of that visit, Pantu ensured that when he came to stay in the hostel, he had no bhangra party in tow.

  Goky was born to schoolteacher Praduman and housewife Yamuna in Sojat, Rajasthan. He was the youngest of three siblings. In his traits, attitudes and demeanour, he was so different from his siblings that it raised doubts if they were even related! He was academically bright and topped his class. He had a sharp memory and phenomenal observation powers. He reflexively identified patterns from happenings and things around him. With all the parental attention focused on Goky, it often surprised him that his older brother and sister were not jealous of him.

  Despite the hard work of both parents, making ends meet was a daily struggle. The family’s savings had been exhausted in raising and educating Goky’s older siblings. Then, when Goky was in class 9, his father’s one bad habit—smoking— took his life. Any money the family had left was spent on treatments that ultimately proved futile. After losing her husband, Yamuna rose to the challenge of earning for her family.

  Goky did his schooling at Central School, which was rated quite high in the state. Apart from good teaching, the students also got good perspective from their teachers about career choices. By the time Goky entered class 10, he had decided that he wanted to be an engineer. Having set his goal and knowing fully well that the road to success was full of hurdles, and that there was plenty of competition, he set about the task in a systematic manner. Over the three years from class 10 to 12, he expertly balanced his school studies with his preparation for the engineering entrance exams. His planning and hard work paid off, and he finally succeeded in procuring not only admission to LEC Surat, but a partial scholarship as well.

  And so three different paths led Kalpu, Pantu, and Goky to the LEC campus, where they met and soon came to be known as the Terrible Troika.

  After settling down in their hostel rooms, they met again in the college mess. While Goky and Pantu were anxious to know more about the bomb blast at the station, Kalpu had seen similar things in the past and wasn’t too perturbed. The blast had happened early in the morning when there were not too many people around; luckily, there had been no casualties. The three injured had been admitted to Surat Municipal Hospital.

  Some seniors arrived and recognized Pantu as the boy who had tried and failed to stop his family from publicly celebrating his admission. They asked him to do the ‘murga’ (chicken) pose. Now that was tough for Pantu, given his girth. He tried gamely and ended up rolling over and over on the floor. His new friends joined him, but only because they’d fallen off their chairs laughing.

  Classes started and the friends’ circle became wider. A couple of weeks later, Kalpu spotted some of the boys huddled together. Never to be left behind, she barged right in and demanded to know what they’d been talking about. The boys were reluctant, but Kalpu shocked them by reading their minds, ‘Remember guys, Gujarat is a dry state.’ There was much disappointment all round till they heard the rest of her sentence: ‘But alcohol is available freely, more so in Surat. Daman is close enough to smuggle booze from. And Mumbai, too, is not far.’

  At this, a tall boy called Sammy whispered something in Pantu’s ear and vanished. Towards the evening, he arrived with a dirty-looking rucksack on his back and headed straight to his room. The arrangements for the weekend booze party had been made. Six or seven boys assembled in one of the rooms at ten-thirty that night and opened a bottle. It was almost midnight when they heard a knock on the door. All of them froze.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked one of them. There was no response. Everybody was holding their breath. The penalties of being found with liquor were severe. There was another knock on the door and they heard a shrill voice ask them to open the door. There was a sigh of relief as they realized it was Kalpu.

  A few seconds passed, and Kalpu’s shout cut through the boys’ reluctance. ‘Will you open the door or do I inform the warden? And I know what you guys are up to. So just relax.’ The door was opened, and Kalpu entered a room full of smoke and the smell of liquor. One of them dared Kalpu to take a sip. She refused.

  Sammy was quiet in the beginning, but opened up gradually. Kalpu learned his full name, Paul Samuel, and much more. His family had been settled in Mumbai for three generations. His parents, Mary and Abraham, were doctors and worked at a private hospital. He was an only child and grew up in the care of housemaids. He often saw his parents quarrel over trivial issues. When this happened, the maid would take him away to another room. As he grew up, he withdrew into himself. After a particularly unpleasant scene at home when he was fourteen, he slit his wrist with a kitchen knife. Luckily, his mother’s hospital shift had changed and she came home early to find Sammy in bed with his forearm still bleeding. His mother’s timely intervention saved Sammy. After this incident, the Samuel home became quieter. The fighting grew less frequent, but Mary and Abraham didn’t talk much to each other either. On returning from the hospital, Sammy’s father generally sat in the balcony with a glass of rum, and munched on peanuts and roasted gram. Even at the dining table, they rarely spoke. The Samuels lived life together but never gelled with each other. Sammy grew up an introvert.

  Over the next few days, every time Sammy met Kalpu, he looked the other way. One day, she invited him for a cup of tea and in casual conversation, said, ‘I am never going to ask you about your parents, family, and things like that.’ ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Forget the past and move on in life. I am your friend. You can trust me,’ she said and patted him on the head. Kalpu eased Sammy’s entry into the Troika’s inner circle.

  A month later, there was a surprise quiz in statistics class. Their professor had set them a tough 30-minute questionnaire on probability. After about 12 of those minutes, a boy named Sridhar quietly handed his answer sheet to the professor and left. As the professor’s eyes moved down the sheet, one could see the astonishment on his face. The class was curious to know what surprise Sridhar had sprung. The next day, the quiz scores were put up on the notice board—Sridhar had cracked it and scored 50 on 50. The next best score was 26 on 50. The stats guru had arrived.

  Sridhar was the youngest member of a highly educated family. His father, Prabhakar Nagaraju, was a professor of mathematics in Vijayawada, while his mother, Nirmala, was a biology professor. Four of his six older siblings had shown an exceptional knack for pure sciences: two of them in mathematics and one each in physics and chemistry. The other two had studied medicine. Academic excellence almost seemed to be a genetic defect in the family! Brilliance was in their blood. Ma Saraswati’s blessings seemed to be with Sridhar as he became known as the ‘maths and stats wizard’ in school and college.

  Goky and Pantu barely understood probability. Kalpu was only a shade better. Together, they approached Sridhar for ‘rems’, or remedial classes. He gladly obliged. Sridhar quickly became Sri, a nickname he shared with popular actress Sridevi and therefore, resented. As the four youngsters interacted more with each other, they realized they got on quite well. The friendship grew, and before long, Sri’s irritation at his nickname evaporated.

  Sammy sometimes joined the four after rems. One day, they discovered something Goky, Pantu, Kalpu, and Sri had in common. Each one was the youngest of her or his siblings. Sammy was an only child and claimed himself the youngest and the oldest. They had a hearty laugh over this, and such shared laughter strengthened their bond.

  Around Republic Day, LEC held its annual fest, a big cultural event with the student community leading the way. In 1985, students staged a satirical play called Aaj ka Mahabharat, in which the five Pandavas and Draupadi found themselves in absurd and frustrating modern situations. Arjun, played by Goky, couldn’t convince the babu to issue a licence for his divyastra. Sri/ Yudhishthir kept interviewing for the king’s job but in vain; even endorsements by Hastinapur’s greatest failed to help him. Pantu was perfect as Bhim, who had to spend hours in queues outside ration shops. Nakul and Sahdev—both played by Sammy—found themselves signed up f
or a Bollywood film about twin brothers separated at birth. Kalpu’s Draupadi got fed up of being asked for five marriage certificates—in triplicate—for every little thing.

  The women’s liberation movement had been gaining momentum around the globe, inspiring retellings of the Mahabharata from the perspective of its female characters. Inspired, Kalpu highlighted Draupadi’s intelligence, courage, and knowledge in her script. Her feisty portrayal brought out the most powerful aspects of Draupadi’s character.

  With the great battle interrupted by pacifist hippies and a dandiya troupe, the grand finale left everyone in splits. The witty script and performances were a huge hit, and remembered for years to come. After that day, the five friends were called ‘Pandavas ’ by everyone. They themselves thought the name suited them, and thus the Pandavas were reborn; albeit in a different time and context, and with a different composition.

  The Superachiever

  Asmiling stewardess welcomed Goky on board. He walked towards his allotted seat in executive class. He was flying American Airlines from New York to Delhi and he’d just sleepwalked to the plane after the stopover in London. After exchanging a couple of nods with other passengers, some of whom looked familiar, he placed his luggage in the overhead bin. An attendant waited for him to remove his Armani jacket and carefully draped it over a hanger in the closet. He eased himself into the reclining seat, and that was when he realized how very tired he was. She offered him a glass of fresh lime but when he tried to lift his hand, the simple act seemed like an enormous effort to defy gravity. She unfolded the table in front of him and placed the glass on it. He barely managed a ‘Thank you’.

  He had been airborne for close to 150 hours during the last 10 days, moved across 3 continents and had 20-odd meetings with clients. Over the years, he had devised his own pyschomoto-neuro-physical response mechanism to handle jet lag. In fact, some of his colleagues used to wonder how he did it: land after a 26-hour flight, head straight for his office in central Mumbai, work for the next few hours, and still look absolutely fresh.

  This time he felt like he could drop dead.

  As both his mind and body were tired, the images on the small TV screen in front of him moved like disjointed dots, and he hadn’t the energy or the drive to join them. He felt lethargic and was not ashamed of it for once. In his professional circle, he was known as an assertive, dynamic, sharp fireball of an individual—always in a rush to achieve, an out-and-out go-getter. Heading a large business vertical in ITS, the new-age multinational from India, he believed and boasted often that he ‘worked best under pressure’. Aggressive, near-impossible goals actually pumped up his adrenalin and made him work harder than ever before. Little did he realize that his style of functioning, these strenuous demands he put on his body and mind, his long working hours without much rest and recreation, and his almost undiluted workaholism, made him a copybook example of a ‘Type A’ personality. Experts know that ‘Type A’ behaviour is known to be strongly correlated with coronary heart disease. It was not that he was totally ignorant of the implications of his lifestyle; he just wanted to make the most of his success as long as the going was good.

  The take-off announcement startled him a bit. He straightened up to fasten his seatbelt, and then closed his eyes again. He did not even notice when the stewardess folded back his table, gently straightened his chair, and went to her seat outside the cockpit. The take-off was smooth, even for a frequent flier like him who had experienced the rough ride along with the smooth, and seen it all, from turbulent weather to emergency landings. But he hardly registered it. His mind had retreated into the past….

  ***

  6 February 1984: It was close to 2:00 a.m. but Goky, tired as he was, was not about to sleep. He was concentrating hard on the maths objective-type question paper in front of him. He had been at it for nearly four hours. He heard light footsteps nearing and raised his head to look up at his mother. ‘You should sleep now,’ she said with concern. ‘You’ve been studying for such a long time. Why don’t you go to bed now, get up early in the morning, and study then? That is the best time to study.’

  He did not want to get into yet another round of discussions with his mother on the virtues of getting up early and studying in the morning. ‘Just half an hour more, Ma,’ he reassured her. ‘I’ll finish this last set of question papers and sleep straight after.’ And he yawned. His mother came closer and he felt her fingers running through his long hair, like a blessing. She did it quite frequently and while doing it, she muttered something which he could never hear or comprehend. But his mother’s touch relaxed him like magic. Just what he needed, an infusion of magical energy. ‘I’ll get you a glass of hot tea,’ she said affectionately.

  There, she’d done it again. He always wondered how she read his mind effortlessly, every time. In fact, he’d been desperate for some tea but hadn’t the energy to make it himself—or get up to ask for it.

  ‘Thank you, Ma,’ he said, and buried his head back in the question paper.

  He was preparing hard both for his class 12 Board examinations and the entrance tests for admission to a good BE or B.Tech course in a reputed college.

  He heard his mother again, coming in with a cup of tea and some glucose biscuits. She patted him and left.

  Half an hour passed, and then an hour. When he finally finished going through the papers, daylight was breaking. He crashed into his bed and fell asleep immediately.

  ***

  ‘May I fix you a drink, sir? JW Black Label, as usual?’

  Goky was jolted back to the present. The stewardess was there with a tray on which a crystal glass, bottles of soda and mineral water, and some roasted almonds were neatly placed. A tiny ice-bucket stood heaped with cubes. Before he could say anything, she opened the small bottle of scotch, poured the contents into the glass, added four ice-cubes and filled it up with soda and a little water.

  ‘Your drink, sir.’ Noticing the question mark on his face, she said politely, ‘Sir, you have flown with us close to a hundred times, and we’ve made a note of your preferences. This is the way you’ve liked it most of the time.’

  He was pleasantly surprised. Then his flair for deciphering patterns and understanding behaviour kicked in. He immediately related this to his company’s credo enjoined on all his employees. ‘Aha,’ he said to himself, ‘customer focus.’ Quite early in his career, he had learnt the importance of understanding his customers, their strengths and weaknesses, their pain areas. Still, he was prompted to ask himself, ‘Do I startle my clients the way she just startled me?’

  He smiled and thanked her. She told him, with a grin of professional satisfaction, that she would be back with the second drink in 25 minutes, and that time, his scotch would be on the rocks.

  Flabbergasted, he took a large sip from the glass. The whiskey tasted great but he always found the bouquet more intoxicating than the liquor itself. He took another sip and tried to relax, but just couldn’t. What the stewardess had done had started a train of thought. Obviously, airlines kept records of passengers’ details. They knew his habits very well. How were they doing it? It did not take him long to see that the airline database had all the basic details of passengers and if they added customers’ food and drink preferences and other tidbits to the repository, meaningful conclusions could be drawn. Data and analytics had tremendous utility. And yet, was the airline encroaching into his personal space? If yes, that could have its own risks. While dealing with his customers, he always held some aces up his sleeve. He wondered if he could explore some ways to similarly keep the airline guessing about his behaviour.

  Curiously, he found himself a little annoyed. What did this woman think—that she knew everything about him? In his disoriented state, he felt almost as if she had taken control over his mind. Goky would allow this kind of control only to his wife, Varsha, and nobody else. A sense of rebellion overtook him. He had a strong urge to prove the stewardess wrong. Little did he realize that his line of thought had slo
wed down, perhaps unmindfully, his intake of the first drink—and it had been observed. The stewardess did return after 25 minutes, but without the second drink.

  ‘Sir,’ she smiled politely, ‘you don’t seem to be enjoying your drink today. Is everything all right? Would you like to be left to yourself for a while?’ The offer came as a relief to Goky. That was exactly what he wanted. He nodded his head, muttered an inaudible ‘Thanks’, and she left.

  Alone again, his resentful thoughts returned. He started to seethe with anger now. Over the years, it was he who had mastered the art and science of understanding people’s behaviour and had earned the kind of respect and status for it which not many achieve. He commanded people, and not the other way round. And here was a flight attendant who was actually turning it around and that too in the air.

  Arrogant, angry thoughts whirled around in his head. He tried to divert his attention to the TV screen in front of him, surfed channels for a bit and then stopped to see The Bourne Identity, one of his favourites. Although he had seen it more than once before, he stayed glued to the film and watched it for the next couple of hours, without realizing that he had started in the middle and continued when it restarted.

  ‘May I change your drink, sir?’ She was back.