Acid

  The rest of the story was a figment of Shaly’s doubtful imagination. Kamala had not seen a Fat Boy dashing down the lane or conceptualized the possibilities of the Cochin town. What she had in her mind was the beautiful home she was going to make for her children, for Shaly, for herself, the beautiful frills of the layered green-and-white curtains with which she was going to adorn the windows, the smiling faces of her boys, and an evening walk with Shaly by the shores of the black waters.

  But now Kamala knew she was tired, her hands shaky.

  The first time, it was the fingers. They grew out of proportion and got dissolved in the air. But that was the first experience, like a first kiss, or first sex. It wouldn’t be repeated. People would not have to stop on the way in the storm or in the rain to look back and ponder. By the time one would realize this, one would be immersed in the poisonous dungeon, all wrecks.

  All peddlers shared the same face, the same expression and the same eyes, so the one she was going to meet in Cochin would be the same one she had met in Bangalore, with the same name. Last week he had been in the Port of Spain, doing the same business, the business of death, the peddling of marijuana and acid. They were happy, they were proud; they had the same manifesto irrespective of nation, creed and sex.

  What the fuck, you live or die!

  If Cochin was a port town, Kamala was just an infinitesimal particle in a handful of sand. Her hands still shaky, she dialled the number.

  He wanted to go and tap on her door and peer inside, or walk in, just like that; he wanted to get out of his bed, first. He wanted her so badly he had been trying to call her since morning. For the last two days, shortly after that most unfortunate of incidents, he had been experiencing a strange kind of spasm on the left side of his body—it was becoming uncontrollable, like a tic. Above all, he was tired of isolation, he wanted his brother back. He wanted someone to help him with the phone. He had woes; like ants gather grains, he gathered his woes one by one, and the more he gathered the more they swarmed around.

  The tea Janu made wasn’t strong enough.

  His bed sheets stank.

  He needed some books to read.

  Could she bring the old TV set to his room and ask the electrician to set up a connection there?

  Could she at least tell him the date she had in mind for the move?

  Was Aadi ever going to come back?

  Where had Shaly gone?

  He talked about freedom, worried about the dreadlock Rasta driven from the mainland to the heart of the Caribbean. He said smoke was his personal freedom: We should have the right in this country to do what we want, if we don’t hurt anybody. But he died of something like a cancer when he was thirty-six. His voice continued to enliven the hearts of many that lived a miserable life.

  The wrong signal: Kamala bargained with the go-between. The unfriendly face of the Cochin port frightened her. In Bangalore, business happened within friendly circles. A busy port should be somewhat like this. But why the hell had he asked her about her children? He must have asked the same question two or three times. Her children were her private sorrow, her happiness, her pain. She didn’t want outsiders poking their noses into her private affairs. She didn’t wish to share her personal data. She looked out at the sea, her fingers tapping on the menu card on the table. The restaurant, she noticed, was not busy. The man in front of her stared at her.

  ‘We guessed you wouldn’t want to share your details when we learnt that you’re not into socializing.’

  She felt uneasy, listening to him address himself as ‘we’. She knew there was more than one person involved, that she was only a microscopic link in this. He might have noticed the painful contraction of her facial muscles, for he stopped talking immediately. Those who came to buy weed were weeds; things would always go badly for them, no matter whether they believed in adwaita, had a different sexual orientation or had the additional burden of a paralysed teenager on their shoulders. As they went bankrupt, they became the difficult weeds, the ones which were plucked and thrown out. Shamelessly, they would come begging for alms.

  ‘Shame on you, you are no longer any good, a piece of shit, a heap of crap . . .’

  She noticed the man who was sitting opposite her in the restaurant. Was he a peddler too? He must be a petty officer on leave, for he had the ways of a seafarer. His T-shirt said: ‘Don’t ever worry about things that don’t worry about you’.

  Kamala tried to recall who it was that was worrying about her: her children, her friend or Madhavan?

  Not Madhavan.

  Not her children.

  Not her friend.

  Pussy, money and weed, the peddlers could not cross the boundaries of thought. Weed and whores are money, thought Kamala; they partake in rotating the economic wheel of the country. Peddlers on the other hand, were just the go-betweens, they did not have any special rights or position, and they were not powerful like whores. The country wouldn’t allow them to climb up the ladder the way ministers and businessmen did, to raise their own GDP.

  The peddler was getting visibly irritated by the long silences of this strange client. He tried to convince her and they argued, and in the end they came to an agreement. She left with the small packet clasped tight in her hands.

  She was not happy about what she had earned through the long hours of bargaining. At the back of her mind, she knew her son had not had a bath in days. What she wanted now was a home nurse, someone who could attend to his needs day and night. A male nurse would be the best option for a boy straddling his twenties. She wondered why Aadi was not worried about her. She was the one who kept thinking about him. She regretted that she never thought much about Shiva.

  When she was a girl, she had seen a cow giving birth to its calf. She remembered how long the children had sat in the veranda, their eyes unblinking and necks craned to see the calf pop out through the mighty hole. A woman gives birth in a similar way, except no one sits around to admire the child popping its head out of her hole except for nurses and doctors. Sadly, human babies are born into the weary hands of some strangers, the mother’s face white and bloodless, the doctor’s pale.

  53

  The actors buzzed around the permanent tables under the fig tree, beneath dangling, lit-up lanterns. The group of aspiring actors—jolly people from different parts of the world—had come together for a theatre workshop. Pondicherry was the land of booze, you got alcohol really cheap here, but Molière didn’t let them drink while the workshop was in session. The merry youngsters campaigned for it and the happy adults jeered at them. It took a while for Aadi to realize that they didn’t mean anything when they spoke, that they were too happy in this company to be serious. Most of them spoke for the sake of keeping their thoughts warm, keeping the merry-go-round on the move, keeping the serious reflections of the morning at bay. When they clamoured for booze it didn’t mean that they wanted it desperately, it meant they were happy with the mere mention of it. What a wonderful world of words, thought Aadi. They talked and laughed and talked till two o’clock in the night. They knew the sessions would start at five in the morning, yet they were reluctant to leave the table.

  Aadi was not part of the workshop but he joined the actors in the morning batch of Kalari. They said its practice awakened the hundred and seven energy centres in the body. His body, smeared with oil, sweated out on the red earth.

  Stretching down . . .

  Walking towards the right . . .

  Paying homage to Kalari . . .

  Touching the sole of the left foot . . .

  Stretching out the hands to touch the ground—the red earth . . .

  Folding the hands and touching the forehead . . .

  Walking towards the left then right then touching the sole of the left foot . . .

  It was amazing to see the rag man with his matted jute hair sitting on a chair near the gate. His boots were worn-out and so was his attire. He had two large eyes and a nose made of newspaper, but he was no scarecrow, he looked very real
. Girls chirped like birds around him. Aadi had not heard about Thanthrotsav. It was only then that he noticed the colourful strips of paper ribbons swaying in the wind along with newly made cylindrical paper lanterns. The morning looked happier than ever with all that colour hanging from the treetops. There was an air of festivity around them. The paper cylinder lanterns had eyes, noses and mouths and long tails like paradise flycatchers, cut out of thin Chinese paper. With their funny looks and bright colours, they seemed happy in the wind.

  ‘Wanna join?’ someone asked and Aadi turned around to see who it was. There were three of them. They were sitting on the veranda of the picture gallery, making paper planes and flowers. There was a basket beside them; it was full of paper flowers. Aadi looked into the basket: blue, green, yellow, orange, red, violet. There were paper boats and rockets too. But why so many?

  ‘Why don’t you help us make some rockets?’ they asked.

  Aadi looked in disbelief at the face of the man who said this. He had long hair that curled all round his face and down his neck and back. He had lined his eyes with kajal like dancers. He also had a small red ball stuck to his nose like the clowns you saw at the circus. Before Aadi’s surprise could die down, another man came to the veranda wearing a broad, coloured band on his hair and carrying a guitar in his hand. He sat down a little away from the group and started playing his guitar.

  ‘Hello!’ The man with the apple nose reached out his hand to Aadi. They shook hands and exchanged smiles. ‘I’m Martin; I am a wanderer, a singer, a kind of gypsy if you will.’

  ‘I’m Saji,’ the guitarist said, strumming his instrument without lifting his head.

  ‘I’m Sudhi,’ another man said, blowing a paper plane towards Aadi.

  Happily, Aadi caught the plane and joined the others in making them. It was something he knew very well. He had made many paper planes out of textbook pages with Shiva during their vacations. It was fun to blow what you had learnt during the school year into the wind. Anything hard-earned is easy to blow out at a certain point of time.

  In the evening it seemed like a festival of lights: together, the hanging paper lanterns and the mud lamps filled with oil and cotton wicks and kept on the ground marked out the walking paths. Nimmy was busy lighting the lamps, she was all dressed up for the occasion and looked stunning. Suddenly, in his mind, he saw his beautiful mother walking down the pathways lit by lamps.

  Amy Ammu came running with a garland of chrysanthemums around her neck. She hid behind him and peered through the holes of her knitted stole at the evening guests. In the open kitchen, unattached to any of the main buildings, people were drinking black coffee and eating beaten rice flakes mixed with shredded coconut and jaggery. Taking Amy by the hand, Aadi walked towards the performance area.

  She got excited seeing the shaft of light from the projector right above her head and frightened when she saw the Theechamundi Theyyam, wearing tender coconut leaves and plunging into the bonfire with a roar.*

  By the time dinner was over, people were in a jovial mood, their faces excited and relaxed at the same time. There were people from the neighbourhood and Auroville and Kalarigram along with actors from Adishakti. Aadi walked as if he were in a dream, tangled up in the breeze from the banyan tree and in the flags and paper ribbons hanging down from the branches. Suddenly, he heard a whistle blowing, a bell ringing, people shouting. All heads automatically turned in the direction of the cries of laughter. A black bus was approaching.

  ‘A bus, look Aadi, a bus inside our place!’ Amy Ammu jumped to her feet.

  People hurried towards the bus. He saw Amy Ammu already dancing around it. His eyes sparkled when he saw Martin sitting on the driver’s seat wearing the clown nose. In an instant, the side of the bus sprang open, revealing a brightly lit stage with drums and guitars and singers on it. Martin, in a sing-song tone, told the story of how the bus had taken a detour and fallen into a ditch. People gathered around the bus like flies and started dancing as the songs progressed. Instantly the many-coloured planes started raining down from the sky. There must have been someone hiding on top of the bus. The children started shouting and gathering the paper toys in ecstasy. Aadi was amazed to see the copters he had helped with in the morning. Even he wanted to run and collect them; Amy Ammu already had a collection of five or six copters in different colours. He looked at the other children, the village boys and girls running like mad after the paper toys. The singer, in the meantime, was singing of the trees people felled and the concrete jungles they were building in the name of development, the thudding pulse of modernity.

  People came together, entwined their fingers and embraced each other. They looked at each other through the rain of flying paper planes. Holding the paper flowers in their hands, they began dancing. It was refreshing to see men with birds, flies and flowers. He had been like that a long time ago. As he danced for the first time in his life, Aadi felt he was floating, becoming lighter than one of those paper toys. He started singing, shouting and whistling. He wanted more. They all did. People cried for an encore. At the borders of Auroville, it didn’t matter if people spoke Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, English, Spanish, German or Latin, they all repeated the one line the singers sang:

  We want more . . . injimvenam . . . we want more . . . injimvenam . . .

  54

  The love which is always turning over in one’s mind is not real love. The coupledom that gives no relief even in the flower of consummation is imagined.

  ‘As I cannot continue with my marriage this way, my dear friends . . .’

  Inside the bar people looked at Madhavan, who was not drunk, but seemed to be making an announcement in public, a personal announcement. His eyes, voice and ears seemed more inebriated than those of the usual drunkard, for he kept repeating, asking and blinking. His clothes, though seemingly new, were torn in places; the keys of his car were hanging out of his jeans, looking as if they were about to fall out. He looked like all his life he had eaten nothing but shit. He was not an unfamiliar figure at the Peacocks bar. People knew him. His soulmate Parvesh was with him, his face bearing signs of tension. After a spat with Kuljeet, it was Madhavan who had driven all the way to Peacocks, steady behind the wheel.

  ‘Cheers!’ Madhavan shouted. ‘Are there any bitches in this room?’

  ‘This style is no longer fashionable, people will laugh at you. This is the reason I call you outdated,’ Kamala whispered in his ear.

  He raised his hands and slapped his own face.

  ‘Don’t raise your voice here,’ he said.

  Kamala became silent at once.

  ‘Friends . . .’ he continued. Parvesh, his only friend, sat down on a chair next to him, his head bowed.

  ‘I don’t know how to love . . . I know nothing about the psychology of women. I tried to love my own sister once, my family supported me. I ask you: Have you ever heard of such a thing? Don’t go deaf, you, modern society, listen to what I have to say! I cannot love this new woman either. The woman who could give you a wonderful blow job need not be a companion, a soulmate or something of the sort. You get me . . . don’t you? I know I am getting all dramatic here, but life, my friends, is nothing if not a drama. Let me say a final cheer to mark the end of my relationship with women. I thank all the whores of the universe for what they have given me and what they have not. Please don’t count Kamala in this group of women, for she is my little sister who used to trail after me when we were children.’

  Parvesh tried to make him sit down, probably to make him stop, but he continued, ‘I am a dead person, and love is terrifying to those who are dead.’

  He wanted to see his children. He wanted to see Kamala. He knew that lust and base cravings had deprived him of the three souls dearest to his heart, those he loved most on earth. Society was always busy issuing bans; it would neither let him live nor love. He knew he was not the only soul on earth in pain, and that was the reason he toasted all those who were present there, all those lonely people. The wedding photo he
had set fire to—his second—was lying on the floor of his bedroom, half-burnt, and his wife—his second—was looking at it with hatred in her eyes.

  After a few more quick shots, he got out of there somehow, leaning heavily against his friend’s shoulder. His friend was unaware of the burden that was weighing him down. He had no idea that with each step, his friend was moving towards his old age. When Madhavan said he was upset that he couldn’t give his sons a chance to dump him in some old-age home, Parvesh’s steps faltered. Madhavan was not worried about what life had taught him. He knew the next day when he woke up he would see an old man in the mirror, that he would walk around the streets feeling old, that he would sit on the steps of a mall and smoke like a stranger in grey.

  There was an open-air restaurant on the lawn outside the bar. The place seemed surreal in the evening display of light and shadows. Madhavan surveyed the people scattered there. His eyes rested for a while on a couple dining at a nearby table. All of a sudden the woman accidently spilled rich hot chocolate over the white linen of the tablecloth and the man hastened to place a tissue over the spreading stain. They smiled at each other in understanding, but the stain continued to seep through the edges of the damp paper. A lit candle stood on the table between them amidst a basket of select fruit and flowers and a heap of chicken bones. He looked at the bones, the better part of which that beauty had eaten. They looked crushed and defeated on the chequered tablecloth beside the burning candle. The woman, he thought, was a witch, there was blood on the corner of her lips—or was it lipstick? Asking Parvesh to wait for a second, he joined them at their table without permission. He said he knew he was a stranger, but there were things he wanted to tell them. The man looked at him with surprise, she with hatred. She was a woman in her early forties, wearing heavy make-up and an outfit that seemed to belong to a teenager. Her gestures, especially her eyes, reminded him of the picture of a bored toad he had seen in a children’s cartoon strip. She yawned looking straight at his face and he realized that that was one of the ugliest sights on earth. There was a bit of meat and parsley caught between her molars. He didn’t say anything to them. Leaving them to their uncertainties, he got up and left. Just then he received a message from Kuljeet. He read it as he walked. He handed over the car keys to Parvesh and sat down in the bucket seat, trying to concentrate on the keyboard of his phone, trying to text back. With his ten fingers moving in twenty different directions, dropping down and flying back, he typed, no spelling out of place: