Notes of a Mediocre Man

by Bipin Aurora

  The boy looked at this strange man with wonder. Was the man drunk? Was he ill?

  But Mister Ravindran had no patience for the boy. He moved on.

  There was a cinema hall with a long line outside. He passed that. There were white pillars outside the cinema, posters all over the pillars for upcoming films. There were walls nearby—more posters pasted on these.

  He passed an alley to the right of the cinema. The smell of refuse and urine was strong. He covered his nose with his handkerchief, hurried on. “These Delhi-wallas,” he said again. “What low-class people they are.”

  He walked, he walked, he continued to walk. He had walked to change his routine, to lift his spirits.

  Mister Ravindran arrived home. He was tired, just that. He boiled the water, he made the tea. There were some old curried vegetables in the icebox. He took out the vegetables, he heated them.

  “A dog’s life!” he said. “Stuck in the north, stuck in a pointless job. Does a man not deserve better? Does he not deserve more?”

  ***

  Many months passed. Mister Ravindran went to work, he came home. He went to work, he came home. One day, Mister Ravindran was sitting in the front room, facing the window with the crisscrossing wooden shutters and cursing his fate. There was no decent veranda in his humble quarters—he could not sit there.

  He sat in his front room reading his newspaper. His mind wandered. He turned the page. He heard some scraping at the front steps. Who was it? Someone was climbing the cement steps, scraping his feet there.

  “Sir?”

  Mister Ravindran lowered his newspaper. It made a loud crinkling sound.

  “Sir?”

  There was a dark man at the open front door. Five feet, three inches or so—perhaps an inch more.

  He had seen the man before. Where had he seen him?

  “I am Ratna, sir. Do you not recognize me?”

  Ratna, Ratna. Who was this Ratna? “My boy!” he called out. “My boy!”

  It was the servant, of course, the servant whose life he had saved. The great deed he had done. The large sum, the rupees—the eight hundred and fourteen rupees.

  “Ratna, Ratna,” he said warmly, rising briefly from his chair but then sitting down again. (Was it not the respectful thing to do?) “Are you better?”

  The hair on the visitor’s head was shaved. The cast on his leg was gone. The cast on his arm was gone as well.

  “I am better, sir, much better. It is God’s will, sir. It is God’s blessing.”

  “And my blessing?” Mister Ravindran wanted to add. But he checked himself.

  The servant stood at the entrance—it would have been presumptuous for him to proceed further. He did indeed look better. A little weak, perhaps, but better. What a cry—a far cry—from the man he had taken to the hospital. From the man who, accompanied by his brother, had fallen at his feet.

  Did he not want to fall at Mister Ravindran’s feet again? Was it not the right and proper thing to do?

  “I am back from the village, sir.”

  “Yes yes, so I see.”

  “I am now a messenger, sir.”

  “What is this?”

  “The servant work, sir, it is too hard. My condition …” He pointed to himself and did not finish the sentence. “But the company, sir—the bank nearby—they have been kind to me. I get them water, I make them tea. I do small errands. But in the evenings, sir, I go home. On Sundays, sir, they are closed. I get to stay home as well. To rest. ”

  “That is great,” said Mister Ravindran. “That is great.”

  And did he mean his words? Or was he jealous of the servant—actually jealous? The servant was moving up in the world. Off in the evenings. Off on Sundays. Was he becoming like him?

  “That is great,” he said again.

  The servant bowed. “I just wanted to come, sir. To thank you. You are a kind man, sir. God will bless you, sir. Bless you with all the rewards of the world.”

  All the rewards—ha! How little the low-class one knew. Mister Ravindran lived a donkey’s life. He worked, he worked. He waited, he waited. Did the rewards ever come?

  The servant bowed—bowed again. And he began to leave. As he did, he hesitated about turning his back. It might be seen as a sign of disrespect, and he did not want to be disrespectful. But did he have a choice? The steps were there, all the steps leading to the dirt ground in the front. He did not want to stumble down the steps and fall—to fall all over again.

  The servant left, his back turned, and Mister Ravindran was left by himself. He returned to his chair. To the newspaper. The servant was better. Was that a good thing? The servant was back. Was that a good thing? Mister Ravindran was reminded freshly of his great deed. “And the reward,” he said. “Where is the reward?”

  Mister Ravindran sat there, the newspaper in front of him.

  He sat there for a long time. The light in the room began to fade, the shadows in the room grew long. And then, softly, very softly (perhaps he did not want the world to hear): “I will see him, yes. I will see him more often. And perhaps he will come and thank me—he has to, it is his duty. He will come and thank me again and again for my great deed. ”

  Gurmeet Singh

  Gurmeet Singh was a short man with two long beards, one on each side of the face. He gave one the impression of deformity. He talked, not surprisingly, of tropes. But was he satisfied?

  He looked at the subject—“la nature du sujet”—but also at a movement leading towards something—“qui conduit.” Something, what something? In a letter to his brother-in-law (his sister’s husband), he spoke at length of the crisis that he was going through. Was he a Sikh or wasn’t he? Should he tie his turban, should he not? If the turban was tied, was it, perhaps, tied too tightly? Should he loosen it?

  America was a big place. He wanted to fit in, yes. But would he then lose himself? Or would he then be free? Be for once the real Singh?

  These questions he faced, and more. Oh, the selfdoubts that he must have gone through. The vagaries, the horrors!

  We met at the Denny’s in Las Vegas, and then at the Howard Johnson’s in Cincinnati. He ordered two eggs, bacon, ham; I ordered pancakes with a side order of fries. We both had coffee, ordered refills.

  “I like life,” he boasted. “I like living. Am I therefore a fraud?”

  I told him that he was no fraud. He was the last person I would consider so.

  He seemed pleased by my words.

  He spoke of “luminous profiling,” a “terrible afflatus.” But he would give no details. What it all meant—or how it all tied together—was beyond me. But so it was.

  He had studied the works of the literary critic Frank Kermode—Puzzles and Epiphanies. He had studied the works of the French man of letters Otto Hahn—Les Temps Modernes. He tried to put his studies to use. Was he able?

  He attended many lectures, liked going to them. They gave him a chance—or was it an excuse?—to see people. To see the world.

  He wandered the streets. He lived with his cousin in Cheverly, Maryland. He lived with his aunt in Seattle, Washington. But most of his time was spent in motels, small and nameless motels throughout the country.

  He studied with the experts, he read books, he read books. But was he satisfied? Was he happy? That above all else. Was he that?

  ***

  Gurmeet Singh was born in Punjab, India, in 1963. He came to America in the early 1980s. He worked at odds and ends. Then he went to college, got his degree. He went back again, studied the esteemed critics. The real question was: was he satisfied? Was he pleased?

  He went for long walks—liked to do so. He often carried a small plastic bag with him. A bag from Safeway, from CVS, from Walgreens—it mattered not. There was something small—his scarf, his gloves—inside the bag.

  “Why do you carry the bag?” I said.

  “I walk, I walk. People look at me.”

  “And so?”

  “They should not think that I am walking, just walking. W
alking idly.”

  I was surprised at his words. He seemed a sure and confident man. Why then this concern for what others might think?

  But I did not want to pursue the matter, not now. I let the matter go.

  Seminars were being held at the time—seminars on fashion, on semiology, on the semiology of fashion. He studied all of these. New designs were being offered. Custom-made or prêt-à-porter, he did not care. He studied all of these.

  He wore a colored turban. Was it a fashion as well? Was it something more? A matter of religion? A matter of the soul?

  At one of the seminars, some woman rose, a professor from a southwestern college. She spoke on mesas, on canyons, on the origins of canyons. He listened—with what interest he listened. The beginning of things—how they were, why they were—this intrigued him. But his own questions—the “rumblings” he called them—were they now calmed?

  In Cheverly there was a cinema with a parking lot behind it. Sometimes young girls gathered there. They were newly graduated from high school; they had studied typing there, bookkeeping. The job market was tight, the money too little or too unsatisfying. They painted their nails, they walked around the parking lot.

  The men came. Were they pleased? One day Gurmeet Singh put on a purple turban—how dapper he looked (or so he thought). He combed his beard, put a net around the beard. And he went to the parking lot.

  He went there—why did he go? Did he go to meet the girls, to spend time with them? Did he go to speak his ideas on the world, his great ideas?

  He spoke about the villages in Punjab, the games that he had played there.

  “Were there dust storms in Punjab?” they said.

  “Yes,” he said. “They came all the time.”

  “You played pithoo, you played gulli-danda?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You understand the world—how it is, why it is?”

  Gurmeet Singh smiled. He smiled again. There was a gap between his middle two teeth. “I am a small man,” he said. “The esteemed critics are big. I am small. There is so much that I still have to learn.”

  The girls looked at him and smiled in return. Perhaps they were impressed by him—impressed by his sincerity, his modesty. But they had work to do, money to make. Must they not return to this work?

  ***

  The days passed. Gurmeet Singh went to his lectures and he took notes. He made entries in his journal and then more entries still.

  There was a small grocery store on Ager Road (near Hamilton Street). A tall man—he had played baseball for a professional team once—owned the store. There were four aisles in the store but hardly any people there. There were bigger stores nearby—Safeway, Giant—people preferred to go there. But Gurmeet Singh often went to the store. He liked going there. He walked up and down the aisles. There was canned food, there were detergents. There were frozen foods and even a few fruits and vegetables.

  Near the fruits and vegetables, a small mirror hung from the facing of the display. If you stepped back a little, and bent down, you could see your face. Sometimes Gurmeet Singh stepped back and bent down—he looked at his face.

  Gurmeet Singh liked looking at his face. The brown skin, the small mole near the ear. The purple turban, the hair that stuck out from under the edges. The gap—the famous gap between the middle two teeth.

  A man looks at his face, why does he do it? Is it from insecurity? Is it from shame? Is it because he wants to see things, understand them? See things—what things?

  Gurmeet Singh wandered the streets of America—he continued to wander them. There were big men trying to answer the big questions of the world. And Gurmeet Singh, what of him? Was he a big man? Was he even close? In the eyes of Americans, was he even a man at all?

  “He has studied science!”

  “He has studied fashion!”

  “He knows it, the Sikh man, he knows it all!”

  In this way the others spoke. Did they speak seriously? Did they mock Gurmeet Singh? And Gurmeet Singh, dear Gurmeet Singh, was he impressed? Did he agree?

  One day I met him at the Howard Johnson’s—the one on Riverdale Road. We spoke of life, we spoke of death. We spoke of the calm, the calm that comes at last. He spoke for some time. There was so much that he wanted to say. And sometimes how it came pouring out!

  “I am alone in America.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is not easy to be a Sikh.”

  “No.”

  “I wash my turbans, you know. I iron them as well.”

  They were intriguing words, I did not know what to say. And then: “It is important to be clean. A man’s turban is clean. But what of his heart? His soul?”

  His heart, his soul. They were serious words, I tried to take them seriously. We ate our chicken sandwich and fries, we drank our Coke and our vanilla milk shake. And we spoke, yes, of the important things of the world.

  ***

  Gurmeet Singh read, he read. He read voraciously. He read Kant, he read Hegel. He read the Romantic poets, he read the classicists. He read J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey) but also J.C. Scaliger (Poetices Libri Septem, Lyons, 1561). He said that both knew something about poetry and prosody, Scaliger perhaps a bit more. The latter spoke of mel and fel—sweet and sour, sugar and salt—and made other contrasts as well.

  One day I saw Gurmeet Singh. How heatedly he spoke on the subject—with what passion. “Poetry, poetry, how important it is. It stirs the soul, it calms it. It stirs and calms at the same time. But do I understand poetry, really understand?”

  I agreed on poetry—the value of poetry—how could I not? But I also told him that he was being too hard on himself. Poetry was difficult, very difficult. For some it took years to understand, for some a lifetime!

  He seemed reassured by my words. Or was he?

  He spoke again of his texts—with what passion he spoke. He spoke of the texts that he admired—Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal and Paulhan’s Les Fleurs de Tarbes (1941). He spoke of the texts that troubled him—Blanchot’s Faux pas (1943).

  It was late twilight. He came out of the house, sat on the low stoop. The sky was orange and grey and blue; the children were playing in the distance. Some were skipping rope, some were playing with a pink rubber ball. The light was fading, it was harder and harder to see the ball.

  “Be careful, children,” he called out. But children are children. They are self-absorbed, they are immortal. Do they have time for such things?

  He called out to the children—why did he call out? Because he cared for them? Because he was timid and wanted the children to be the same—to not take risks?

  The hours passed. He sat on the stoop, he continued to look at the children. India was far away, the Punjab was far away. Was happiness far away as well?

  Gurmeet Singh rose the next morning. He came out and stood in the veranda. He was living in a cheap motel. He stood under the blue awning. Cars were around him—old cars, cheap cars. The metal trash cans were around him as well. Some were filled to the top, brimming with refuse. They had not been emptied in days.

  Was this what America was? Was this what life was—his life?

  ***

  Gurmeet Singh walked the streets—he continued to walk them. He lived in America—was he happy there? He lived in America—did he fit in? He lived in America—did he understand things?

  Things, what things?

  One day, at a conference, he met the famous jurist Mo Tan. The judge had been born in Tibet, he had fled, with a few others, to America in the late 1950s.

  Gurmeet Singh spoke of his days in Punjab. Was the other impressed? Gurmeet Singh spoke of his walks, of the plastic bags that he carried with him. Was the other impressed? Gurmeet Singh quoted from the esteemed Hegel in his Phenomenology. He spoke of family, of intimacy, of a man’s search for the same. He spoke of the various paths he had taken. He noted—quoting Hegel—that a path, though necessary, is not the only possible path.

  The jurist listened—listened with som
e attention.

  Gurmeet Singh spoke at length of his turban—the colors he wore, the hair inside.

  “The hair is long?”

  “It is.”

  “You cut it?”

  “I do not.”

  “And of that you are ashamed? You are proud?”

  Gurmeet Singh paused, smiled. Shame, pride, what idle words they were. A man does what he does. Is that not enough?

  But the judge was not convinced. He spoke—citing Gurmeet Singh’s own words on Hegel—of analysis and motivation, of the need for analysis and motivation. “We are not animals,” he said. “We do because we choose to.”

  Gurmeet Singh was struck by the word. What an interesting word it was. One did, one did not—that he understood. But to choose to do, to choose not to do?

  “My sister is getting married,” said the jurist simply. “I want you to come to the wedding.”

  Wedding, wedding, what was this strange talk? But the judge was an important and influential man. Who was Gurmeet Singh to refuse?

  The wedding was held in a small hall at the edge of town. Chinese lanterns had been set up; here and there were pictures of Jesus Christ. The bride was Tibetan, the groom was American—white. Gurmeet Singh stared at the scene, marveled at it.

  During the ceremony the jurist came up to Gurmeet Singh, greeted him.

  “Do you see now?” he said.

  “See?”

  “The girl likes the boy, she loves him. It is a matter of choice, Mister Singh. Not parents, not God. But choice. An individual’s choice.”

  Again Gurmeet Singh marveled at the jurist’s words. What an amazing world it was. Choice, choice, still that emphasis on that word. There was so much in the world—so much perhaps that he still did not know.

  ***

  The days passed. A major conference was held at the university. Gurmeet Singh washed and ironed his purple turban (how resplendent he looked!) and he went. Some of the biggest scholars were there—Derrida, Poulet, Todorov, Girard. They spoke of signs, they spoke of signifiers. They spoke, longingly, of a center; they spoke, not so longingly, of the “burden of our Hegelian metaphysical heritage.” Gurmeet Singh listened—with what rapt attention he listened.